[TraineeHuman]

Ortho: “Embracing your dark side” as I and Jung and the advanced forms of all the world’s religions etc mean that phrase (or similar) certainly doesn’t mean doing any destructive acts at all. I thought I’d already made that halfway clear, but apparently not. The “embracing” part refers to admitting your negative impulses to yourself – but with the result that you then don’t act on them (apart from beating up a pillow in private, etc). You don’t act on them because you’ve then – and only then! -- become aware that they can be dangerous. One thing in the background of all of this is the fact that most of the things humans do are controlled primarily by the subconscious / unconscious. As any psychologist can explain, humans mostly behave subconsciously/ unconsciously rather than with full awareness of what they are actually doing. And therefore personal/spiritual evolution always centrally involves becoming aware of things we hadn’t been aware of – particularly things about ourselves. Thus the “embracing” part means shining the light on those things, and certainly not laying further darkness on them.

The whole point about one’s “dark side” is that one is unaware of, or lies to oneself about, it’s existence. That’s why it’s “dark”, or invisible, to oneself. I could give heaps of examples, but anything that’s “ego” is the dark side. To give an example of that, consider what Dr Phil calls “right-fighting”. That term refers to the reality that many people’s approach to any disagreement is to try to prove that whatever their position is is 100% right. The only reason such people behave that way is that to them every other alternative is outside their awareness, i.e. “dark”.

The more fully one does “embrace” some part of one’s dark side, the more fully one heals it and transforms it into something positive. Here “embrace” doesn’t have the wider meaning of laissez faire, which I guess is what you’ve taken it to mean. Laissez faire parents neglect their children emotionally, and parenting of that kind sometimes creates criminals out of the kids, or at best the kids grow up psychologically messed up. That isn’t accepting (embracing) one’s kids at all. Equally, “accepting” and “embracing” one’s negative impulses means dealing with them realistically and organically and pying attention.