Greetings from the Dark Side

I am both Light and Darkness. But increasingly, to act as a catalyst in this incarnation, I am Dark. As a representative of the Dark, I am here to share with you my perspective on things that have been gravely misunderstood about this vital force in the tapestry of existence. Things that I am still working to understand.

Everything was born from Darkness. Every mythology in the world can attest to this. Before a single star burned in the sky, there was Darkness. Life on Earth arose from the darkest, most inhospitable depths of the ocean, which still house the greatest biodiversity on the planet without a sliver of sunlight. Plants sprout from black, fertile soil. Birds and reptiles hatch from the darkness of the egg. Mammals – humans – are nurtured in the darkness of the womb. It is safety and comfort.

Everything also returns to Darkness. So, one has to ask: what is Darkness? It is not the absence of Light as some may claim. Where did it come from? To answer that, we have to go back farther than space, farther than time…

THE VOID...

In the “beginning” there was the Void: the Primal Darkness, the Deepest Dark.

This Void is not the “empty” space between stars in this universe. It is not a dimension, density, or frequency that exists in this universe. It is a reality of an entirely different scope from anything you know or can imagine without experiencing it firsthand. It is outside of this universe, outside of ALL universes! I sometimes imagine it as undulating waves of black electricity under a neon gray sky. This is a realm of absolute chaos and infinite freedom; the churning cauldron of all possibility. It is teeming with wild, frenzied beings who are constantly fighting to tear each other apart.

Except you can’t really call them “beings.” They are nothing like any entities you might find here. I would say they have a “consciousness,” but it is nothing like any consciousness found here. I would say they are “thoughts in the mind of God/dess,” but they do not have “thoughts” as we may understand them. The thoughts of a human are like a faint wisp of smoke to them, and the thoughts of the most advanced beings in this universe appear to them as a straight line. Instead I may call them “flames in the mind of God/dess.”

The closest thing that I know of which can compare to a Void being’s “mind” is the mass consciousness of an entire universe, with all of its conflicting voices existing as one. Constancy within chaos. And this is no coincidence, because if my recent information is correct, the universe IS a Void being! One, big, “incarnated” Void being. A Void being which decided to collapse in on itself, and came out on the other side as the “Big Bang” – the prism through which its countless, conflicting parts gained expression as distinct, internally-coherent beings/energies/perspectives. They don't incarnate on worlds, but AS worlds!

THE MANIFEST...

And so Light was born from Darkness – a universe manifested from the infinite sea of potentiality which is the Void. That is what I call this universe, and other such universes: the Manifest. The Manifest worlds drift like specks of light in the Void’s turbulent ocean. They offer a very different learning environment from the Void.

Where the Void tends towards expansion, the Manifest tends towards coming together – back into the one Void being. You experience this physically as gravity, non-physically as “love.” Where the Void tends towards chaos, the Manifest tends towards order; where the Void tends towards freedom, the Manifest tends towards limitation; where the Void tends towards formlessness, the Manifest tends towards form.

This is the world you see around you: the world of forms. A form is anything that can be contained, measured, defined, or takes effort to maintain. This includes bodies, souls, thoughts, and ideas. Stable forms and structures are what make the Manifest learning environment possible. The Light of the Manifest is all things, sees all things, records all things, and by doing so keeps them existing. This makes sure your body doesn’t spontaneously reassemble itself into a rock, or a bird, or some randomly generated chimera (unless it really, really wants to). This is also what makes the Manifest prone to stagnation.

THE QUANTUM DARK (and Light)...

I used to think of the Manifest/Light as the force of creation and the Void/Dark as the force of destruction. For a very long time, I thought this was the dance of harmony between them, and it made perfect sense to me. But, over time, some things just didn’t add up. The Void had the role of destroying universes that have run their course, yet it also created them. How could this be?

I often address the Void as the Void Mother, referring to its parallel with the ancient ideas of Goddess. The Goddess is both the giver and taker of life. All things come from and return to her cosmic womb. Creation and Destruction cannot be separated. Who is to say that the creation of a book is not the destruction of a tree? They are the same force, and that force flows from the Void. Just as the Void gives birth to, swallows up, and recycles entire universes, so too does it perform this function on every microcosmic scale.

