Inner Darkness and the Power it Holds: The Truth about Anger, Ego, and “Negative” Energy
By: A. W. Finnegan
To the average person, the idea of an inner darkness, that is, anger, the ego, and that which is termed “negative energy” is deemed just that; “negative” and “evil.” It is equated with destruction and doing harm to others. It certainly can be used this way, but one could also say that aside from a case of self-defense, the use of these forces directed in harmful, destructive ways represents a misuse and abuse of their original purpose. That is to say, unless it is used for self-defense, it is wrong to intentionally inflict harm on another. It is not this inner current of darkness of undirected potentiality and power that is evil per se, but the care in which we direct it, the intention behind it and to what end.
In today’s world, many have become caught up in self-sabotaging belief systems serving as solutions to atheism and organized religion that are constantly repackaged, reinforced to the wandering or lost mind and seeker of Truth. These systems are usually decorated with an attractive surface layer of Occultism, spiritualism, shamanism, or the New Age. If this is the case for you, don’t take what I’m about to say personally, because many of us have been ensnared by it at some point, including myself to some extent. I believe in non-physical beings and dimensions, but this is often used to mystify a topic that is not really mystical in origin, but used as an attractive disguise to lure you in before disarming the spiritual power of every individual who signs onto it.
These systems effectively promote spiritual subversion. A subversion of your ability to recognize and develop the esoteric or occult abilities latent in the human mind. When I say “occult” I’m not talking about mysticism or supernatural abilities, but psychological tools of the trade for living life, so to speak. These belief systems spiritually strip away the real spiritual power you hold when you indoctrinate yourself in them. However, not all is lost for those who do, because the Truth is always available and accessible to those who honestly and remain unwavering in seeking it.
This doctrine of spiritual Subversion has been propagated and put into circulation far and wide, which hook and bait those who wish to seek more than the two standard polar opposites, religion and atheism. It baits those asking questions about reality, who realize there is more to this existence than what is on the surface and promoted by the two polar sides. It baits those who have come to a fork in the road and instead of taking an honest path to learning truth, they are fooled and sold a lie packaged as truth. These systems impart destructive and harmful effects that appear as selfless love, peace, and ego transcendence.
It is indoctrination to a philosophy of slow devaluation and self-capitulation. They are being turned from vibrant beings full of spiritual fire to docile mutes that don’t stand up for themselves when met with conflict. Or when they do, they believe they did something wrong. They sign on to a system that teaches them to deny their unpleasant feelings, to the point where they start to fester underneath. It is a convenient but very unfortunate arrangement for them because there is very little work involved in order to be initiated into these systems, but ultimately robs them of the opportunity to truly develop their spiritual nature and its application in the real world.
The spiritual awakening sold to them in the process is one of spiritual disarmament and filters out the mechanics of how to truly utilize the spiritual plane to make this realm more effective and orderly. The process of real spiritual initiation takes time, arduous study, applied effort, and work. Many will seek to find ways around that to escape that ugly truth.
The different spiritual approaches of these brands of spirituality may seem diverse and unconnected to each other but there are usually some general themes or underlying principles that weave them together. Principles and ideas which are effectively disarming and dehumanizing large numbers of people from otherwise amazing potential to shape themselves and be a source of True Light in a very dark world.
The main tenets or suspect ideologies usually include some variation of the following: that we are approaching a transition time in which we are to enter a new phase of existence, transcend the life we live now and enter some magical awakening of peace, love, harmony, and on and on.
Ask yourself this: How are we to enter a new, more advanced phase of existence if we can’t even master the one we are in right now, which is a complete disaster?
On top of that, nothing is done to combat the very evils proliferating every corner of the globe. Do these things just magically disappear in the next phase? They reinforce that all of our interactions with others should be done from a place of peace, love, compassion. However, the world is not getting any nicer, and the clever manipulation and undermining of society and its naive inhabitants is only getting much, much worse.
There is the promotion of the idea that the ego is evil and should be destroyed. They suggest that this physical world is all an illusion. It will mix half-truths with misleading sidesteps while playing on people’s desire for a world without evil. Its design only guarantees the subversion of the sacred Self and real spirituality. Subversion of your ability to begin real change in the present by having you focus on anything except for right here, right now.
The only way to bring peace and change to what is in the here and now, is to focus on the here and now, identify the problem in the here and now, address the causal factors in the here and now, and actively work to understand and change them in the here and now. There is no other way. There are no drugs or compounds that anyone can take to do the work for them. They have to understand the human mind and how it works in order to change things within themselves, and by extension, the world around them, there is no other way than this.
Recognizing the problem becomes paramount, so that is my focus in this article. In order to illustrate this, let’s break down some of these underlying ideas and the ways they are carefully manipulating these movements to disarm you from becoming truly powerful spiritual beings. They want you to equate peace, love, and compassion, with being smiley, docile, and non-responsive to conflict or threat. They want you to equate peace with not fighting back. They want you to think of love as being tranquil, compliant, and submissive.
