Do you struggle to contain your dark side?
Humanity has battled its darker impulses since the dawn of free will. Why haven’t we learned to drop our dark side? In this episode Johnny G covers the relative nature of good vs. bad, the impact of love and fear on our behaviors, the role of awareness and balance in correcting our path, finding self-compassion, and a powerful method for regaining balance of our energy after a negative experience.
Episode Resources:
The Poem “Autobiography in Five Short Chapters by Portia Nelson can be found here.
The Impersonal Life by Joseph Benner is an extraordinary spiritual text. It’s for sale wherever you buy books- I really enjoy the audiobook version I got from Audible- but there is a free PDF version here.
To learn more about Refractive Coaching visit www.refractivecoaching.com
Caroline Myss’ books can be found wherever spiritual books are sold. I enjoyed Anatomy of the Spirit and Sacred Contracts. She has an especially good episode on Oprah’s Supersoul Conversation podcast, which you can find on Apple Podcasts by clicking here.
If you enjoyed this type of topic, you might also enjoy these Refractive Podcast episodes: Surrender to Greatness and From Addiction to Self Acceptance.
An automatic transcript follows; please excuse inaccuracies from the transcription software.
Speaker 0 00:00:02 Ever since you can remember, you felt something in your chest telling you to move, to love, to speak, to try day after day. You pretend you don’t hear calling. Maybe you dismiss it as silliness or worse that it’s there ready for you, and we’ll wait for you. And as long as you, my name is Johnny G and I invite you to join me on a journey of awakening as we dare to embrace our light. This is refractive. Hello everybody.
Speaker 1 00:00:45 This is Johnny G with another episode of refractive today’s topic is one that was very important to my own spiritual journey. I want to talk about how to deal with our darkness. Um, the more base qualities in us and some people call it the shadow. Um, how is it that we can come to a place of harmony between the ideals of personal and spiritual growth and the tendency that is there to lie, to cover up our shame or, uh, to take things that don’t belong to us or violence. So that’s really what we’re going to talk about today. I hope it’s going to be a topic of some value for you as well. I want to say right off the bat that this is my philosophy and it may not apply for you. I want to encourage you to take what has value and discard everything else.
Speaker 1 00:01:40 What I will say is that I’ve thought a lot about this. I’ve meditated on it. I’ve read a lot about it. And they, these are some conclusions that I’ve come up with that have helped me to move forward in peace with my human nature and to stop rejecting myself rejecting these parts of myself that I used to believe were faulty. Um, but that I no longer feel that way today. And because that ability to stop rejecting parts of myself has been so valuable. I felt that it was a worthwhile episode to dig a little bit deeper into. So let’s go, we all have parts of us that we would consider to be dark. It is a part of human nature and, uh, we tend to seek to get rid of it to suppress it. We’ve all heard stories about people who were raised in a very strict household and the moment they were able to get out from that pressure.
Speaker 1 00:02:46 Uh, they went crazy and really sowed a lot of wild oats. And, um, this is an important lesson for us to learn about the nature of balance. Another thing that is essential to the philosophy I’ve developed about, um, dealing with my light and dealing with my darkness is the concept of love versus fear. I’ve talked about love and fear being on two ends of a continuum before, in other episodes, it was Caroline Miss, M Y S S who is a, she’s a spiritual teacher. She’s the first person I ever heard talk about it this way, but ever since I heard her, um, my ears perked up when other spiritual teachers had talked about it too. So it is a fairly widely discussed concept in spiritual circles. So the concept of love and fear States that we can never be moving towards both love and fear at the same time.
Speaker 1 00:03:52 So I’m going to repeat that we can never be moving towards both love and fear at the same time, we can go back and forth very quickly, but in each moment we are either moving towards love or moving towards fear. Now what’s interesting is that this is not love versus hate. The idea is that love is the source of all high vibration, high energy, positive behaviors. And that fear in its hundred different forms is always the origin of some negative, low energy, low vibration behavior. One key way to define love, because when we say love in our society, we think about, uh, relationships and romance and family. Um, but each of those forms of love is one facet of the greater concept of unconditional love. And to be honest, most of what we call love, especially when it comes to friendships and romantic relationships is a, uh, I’ll say it is a very complicated form of love.