The Void is the cauldron of the Goddess, where all possibilities brew. For the sake of this analogy, you can think of it as a box. Who here has heard of the Schrodinger’s Cat thought experiment? It is used to illustrate the superposition principle of quantum physics. It basically says that if you put a cat in a box with a vial of poison that has a random trigger, the cat exists in a superposition of being both dead and alive until you look inside the box.

Quantum physics is the science of uncertainty. It is also the science of the very small, where particles move freely through solid objects, go backwards and forwards in time, appear and disappear from thin air, defy the speed of light, bi-locate, teleport, and generally make no sense whatsoever to the linear mind. It seems so different from the everyday world we experience, and yet it goes on inside and all around us all the time. The scientists who discovered it were horrified by what they found, because they wanted to keep thinking the universe was perfectly deterministic once all its laws were known. Instead they proved the very foundations of free will.

The Dark is that uncertainty. It is the original Void self which links us to absolute chaos. It is the unknown state of Schrodinger’s cat in the box before the lid is lifted. So what does Light do? It makes things known. It shines into the box and collapses one of infinite probability waves which then manifests into our world of form. And, most importantly, it stabilizes that manifestation and keeps it existing (by keeping it known). This happens every instant, and is the mechanism of reality creation.

To put it another way: although Light is capable of replicating what already exists, it is incapable of creating anything new. Light must reach into the Dark to exercise free will. Left unchecked, Light would maintain Manifest forms to the point of stagnation. This is where the other role Dark plays comes in: Dark is capable of reaching into the Light to destabilize forms. Whether it’s to introduce mutation or challenge the status quo, Dark is the agent of change. But to Manifest beings, change often means fear, doubt, and death.

THE DARKNESS DISTORTION...

At the core of all things in this universe sleeps the Void being who dreams this world. All are capable accessing this potential, but few are able to process it in a “healthy” way. This is because the Void and the Manifest are fundamentally different reality layers with utterly incompatible laws. Laws of Void plus Laws of Manifest equals Gibberish. No matter how much something “made sense” in the Void, once it passes through Manifest filters, all bets are off. Though the reasons for why it gets lost in translation are many, perhaps the biggest one is the concept of forms.

Void beings do not have forms – physical, thought, or otherwise – that can be destroyed. They can not be pinned down, cornered, or defined. They are things of absolute chaos, endless destruction, unbridled ferocity, and infinite expansion. As they constantly fight (or “friction” against) one another, they have no intent to cause “harm.” They have no concept of “harm.” The concept of “restraint” is irrelevant to them, nor can they understand “fear,” "pain," “doubt,” and “death.” While these are meaningful things in the Manifest, they are entirely alien to the Void.

What translates as “aggression” and “conflict” to someone from the Manifest, is in perfect harmony with the “laws” of the Void. The sensation is closest to what we may understand as sex. It is a mindless orgy of bliss steeped in the fullness of their immutable immortality. Yet if they tried to share this friendly “friction” with the Manifest, a Void being could destroy this entire universe with a single touch. To the Void, the Manifest is an infinitely fragile thing, and the power scales are simply incomparable. This is why beings influenced by Void energy often express it in ways that cause great “harm” to Manifest forms.

The most classic example of this is something I call “Moon Sickness.” Undistorted, this is the purest remembrance of immortality. But after passing through Manifest filters, it typically surfaces as either sadism, masochism, or both. It is an insatiable bloodlust (more in the werewolf sense than the vampire sense) where you get high off pain because it no longer registers as dangerous. Restraint and remorse go out the window. You grow disconnected from the Manifest structures contributing to your existence (ex: body, mind, house), and don’t understand that you’re harming yourself and/or others. This is the result of taking Void energy literally and not harmonizing it with the rules of the Manifest.

When beings aren’t taking Void energy at face value, they’re usually trying to interpret it by Manifest laws. Sensing Void through Manifest filters, without understanding what you’re seeing, is a terrifying thing! Imagine knowing that all things are bound for annihilation, that chaos triumphs over order, that ravenous shadows lurk in the fringes of consciousness ready to tear you to pieces. It is enough to drive anyone mad – and it has! Depression, despair, and emptiness are the reality of those who have seen that the universe exists at the whim of forces that appear outright “evil.”

