The importance of our dark sides

I'm realizing more and more the importance of owning our own dark
sides. Each individual has his or her own unique dark side, though we
each have dark sides that reflect our culture. For instance, many
women have not been allowed to feel the fullness of their sexual
inclinations. They have been taught since babyhood that feeling sexual
responses is not talked about and that blatant expression of sexual
responses is punished.

So they learn to deny their sexual feelings. Denial is a magical
process. It's not that we don't feel our sexual feelings, but at the
moment that we begin to feel them, we deny that they are there and do
lots of body things - squeezing muscles, holding back our breath, and
so on - to actually dampen down these feelings. But the biggest thing
we do is we project these feelings onto other people. If there's a
woman in our lives who IS being blatantly sexual or even who looks
like she might be, we project all our own sexual desires onto her. Now
SHE's the problem, not our own feelings.

Different clans have different dark sides: for instance, the
intellectual clan is not allowed to get down and dirty in physical
fighting. It's beneath them. But, of course, they have their share of
desires to get down and dirty. They deny them, project them onto the
lower class, and hate that aspect of the lower class.

I'll go so far as to claim that we all have issues around infant and
child sexuality. I bet that infants and children have sexual feelings.
We were taught that this was bad in lots and lots of ways. The
accumulation of all this repressed, denied, and projected energy is
what actually creates the child molester in our culture.

Our refusal to be our strong, demanding, ego-centric selves is what
creates the bully in our societies.

If we can reclaim these dark sides, we stop giving all that denied,
projected energy to those who are caught up in acting out. If all of
us would reclaim our dark sides, 90% of our social ills would
disappear.

At least, that's what I think
Doreen

(30/11-2000)

<<<