Speaker 1 00:05:22 Now, love in its most basic form is full acceptance of the now full acceptance of what is, okay. Let me give you a second because I know that this is probably not a definition of love that you’ve heard before, but love is full acceptance, and I’m talking about the most purest, the most pure form of love, unconditional love. So when I say love, the definition of love is full acceptance. It means that what is happening right now, what is before me, whether it is a person, whether it is a situation I do not desire it to change. I am in perfect harmony with what is right now, and I have no urge to make it different. It is perfect. I am perfect. And we harmonize perfectly.
Speaker 1 00:06:29 That is, it’s a very interesting, uh, and some might say revolutionary definition of love. And although it is a, it’s certainly not mainstream, it resonates with me. I really feel that as I’ve become more mindful, and as I’ve learned to sink more into the present moment and stop fighting and start looking for acceptance, um, this really makes a lot of sense to me. Now, if we go to the other end of the continuum and we talk about fear, fear is the full rejection of what is now. This is not quite as complicated to understand as love equals acceptance. Obviously, if we have a fear about something, we need it to be different. We want it to be different. I’m scared of poverty. That means I want my situation to be different, or I, I don’t want to walk down towards this path. I’m scared of the death of someone I’m scared of losing someone.
Speaker 1 00:07:40 I’m scared for my safety. It means what’s happening right now is not in harmony with me. I am not comfortable with the way things are. And so the same way that this love slash acceptance can be very subtle and minor. It could be walking down a path and simply accepting what the path looks like. Or this love could be more intense seeing a garden that really makes my spirits soar, and I feel completely energized by it, right? So the same way that there’s this range of love from almost neutral to intense, the same thing happens with fear, right? So if fear, the lack of acceptance, the full rejection of what is it could start with. Um, I don’t like what someone is wearing. Where’s the fear in that this person’s views, don’t jive with me. Is there some sort of way that we are separate?
Speaker 1 00:08:48 Is there some sort of way that, uh, my opinions and my taste is not, what does it say if I wouldn’t dress that way, but he’s dressed that way. These may not be conscious thoughts, but when we don’t like something, it is rooted in some sort of fear. And so it can be very subtle, close to neutral, and it can go all the way to the most dramatic, like I have to kill this person because I’m in danger, right? So, uh, an extremely dramatic example like that, or I need help in this moment because I can’t handle what’s happening to me, right? So there is a range of love and a range of fear. And the reason that I’ve gone through all of these details is that before we talk about our darkness, it’s important that we, uh, well, me, I’m talking about me. It’s important. It was important that I redefined the concepts of good and bad because good and bad are relative.
Speaker 1 00:10:04 If you remember Les Miserables, John Bell, John was arrested for stealing bread to feed his starving family. And so the whole conflict of that story is that, was he a criminal? Did he deserve to be punished? And the fact is, according to the law, he was a criminal. That is true. Does he deserve to be locked away? Would you see that’s different? It depends. And so with any type of behavior that we would look at as negative, whether you’d call it a sin, a crime, something that offends you, anything that you have a negative reaction to it’s relative that same behavior that makes you feel one way can make another person feel completely different. And who has the authority to be, right?
Speaker 1 00:11:12 No one has the authority to be right. Each person gets to be right. No one can tell a person that they’re wrong about their moral judgment of a behavior because it’s it’s individual. And this is why we have juries, right? Because two different people may see the same act in two very different ways. So the whole, uh, again, I know this has been a lot of setup for this topic, but how can I deal with darkness? If I think I’m bad? How can I grow in light? If I believe I’m dark, I need to come to a way, a new paradigm of dealing with light and darkness. And so this is the concept of, of all of that. So when I say positive or negative, good or bad, what I’m really talking about in this philosophy is love or fear. So now that I’ve set that up, we’re all speaking the same language. So what does this have to do with dealing with our dark side? After a quick break, we’re going to go into some steps of how to work with and come to peace with the darkness inside. We’ll be back in just a minute.
Speaker 2 00:14:13 Welcome
Speaker 1 00:14:13 Back to refractive podcast. We are talking today about how to deal with our darkness. And so I mentioned before the break that there are a couple of steps to follow, uh, at least what I found through my spiritual path in order to come to peace with my darkness and to no longer see it as an obstacle for my own spiritual growth.