First off, lets discuss their version of peace, love, compassion, and care, in your approach to life, versus a genuine form of peace, love, and compassion. Should we always approach life with peace and love? Yes, but the context needs to be well-understood to illustrate the difference between the actual definition of these ideas and how they are understood today within these systems. The definition will bring us to the root of the problem:
We can understand peace as coming from the “mid-12c., pes, “freedom from civil disorder, internal peace of a nation,” from Anglo-French pes, Old French pais “peace, reconciliation, silence, permission.” [1] We can define love here as “to care, praise, or hold dear.”[2] I use the word “value.” The word compassion can be etymologically broken down as “compassioun, literally “a suffering with another.”[3] The word care from the Old English carian, cearian “be anxious or solicitous; grieve; feel concern or interest,” from Proto-Germanic *karo- “lament,” hence “grief, care.”[4] So, by definition, to care about something means to value it enough for you to feel a deep emotional response to it.
Next, understand that an approach of peace also means approach to keep the peace, to ensure the peace, which is not always a peaceful resolution. Love is not always acted on with kindness or peace, but with peace in mind as the end goal. To love is to value something. To value something means to give it a rating of importance, likely rated by cause and effect. This value depends upon the rating or impression given to it by the result of its actions. If we are considerate and nice to someone, who responds by being rude, inconsiderate, and disrespectful, we can value them as disrespectful and act accordingly.
By proxy, we must hold our own life dear so we need self-respect and love for ourselves in order to value or love life as a whole. A person who disrespects us and degrades us, should be dealt with in a manner consistent with having respect and love for yourself by standing up to them. It calls for you to stand up for yourself, defend yourself, and even fight back if the response calls for it. Self-defense is a built-in mechanism to survive and rightfully given to us to keep order within our sphere of life.
We do have traits that are inherited from the animal kingdom and we still use them for social and survival purposes. That being said, the human existence is on a different plane from the animal kingdom, and because of the fact that we value life, we will usually try to reason with the irrational party and solve things peacefully, but things don’t always work out that way, so we have to know how to stand up and act when the time comes. It takes care for one to stand up for oneself.
To care shows you are emotionally engaged in the exchange in which you respond with a value equal to the level of value given to you. It does not necessarily mean eye for an eye is a general rule but that you will respond with the appropriate measures if they devalue you, be it walking away, settling an argument by trying to reason with them, or physically fighting back.
Caring does not always include being peaceful or calm in demeanor. A mother who cannot find her 3-year old child is frantic and full of anxiety, which rightfully fuels her into quickly finding the child, driving her to find him faster and make sure her child is safe. It is fueled by Care. If she finds the child and the child is being harmed by another adult, her intrinsic Care rightfully sends her into a fit of rage and attacks the person who is harming the child. She does this at the instinctual level to ensure survival and because she cares enough to feel angry that someone is trying to hurt and devalue the child.
As a rule, we give everyone a fair shot and act first with kindness regardless of race, creed, gender, and so on. We do this because we value all life as equal. It is until they act in a way that disrespects and devalues us, which prompts us to a response of differing value, which may or may not be kind. This actually is a form of compassion, because you are suffering through it with them, together, even if you don’t condone their thoughts or actions, you are engaged with the exchange emotionally because you care place value in it and feel a significant emotional response to it.
Both care and love include heavy emotional states that some consider negative. We need these passionate, darker energies at times to help ourselves and our loved ones survive. We are still compassionate in this approach, because we feel the passion or emotion with which they provoked in us by some inner suffering of their own. It is about maintaining order for each, so that when one crosses the line, there has to be a reaction or the person will find themselves being more and more devalued and detested.
Kindness, happiness, peace, and serenity are usually aimed for because they are pleasant and without conflict. It is always nice to have a nice long period of pleasant living. We strive for and appreciate them, but when the going gets tough, the tough gets going. We have the lower energies for a reason, and this reason has as much to do with love, as peace and serenity does in appreciating it. These heavy emotional states that help us value life so deeply are in the domain of the ego. The ego allows us to feel this deep sense of value and Care, so anyone who says that ego is all evil and should be completely destroyed, is not understanding the equation and is more or less advocating for their own non-survival and devaluation of life.
Ego, however, can become like a wild beast if it is not kept in line or tamed. There are times when a person would do well to let go of the importance the ego places on something or someone, such as being overly attached to someone is causing them endless suffering. Addictions, co-dependencies, and destructive coping mechanisms are all examples. The ego is holding onto something that is causing the person suffering, but this is because they are not self-aware enough to realize that it is the unhealthy constructs of the ego causing the continuation of this unhealthy arrangement. Through practice, they can learn when the ego is in control so they can respond by modulating the value they place in it. They can then make more sound decisions in the way they respond in this manner. So on the one hand, you need the ego for your very survival, but not being in control of it and letting it run amok, can also lead to destructive tendencies and thus your eventual demise.
