Darkness

As a child I was always afraid of the dark. When I was old enough to write the first things i learnt to write was Allah and I would write it a hundred times and paste it all over my room to protect me from the darkness because darkness bought with it monsters and dreams things that went bump in the night.
 As I grew older I learnt that one had to be brave and not let the darkness scare you. As I got older still I learnt of a new kind of darkness, the one which lurks within all of us. What are we to do with that darkness let is dwell, not disturb it or rattle its cage. What does that darkness signify anyway, the shame, the guilt, the fear we all feel because we all are vulnerable human beings yet we pretend we are braver, stronger, faster than the other guy.
 The question that has been festering in my mind is why we are afraid of the darkness. The dark in the metamorphic sense within our souls or the darkness of the night. If we think about it all good things really come out of the dark. The seed is under layers of dark soil before it erupts and comes forth as a plant, a flower, or a tree. A baby is in the darkness of the womb before it comes into the light of the world. It is darkest before the dawn tears out of the night.
 I think our darkness completes us. It is only when we have allowed our selves to be comfortable with out own darkness, our own fears, our guilt, our shame, our vulnerability that we realize our true potential. We realize our own humanity and hence the humanity within others. The question than become how does one allow one self to be comfortable with the dark within. For that to happen one has to get thoroughly uncomfortable, to step outside of our comfort zone and think through the hard questions, face the fears we are never willing to face head on. The fears that lurk within us of our own inadequacy, It means letting down our own guard and the plastic masks we wear in public and examine our belief systems. Thinking is a painful process for many people we would rather be indulged, told how to live a life rather than take a path less traveled and find our own answers which may not be in agreement with the rhetoric of the time.
 However, looking back at history one finds many examples where geniuses have come forth when they were ready to embrace their darkness.Darkness than is not something to fear but to embrace to get comfortable with because it is only when we are ready to accept ourselves completely, that we are able to reach our true potentials. It is when we embrace the pain, the fear, the shame that we have experienced in our lives that we will feel adequate and will allow our selves to be vulnerable, to connect, to communicate with other living beings and it is only at that juncture that an ordinary un-examined life becomes an extra ordinary life.