Speaker 2 00:14:37 Step one. Well, points
Speaker 1 00:14:40 One, let me say not step one. The first point is that it is impossible to remove your dark side.
Speaker 2 00:14:51 I
Speaker 1 00:14:52 Like to think of it as a sheet of paper. Can you remove one side of a piece of paper? I mean, I could, I’m, I’m holding for those of you just listening to audio, I’m holding a piece of paper. So, um, I can maybe shave down one side of the piece of paper, but all it does is create a new version of that side. And if I continue to shave down, I have nothing. So, um, my point is that this paper either has two sides, or it has zero sides. There is no one side. And so this is the concept of polarity. You see this in religions and spiritual concepts, all through history, the idea of the yin and yang, the idea of birth from destruction and death, that there are always these two sides that are equal and opposite, and neither is really good and neither is really bad.
Speaker 1 00:16:00 It’s all. It all depends. So before we say, I really want to, uh, eliminate my, um, my tendency to, to, to, to be what I’d call a bad person. Um, it’s important to realize that you could never, you could never, you can’t just like I can’t take away aside of that paper. I can not take away my darkness because every dark trait is equal opposite part inseparable of a light trait. I’ll go into more about this in, uh, in, in, in a future step. I’ll talk about how to take this idea of polarity and apply it to particular situation. So hold onto that, tuck it in, right? Because we’re going to need to return to this, to this concept. And just a moment, the second point is to look for balance. So if we’re, we’re looking to deal with our darkness and, um, to come into some sort of peace in this situation of growing spiritually, growing personally, becoming a better person yet also having a natural tendency to, uh, towards self-centeredness and other things we look for balance instead of trying to eliminate something that can’t be eliminated.
Speaker 1 00:17:30 We look to reduce, reduce the swing of the pendulum. We know that a pendulum, uh, tends to, uh, in control in a controlled environment, tends to swing equally from left to right, right from one direction to the other. And so we look to do is to lessen the swinging of the pendulum so that as we get good, we stay within a reasonable environment. We don’t become extremist in our search to be good. We don’t need to, uh, you know, we don’t all need to, uh, become mother Theresa and everything, right? Our life is balanced and we also don’t swing too far to the, to the bad side, to the fear side. So by maintaining balance, life feels more calm. So when a situation triggers me, it’s okay to get upset, but maybe I don’t yell and scream and maybe I don’t resort to violence. Right.
Speaker 1 00:18:36 When I feel, when I start to fall in love with someone, I tell them, I show them, uh, but maybe I don’t, uh, maybe I don’t buy them a house today. You know, I keep everything in a reasonable range because balance is key. So becoming aware, and this is a central point today for this podcast. So listen up becoming aware of an area that is out of balance is 100% required to change it. You cannot change a situation that you do not have awareness around. So I, I wrote this in a simple formula awareness plus desire to change equals change awareness, plus desire to change equals change if I have awareness, but no desire. There is no change if I have a desire to change, but no awareness of what’s happening. I can’t change.
Speaker 1 00:19:55 It’s important to have some compassion around this because while sometimes once we become aware of a negative characteristic, we can just simply stop doing it. That’s not in my experience, the most frequent occurrence, what is more likely that once I become aware of a situation that causes me pain, my behavior, my reactions, my, my, um, reflexes toward the situation creates disharmony. Once I become aware over time, the situation changes. It can take quite a long time. There is a poem called autobiography in five short chapters. And I learned about it from a mentor of mine. And since then, once again, it’s popped up over the months as I’ve kind of done some spiritual work. And, um, so I want to share it with you. I’m going to read it. Uh, so again, it’s called autobiography in five short chapters by Portia Nelson, and I’ll link to it in the show notes.
Speaker 1 00:21:15 One, I walked down the street, there’s a deep hole in the sidewalk. I fall in. I am lost. I am helpless. It isn’t my fault. It takes forever to find a way out to, I walked down the same street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I still don’t see it. I fall in again. I can’t believe I’m in the same place. It isn’t my fault. It still takes a long time to get out three. I walked down the same street. There’s a deep hole in the sidewalk. I see it there. I still fall in it’s habit. It’s my fault. I know where I am. I get out immediately for, I walked down the same street. There’s a deep hole in the sidewalk. I walk around it. Five. I walked down a different street.