There are four key Void distortions that I am aware of, which combine to form all others: Fear, Pain, Doubt, and Death. I actually call them Gateways to the Void, because until they are faced, the Void can’t be seen for what it is and will appear in the many guises of these distortions. They are also safeguards, because until a being overcomes these Gateways, it is not safe for them to work with the Void. They are Manifest qualities which arise from having a form or, more precisely, what that form perceives as threats to its stability. Fear is a distortion of Void’s Strength, Pain is a distortion of Void's Bliss, Doubt is a distortion of Void’s Truth, and Death is a distortion of Void’s Immortality.

In summation, Void energy doesn’t translate well into the Manifest. AT ALL. But this is yet another mechanism calculated to bring the element of spontaneity. When understood and used wisely, the Void could extend its ultimate gift to Manifest beings: Freedom. To sit at the nexus of the four Void Gates and to integrate their paradoxical qualities brings inner peace.

UNIVERSES WITHIN UNIVERSES...

The state of Oneness is a given. There is nothing you have to do or be to make it so. To say that an individual is “part” of the whole is to imply that the individual is somehow less than the whole and must rejoin it to find fulfillment. But you are not “parts” of anything, you are everything! This is the difference between a fragmentary and a holographic approach to the universe.

The fragmentary approach sees the universe as a painting: cut up the painting and each piece will only have a part of the whole picture. The holographic approach sees the universe as a hologram: cut up the hologram and each particle will contain information on the whole picture. Our DNA is also holographic: each cell contains the entire genetic code even though it is actively using only part of it. The same goes for the universe and the multiverse at large.

This naturally gives rise to what I call the Sacred Principle of Individuality, which says that even “if you isolate the smallest universal particle from the whole, it will spawn its own universe.” This is the principle the original Void being invoked when by diving within it separated itself from all others, thus giving birth to the Manifest. Why did it choose to “incarnate” in this way? To learn, grow, experience, and understand. But the real question is: how does it do that? Not by returning to the Void (that is, reunifying) in the same state that it left, which is what a lot of people seem in a rush to do.

It is the nature of Light to glorify and bind together that which already exists. It is the nature of Dark to be the wellspring of that which is yet to come. This is why Darkness champions the quest for individuality instead of the extant unity. Because remembering unity can’t bring anything new to the table, but developing as an individual can. This is why Void and Manifest beings incarnate in the first place (otherwise you would’ve stayed in “Nirvana”). It is not the state of separation but the state of unity that needed to be fixed!

And here is where things come full circle. Void beings don’t return to the Void as a “whole” but in “pieces.” The individuals who populate the Manifest worlds can choose the inner path. Just as a Void being dives deep inside itself to find the Manifest, a Manifest being can dive deep inside itself to find their Void core. Once they understand what they’ve found they could pass through the Gateways and return to the Void as its very own, brand new Void being! This fledgling Void being will evolve in the Void until it may decide to take its own Manifest journey. And so the Void gives birth to the Manifest which gives birth to Void.

Here, then, is the message of the Dark. Embrace yourself fully. Express yourself fully. Experience with your whole being and do not censor your reactions. Do not be afraid to challenge, criticize, or judge, for this is part of how you enrich the world (and any subsequent worlds you spawn) with everything you have to offer. Remember that Light and Dark alone are blinding, but Dark gives definition to that which Light illuminates. Light is Knowledge, Dark is Wisdom.

To better visualize this, think of a tree. Its branches reach up towards the Light of the sun, and its roots dig deep into the Darkness of the earth. Does the tree need its branches more than its roots? It needs both, and can't survive without either. This is a concept encoded in the sacred World Tree legends found across the world. This is what makes us whole. It can also be found in the Yin Yang symbol:

These two spring from the same source,

But differ in name;

This appears as darkness.

Darkness within darkness.

The gate to all mystery.

(Tao Te Ching, ch.1)