How to Embrace the Dark Side

How to Embrace the Dark Side

Embracing the dark side is an important subject in psychology and spirituality.

The dark side is the side of ourselves that we fear, reject, fight, avoid, and put off facing: the ego within, emotions, trauma, defenses, fixations, and karmic obstructions. (See the earlier article “A Special Feature on Karmic Obstructions.”)

I. Two Figures

1. Jung, who is known for this.

The earlier article “The Structure of ‘I’: The ‘Experiencing Self’ Accompanies the Libido” compared this with Jung’s framework. Jung’s path of healing and growth involves the ego “striving” to integrate complexes, the shadow, subpersonalities, personality fragments, and so on (karmic obstructions), gradually reaching the Self (wholeness).

I believe Jung was influenced by Spinoza (whom he himself mentioned) and traditions such as German objective idealism. His concept of the “Self” resembles Spinoza’s identity of nature, Schelling’s absolute identity, and the “Dao” of Daoism: “only a few can attain it.” So it is perfectly natural that Jung liked Daoist philosophy.

A good psychology documentary from the past few years, *Stutz*, discusses embracing the dark side: feeling inferior, embarrassed, rejected, dejected, or ashamed, and wishing that this side of yourself did not exist—for example, a fourteen-year-old boy with acne.

This framework is fairly practical and concrete, but it clearly differs from the humanistic, Zhuangzian, and Zen framework of “everyone possesses innate wholeness, with no cultivation or attainment required.” Common psychological concepts such as “striving” and “healing the inner child” do not express views I agree with. See the earlier articles “Spiritual Cultivation Is a False Concept: Follow Nature; Striving Leads You Astray,” “The Birth of a New Ego: The Spiritual Practitioner’s Ego,” and “The ‘Inner Child’ Heals Me.”

1. Gilligan

See the earlier article “Gilligan’s Psychology: A Daoist Approach to Psychology.”

Stephen Gilligan holds a PhD in psychology from Stanford and was a student of Erickson. Gilligan’s school of psychology is currently the closest to my own approach. He is very fond of Daoist philosophy, and I also think his school best represents what a psychology based on Zhuangzi would look like.

Its main elements are as follows:

a. Innate wholeness; “How Ordinary People Can Experience Innate Wholeness,” “A Brief History of the Development of Innate Wholeness in Zen,” and “Humanism vs. Marxism.”

b. A deep connection among the self, others, and the world, a profound existential experience; “Psychological Growth for Ordinary People: Psychological Boundaries, Selfobject Relations Theory, and Object Relations Theory.”

c. Surface-level verbal thinking vs. the deeper mind; see the earlier article “Zhuangzi’s ‘Discussion on Making All Things Equal’ and Marx: Returning from Surface-Level Verbal Thinking to the Deeper Mind.”

d. Following nature (innate wholeness + deep connection + the deeper mind -> following nature). Relax and let the id heal naturally: the id will heal the experiencing self on its own. What matters most for the experiencing self is to stop resisting and stop meddling.

e. Embracing the dark side: Japanese Morita therapy’s approach—let suffering take its natural course, and do what needs to be done in everyday life—is also a fairly Daoist and practical way of putting it.

f. Acceptance: accept, allow everything to happen, relinquish control and deliberate action, and follow nature and fate instead of fighting them. Accept, relax, and let the id and psychic energy/libido flow naturally.

Taken together, this is clearly a framework based on innate wholeness, in which the inner mind naturally heals itself, with no cultivation or attainment required. It is closer to Zhuangzi, Zen, and humanism. What matters most for the conscious experiencing self is to relax and stop fighting. It differs from the Jungian framework of “striving” and “healing the inner child.”

II. What to Embrace

(1) Avoidance

The dark side arises from avoidance. On the one hand, we evade it; on the other, we often lack sufficient experience of inner life and do not know how to be with our own minds.

Working against this is the way society disciplines us to be “simple and innocent,” along with a remark that often makes people explode: “You think too much.” Socialization, objectification, instrumentalization, reification, and alienation devalue the colorful issues of our inner lives, our emotions, and fluctuations in our states, demanding “emotional stability.” That is why I previously wrote “Emotion Is a False Concept: With a Stable Personality, Emotions Take Their Natural Course” and “Psychoanalysis Reveals the Poetry, Sacredness, and Cthulhu in Ordinary Life.”