Speaker 1 00:22:27 I have goosebumps. It’s so powerful because that really is how it is. We know something’s wrong. We continue to do it because it takes time and not giving us the time we need to make these changes. That’s a lack of compassion and we all deserve compassion. We deserve self-compassion all right. So continuing, the third point to make is that when we find ourself behaving in a way that we would call bad negative, fear-based however you want to call it. This signal that triggered our darkness is neutral. The situation that was the origin point of our reaction, that was negative is neutral.
Speaker 1 00:23:29 So let me, uh, let me explain what happened to me is neutral. I have the power to choose to respond in a love-based way, or I can respond in a fear-based way. Every single situation that could ever possibly happen has a response to it. That would be love-based or fear-based the most loving thing that could ever happen to you. You could still respond from a place of fear, the most terrifying thing that could ever happen to you. You could still respond in a, from a place of love. So again, the signal that triggered our darkness is neutral. Let me give you an example for my own life. I am so sensitive to the perception that I’ve been disrespected. This can take place. If someone cuts in front of me in line, this often happens when I’m driving. If someone has their high beams on and they’re blinding me, or if someone doesn’t yield or cuts me off or, uh, jumps in front of me in a way that makes me have to, uh, apply the brakes. Um, there’s this part of me that interprets it as disrespect. So this situation in effect, in effect is neutral. Did the person disrespect me that assumes intention, maybe the person had a wife in labor in the backseat of the car. How do I know maybe the person is going to be fired if they’re late to work one more time. And there was an emergency this morning, you know, um, it is not accurate for me to see the situation as disrespectful towards me.
Speaker 1 00:25:54 It could be inconsiderate, but that’s not the same thing I’m not considered, but that doesn’t mean that I was proactively disrespected. So what happened is neutral. I get to decide whether I respond in love. So in this car situation, what does a response that’s love-based look like. I love myself and I care for my safety. I love others around me and I care for their safety. And therefore I maintain full control and calm of my car. Obviously, there is a person who is not in a state of peace right now.
Speaker 2 00:26:39 Um, and so, because I
Speaker 1 00:26:44 Am in a state of peace, I will allow that person to live his or her life without interference with me. Lord knows that person must be going through something. And I do not need to add to that. Person’s stress. If I am reacting from a place of love, I can simply go on with my day. The fear-based reaction is I will not be stepped on like that. How dare this person, I’m going to turn on my high beams. I will not be cut off like that. I’m going to speed up. I’m going to pass this person because I am not somebody who’s chump.
Speaker 1 00:27:36 That’s it? Right? These are the two reactions. So the person’s behavior towards me is in effect neutral. It’s my decision that can be either love-based or fear-based. This can apply to any situation. And so let’s combine this with the awareness that we talked about in the previous point. If I am aware that I have a tendency to react negatively, when I perceive disrespect from others, then when someone does something that I would have called disrespect before I can be aware of the flood of energy, you’ve all felt it, right? This rush of, of, of, of hot lava that fills your torso, this anger that fills your torso. I can see it. And maybe just like with the autobiography in five short chapters, maybe for the first couple of times, I still get upset. I press on the gas. I’m going to take my revenge on this person, but eventually the awareness plus the desire to change equals change. So, Oh my God, I feel the heat rising up in my torso. Okay. I’m just not going to give into it. I’m going to take a breath and go on with my day because I love myself. So I’m not going to jeopardize my safety. I love other people, so I don’t need to contribute to someone’s already bad day and I don’t need to scare the other drivers around me. That’s selfish. So I’m just going to go on with my day and I’m going to wish the best for that person awareness plus desire to change eventually equals change.
