It’s dark deep down. What fantastic unimaginable creatures might you find at the bottom of the Mariana trench? What lives there closer to the core of the earth in complete absence of any light and how do those creatures differ from those who arose on the surface? What laws govern a world with no light and can the light dwells really truly understand such a fundamental shift? What lives in down below in you? Down there when you dive deeper than the conscious mind, when you pass the first layers of the unconscious and fall further to the place untouched by anything you’re aware of as you?

We are all shadow people as well as creatures of the light. Anything standing in the light casts a shadow as well. There is nothing pure that exists without cohabitation with its opposite. No matter how enlightened you are, a shadow is always there, always present even if you never act on its whispers. It cannot be reasoned with because it is not a language it speaks. It is primal and pre-verbal and you will never truly know yourself until you accept that it is there and that you are not a pure hero, a pure antihero or a villain but a mix of all you can be. Your job is not to kill the shadow by lighting a torch – you still wouldn’t be able to see more than a few feet ached and would be in no less of an unknown than before, just surrounded by a false security-generating bubble of light. Your job is to just acknowledge its existence in your person. You’re not that much different from the people you judge or despise for something. The same capacities that made them choose another path are present in you.

Would you have stood up to Genghis Khan, stopped the horrors if faith had put you as a guard in a concentration camp? Would you have stood up against human sacrifice if you were to be born into a society with such customs…? Highly unlikely. You’re not that different from those you scorn. Accept the shadow, understand it and expand your empathy to include those who haven’t had the same chances as you to live in the light. You have no idea what lies at the bottom of your trench in a different set of circumstances.