The task of embracing what we avoid is to embrace emotions, stray thoughts, and karmic obstructions (“The Spiritual Practitioner’s Ego”). I like the concept of “libido” because it gives us a useful name for our inner emotions, fluctuations, karmic obstructions, and motivations, helping us learn to live with our complex inner lives.

General education and psychological education are important because they help people realize that emotions should be embraced, and that emotions are natural and healthy. Anger, for example, is often stigmatized, but anger is a very healthy, normal emotion that deserves attention. When anger is suppressed, aggression turns inward. This is why many spiritual approaches emphasize acceptance, allowing, and embracing, as in Hellinger’s “I Allow.”

Embracing stray thoughts and karmic obstructions is an important concept in “spiritual cultivation.” Many practitioners do not allow themselves to have stray thoughts or karmic obstructions, which is itself a karmic obstruction. Enlightenment means an inherent stillness of feeling, remaining unmoved as karmic obstructions gather and disperse like clouds. Zhuangzi: “The perfected person uses the mind like a mirror: neither following what departs nor welcoming what comes, responding without retaining. Thus they can deal with things without being harmed.”

In “My Second Year After Enlightenment” and “A New Model of Psychological Growth Levels and Needs—A Revision of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs,” I wrote that many people mystify enlightenment. They imagine that once enlightened, a person sits like an old monk absorbed in meditation, doing nothing, or becomes omniscient and omnipotent, able to turn stone into gold, fly through the skies, and pass through the earth. Many people think enlightenment means a cloudless sky stretching for miles, but the sun can still shine brightly when there are clouds.

Really, just think of Lu Xun, Su Shi, Marx, and Engels. Did they never have worries, confusion, hardship, or times when they had to earn a living? Surely they can still be called enlightened. Lu Xun’s writing is angry and tragically heroic, but his heart is peaceful.

(2) Embracing Anxiety

Anxiety is not a bad thing, avoidance is a good thing, and procrastination is not a problem.

Internet cafés, games, anime culture, and short videos are always said to be ruining a generation of young Chinese people, but in fact they have not. These forms of “escape” have served as what Winnicott called a “transitional space,” or even a holding environment. Looking back at thirty-five, those days in internet cafés offered rare breathing room and mental space during the high-pressure years of adolescence. Seeing more than a billion people struggle through life while still retaining a simple sense of truth, goodness, and beauty makes me feel the significance of innate wholeness all the more. See “How Ordinary People Can Experience Innate Wholeness.”

Why is anxiety good? If being with someone makes us anxious, that is a signal that we should leave that person. See “Screening Our Social Connections” and “The People Who Said There Was Something Wrong with Me ‘For My Own Good’ Made Something Wrong with Me.”

Procrastination means we lack psychic energy, and self-attack depletes that energy further. That is why I wrote “Procrastination Is a False Concept.” Much procrastination is actually the libido having already made a judgment and a decision that consciousness has yet to accept.

With anxiety, as long as we acknowledge it rather than deny or malign it, either avoidance or facing it directly is fine. Face it when you have the vitality; lie flat when you do not.

(3) Embracing Shame and Guilt

a. External: crimes, morality, identity

*The Shawshank Redemption* is about more than an escape of the spirit; it is also about atonement. Andy acknowledges that he is guilty. After all, he impulsively took a gun and went to kill someone, so he serves his sentence with a settled mind until he feels he has atoned enough. Setting yourself free is important.

Much moral guilt does not arise from anything truly immoral, but simply from failing to conform to public opinion. For example, people born in the 1980s, followed by those born in the 1990s and 2000s, have begun criticizing their families of origin. Traditional East Asian ethics sees this as profoundly rebellious and unfilial, but it is healthy and humanistic.

b. Internal: CPTSD, toxic shame; social conditioning

Shame = trauma

CPTSD is a concept I particularly recommend learning about in my psychology reading list. It is a form of complex trauma related to childhood and adolescence, and it often becomes a central theme between the ages of 20 and 35.