Speaker 1 00:29:44 The fourth step that Earth’s not a step. I keep saying that the fourth point to talk about it is, uh, it’s another nugget of wisdom that I’ve heard from several different spiritual sources. And there is nothing that, that, that touches my heart more than when I find the same wisdom from several sources. It’s like, I just feel that my angels and the spiritual guides and my, my, my definition of God source higher power is communicating with me in that moment. And so, um, the concept is that when we react to a situation in a way that is fear based, our energy becomes contaminated. Now you don’t need to believe me, just remember what it feels like to do something out of fear or anger. You feel like this residue of gross newness inside your body, right? Your blood pressure goes up, your, your, maybe your throat feels tight.
Speaker 1 00:31:01 You have a knot in your stomach. You’re short tempered with people for the next hour or two. You don’t want to be like that, but you can’t help it because there’s this residue of what happened. The point is that whenever we behave in a fear-based way, we put our energy out of balance, our life energy, and it is important at some point. And most of these, uh, most of these spiritual teachings and practices say do it at the end of the day, dedicate just a few minutes at the end of the day, to, um, go in through a mental list of the times today, when we have reacted in a fear-based way,
Speaker 1 00:31:49 Where we angry, dishonest, resentful, um, do we do something in a fear-based way? So the, uh, the way to clear your energy and release this residue, that’s in you from this, from this gross miss is to remember what happened. So I’m going back to my car. I’m driving down the highway. This person cut me off. And I remember I had this rush of hot, of just heat, fill my torso. And like, I felt this like burning desire to, to show this person that I will not be disrespected. I will not be someone else’s doormat. And, uh, and so I feel this heat and I go, and I put my foot on the accelerator and I, I display my dominance. And I remember what it feels like, right? Cause you have to remember what happened. I can feel the steering wheel. I can feel the tenseness in my neck and my shoulders.
Speaker 1 00:33:04 I feel the hot energy inside of me. And you live that experience again just for a few seconds, but be thorough. Then you reimagine you re-imagined because again, everything is a continuum. Everything is polarity. Everything has its equal opposite. So in order to put my energy back in balance, I go back to my mind and I say, what would the love-based reaction have been? I would understand that this person is not in a position of peace right now. I would want to take care of myself and take care of my fellow drivers. So I imagine it I’m sitting in the car, I feel the steering wheel. I feel the seat against my back and my legs. The person cuts me off.
Speaker 1 00:34:03 And my reaction is, Oh, that poor person, it must be having a rough day. Go ahead, buddy. It’s as simple as that, it’s as simple as that to release the film of negativity and balance your energy. And you would go incident by incident, by incident throughout your day. And you do this at the close of every day. And this is how you keep your positive energy glowing and flowing. And, uh, and you keep your capacity to be of service to others at a higher level. So that is something that I do every single night. I actually have a phone partner. Uh, Hey, how are you doing? And uh, if she’s listening, I have a phone partner in every night at eight 30, we have a call and we go through together. Um, where did we miss the Mark today? And, uh, you know, over time, the list gets shorter day by day. It really does. All right, the next point in this list of, of how to come to terms with the darkness and instead of seeking to, uh, exile it and, uh, tear it out of our bodies, um, to learn to work with it. The next point is compassion and love, compassion, and love. It takes time to change. It takes time to build the slivers of faith that allow you to no longer need to scramble to protect your ego.
Speaker 1 00:35:56 I’m going to say this again. It takes time to build the slivers of faith that released the need for us to scramble, to protect our ego fear is the absence of faith, right? If I believed all was well, if I believe this moment was exactly as it should be. If I accept this moment, that it is exactly as it should be, that all is well, then I have no need to wish for this situation to be different. I have no need to resort to fear. So it takes time to build faith that allows you to let go of a fear based reaction.
Speaker 0 00:36:45 Okay?
Speaker 1 00:36:48 So the last point that I wanted to bring up in this situation, in this topic today, it’s I just, I want to ask you when you get angry, when you tell a white lie, when you overindulge in some sort of compulsion, do you think that you displease God, whatever you call it, source the universe, God, higher, power, whatever. Do you think that you displease God when you make a mistake? Do you think that the hand of the creator was absent from your behavior? Do you think that you do anything outside of the will and permission of God? Do you take one breath that is not within the will of the higher power? Does one thought ever arise in your mind that wasn’t passed through the filter of God first?