Finally, the world we live in is most certainly not an illusion, but a very real place, so vivid and physically real that you can feel, see, hear, smell, taste, touch all that is in it until the day you perish. However, the physical world certainly is full of illusions and false realities being lived out based on lies. When we place the importance only in our physical aspects and material possessions, we shut out the spiritual world in which we formulate our journey here. The world is full of illusions, but that doesn’t mean that we should regard the physical world itself as an illusion or lie, we should value it and see it as something to be cared for with great compassion.
It is when we devalue this physical world and seek to destroy the ego which we use for our spiritual growth and survival, that the world becomes more and more disorderly and chaotic. This is because in effect we are giving up our moral responsibility to ensure its order, and order is the result of value (love) placed on life when we are aligned with Truth.
The lower order of emotional states serves a very clear purpose. It is with these aspects of ourselves that we are able to stand up for ourselves and do what is right. If we did not exercise our natural right to experience them and act in accordance with love and order, we would find that malicious hearts and minds would scheme and run right over us, just as they are doing today.
If you fight for Truth, or love, you need to care enough to value life and act to ensure its survival, just as a mother would do to protect her child. She would fight to the death to protect her child from harm. You would need to value life enough to take the time to understand how those we consider “evil” operate. That is, the unhealthy minds and hearts that put all their time and effort to manipulate and deceive others, corrupted by greed, power, and control. Extreme people who direct these dark energies for the wrong purpose of destruction and harm to others. Our survival and continuation depends on our ability to understand it and stand up to it to overcome it.
Maintaining Goodness means establishing an order by way of care and value by calculating and acting to ensure it. It is certainly not a passive process, it takes action. If you take a look back at the history of the human race, being docile and submissive is not a good trait, being overly naïve and overly trusting, is not a good trait.
It means that you would need to understand that not everybody else wants the best for you or wants to be kind and loving like you are. You understand that there are cold-hearted, mean-spirited people out there that thrive off lying, cheating, stealing, and demoralizing the good people of the world. It takes guts and an edge to take on these vicious elements in the world. It means that you value life and the order within it, and you care enough to feel the appropriate emotional reactions that the world suffering makes you suffer with it.
It is when you stop caring, you turn docile, naïve, and way too nice or compliant to everybody, which will literally get you killed. This is akin to saying “I don’t care or love anymore, so I’m going to do nothing.” You will effectively forfeit your position as a human being by more or less implying that you aren’t a human being and as a result lose the freedom that comes along with being human. When we stop declaring our inalienable natural rights, we will eventually fall prey to the vicious nature of tyranny and be trampled on like cattle and sheep, as history has shown us, time and time again.
Our inner darkness can act as fuel when we are feeling its effects, a catalyst to truly take control of ourselves by choosing how we shape our character and being. In times of weakness, the inner darkness is your friend, to pick you up and get you back in this fight called life. The current can be directed into so many outlets. Anger can be the most motivating to the stagnant and complacent mind. Feelings of rejection, being looked down upon, can all be redirected to success according to the way we channel them to re-manifest.
Heavy metal music is an example of dark, otherwise destructive energies turned into a creative outlet and made into art. The same can apply to all other aspects of life. All of our inner darkness is a potential of great power. We have the ability to transmute the darkest order of base elements with the passionate internal flame to bring forth Spiritual Gold. And the power in this spiritual gold has absolutely nothing to do with greed…
Sources:
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[1] Peace: Search Online Etymology Dictionary. (n.d.). Retrieved July 19, 2020, from https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=Peace
[2] Love: Search Online Etymology Dictionary. (n.d.). Retrieved July 19, 2020, from: https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=love
[3] Compassion: Search Online Etymology Dictionary. (n.d.). Retrieved July 19, 2020, from https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=compassion
[4] Care: Search Online Etymology Dictionary. (n.d.). Retrieved July 19, 2020, from: https://www.etymonline.com/word/care#etymonline_v_5376
Many thanks to my true friends, few as they are. To my family, and my extended family. Many thanks to those who took their time to work with me, artists, musicians, my mentors in Natural Law, fitness, and life in general. Special thanks to Guru Vashish ji, for his kindness and selfless assistance in taking the time to help me in my studies and respect to the care of the Great Mother Kali Maa. Blessings to my friends no longer with me who have passed on. Many thanks to heavy metal music for getting me through some of the toughest times: Dissection, At the Gates, Dark Tranquility, Death, Sepultura, and the many others. Many thanks to those doing the Great Work to inform a dire world about the principles of Natural Law and spiritual freedom. Finally, I want to thank those who never had faith in me, don’t believe in me, accept me, or appreciate me, it is the fuel that drives me forward…