Shame is not an ordinary emotion, as people mistakenly assume, but a serious trauma. Shame = trauma. Moreover, it is a particularly severe type of trauma, close to dissociation, a phenomenon involving the collapse of the core of the self. To put it in extreme and vivid terms, a truly healthy person has no shame. In other words, much of the shame we experience is a recurrence of trauma.

“What Are the Roots of Self-Attack, Self-Doubt, and Toxic Shame?” discusses toxic shame fairly systematically:

Kohut—self psychology:

Narcissistic injury brings a feeling that the self is fragmented and produces two defenses: a. the grandiose self (concealing shame, as in excessive narcissism); b. narcissistic depression (becoming trapped in the shame of “I am worthless”).

First comes a profoundly painful experience, followed by a chain of consequences and multiple defense mechanisms: withdrawal, self-attack and self-destruction, self-doubt and procrastinatory perfectionism, and a false sense of superiority. Prolonged shame may lead to emotional dissociation.

Winnicott—the object relations school:

Without sufficient mirroring, a child cannot develop a true sense of self and develops a “false self”: a survival strategy of pleasing others while concealing what is real, with the shame of not having been accepted at its core. A toxic superego: an internalized, persistently humiliating superego. Imperfection deserves humiliation, and even small mistakes bring intense shame.

Shame also often comes from society: a. Projective identification and the intergenerational transmission of shame: caregivers cannot process their own shame and project it onto their children—“You’re such an embarrassment to me.” Through projective identification, the child internalizes this intense shame. b. The oppressive internalization of social power structures: marginalized groups and structural shame, such as shame among workers who collect human waste and sexual minorities.

“Everyone Suffers: On ‘Deep Collapse and Deep Suffering,’ in Response to a Reader’s Question, ‘Why Has Fate Been So Unkind to Me?’”: psychological defense mechanisms serve to ward off a more serious collapse. At the heart of deeper problems are fear, grief, and shame, which lie deeper than anxiety and depression.

1. Embracing Mediocrity and Existential Crisis

Embracing mediocrity, like embracing karmic obstructions, is also an advanced concept in psychology and spirituality.

Mediocre people cannot accept mediocrity. Only by accepting mediocrity can we be at ease as ordinary people.

Accepting mediocrity is difficult because of existential crisis: people lack the strength and courage to face many truths, such as loneliness, the fact of having no friends, responsibility, death, and so on. That is why Irvin Yalom’s book on the philosophy of death is called *Staring at the Sun*.

People often realize around thirty that their abilities are limited, and may even accept their own mediocrity, setting out from there toward Daoist philosophy. But many firmly avoid it, flailing about in search of a sense of significance and superiority.

From the earlier article “Accepting Mediocrity”:

Mediocrity was once something I found difficult to face. 1. Seeking fulfillment outside myself made mediocrity unacceptable. 2. “The people around me” could not accept mediocrity. 3. Looking for work made mediocrity unacceptable. 4. Existential crisis made mediocrity unacceptable. 5. All kinds of ego fixations made mediocrity unacceptable. My former inability to accept that the younger generation in my family might be ordinary or mediocre was also a projection of my inner anxiety.

Mediocrity is not good, but neither is it shameful. This world is unkind to ordinary, unexceptional people. The ignorant have little choice but to protect themselves through vulgarity; it is hard to avoid. But when a tactic becomes a strategy and vulgarity becomes the core, it is all over. Striving in the latter half of my life to be ordinary without being mediocre already counts as having come to my senses.

Accepting mediocrity gives me peace. I am an ordinary thing in nature, an ordinary existence, coming naturally and going naturally.

a. To be an ordinary person without needlessly troubling yourself is to be ordinary without being mediocre.

b. I owe nothing to Heaven, to anyone else, or to myself.

c. I have no task to fulfill. I do not need to deliberately do anything. I am simply a very mediocre person, always being carried along by fate. Only when I settle down and stop struggling wildly can I enjoy the river of fate.

d. I bear no guilt. I have done nothing wrong.