Speaker 1 00:38:20 Do you think you’re controlling your thoughts? Do you think you’re responsible for what is happening? Do you think you’re responsible for the type of anger that’s inside of you? Do you think you’re responsible for the darkness that’s inside of you? I would have said yes to every single one of those questions. Every single one is God managing my breath. No, no. That’s I would have said no. God started the engine and let me go. It’s up to me to take care of myself. It’s up to me to go to the doctor. It’s up to me to, uh, to do this. It’s up to me to control my thoughts. It’s up to me to not be in traffic. If I worked harder, I wouldn’t be in traffic. If I got up earlier, I wouldn’t be in traffic. If I do more, my family will have more. So I believed that I was the one pulling the strings and that when things didn’t work the way I had idealized them, that it was my fault.
Speaker 1 00:39:44 And through this journey of awakening that has exploded me from the inside over the past three years, I’ve come to realize that my definition of God is limitless. God is everything everywhere. There is nothing that is not God. Even what we think of as nothing. The space between subatomic particles. That’s still God. So do I displease God when I get angry? I don’t believe that anymore. I don’t believe that anymore. That’s where I am today. So I want to share an excerpt with you from a book that has been possibly, well, I don’t know, maybe the most influential book of my entire spiritual journey. I mean, possibly the number one it’s called the impersonal life by Joseph Benner, the impersonal life by Joseph Benner. So I’m going to read this for you. And, uh, I know that by the time I finished reading this, I’m going to be vibrating inside with energy because it just, it causes my spirit to rise.
Speaker 1 00:41:26 Here we go to test your strength and more often to show you what the misuse of my power does to you. I, at times allow you to commit a sin in so-called or to make a mistake. I even permit you to become inflated with the sense of my presence within you. When it manifests as a consciousness, my power, my intelligence, my love let you take these and use them for your own personal purpose, but not for long for not being in strong enough to control them. They soon take the bit in their teeth. Runaway with you, throw you down in the mire and disappear from your consciousness. From the time being always. I am there to pick you up after the fall. Although you do not know it at the time, first straightening you out, then starting you onward again by pointing out the reason for your fall.
Speaker 1 00:42:29 And finally, when you are sufficiently humbled causing you to see that these powers accruing to you by the conscious use of my will, my intelligence and my love are allowed. You only for use in my service and not at all for your own personal ends to the cells of your body, the muscles of your arm, think to set themselves up as having a separate will from your will or a separate intelligence from your intelligence. No, they no, no intelligence, but yours no will from yours. After a while, it will be that you will realize you were only one of the cells of my body and that your will is now not your will, but mine, that what consciousness and what intelligence you have are mine wholly and that there is no such person as you, you personally, being only a physical form containing a human brain, which I created for the purpose of expressing in matter an idea, a certain phase of which I could express best only in that particular form.
Speaker 1 00:43:50 Yes, all ideas and all desires come thus for me, they are my ideas and my desires, which I inspire in your mind and heart in order to bring them through you into outer manifestation, you have no ideas of your own and could not possibly have a desire that came from other than me for I am all that is therefore all desires are good. And when thus understood unfailingly, come in to speak and complete fulfillment, you may wrongly my desires. My urge is from within and seek to use them for your own selfish purpose. But even while permitting this, they still fulfill my purpose for it is only by letting you misuse my gifts and by the suffering such misuse brings that I can make you into the clean and selfless channel I require for the perfect expression of my ideas.
Speaker 1 00:45:05 Thank you so much for tuning in today and, uh, as always be good to each other and aim your light. This is Johnny G and you have been listening to refractive podcast. If you enjoyed today’s content, please subscribe. And either like the episode or give it a rating, it helps to prioritize this content in search engine results. I’m a coach speaker and facilitator based in Washington, DC. I work in person and remotely with those who are ready to step into an authentic life and a fulfilling career. If I can be of service, visit refractive coaching.com or email me at johnny@refractivecoaching.com. I’d love to hear your comments and feedback on the podcast, or maybe you have a topic you’d like to hear. You can find me on social media, on Facebook and YouTube at refractive coaching and on Twitter and Instagram. I’m at refractive life. As you go through your day, I hope you remember the magnificence that is your birthright. Be good to each other. And don’t forget to aim your light.