Darkness is not so much the opposite of light as its companion; neither one could exist without the other. The same holds for your bright and dark moments, your peace and your suffering. When darkness comes, it helps to remember that it is only here because light is real.
Look at how opposites actually work and you find they lean on each other completely. Black would not be black if there were no white to set it against; the very meaning of the one is borrowed from the other. Silence gives sound its shape, and a birdsong is only heard because of the quiet around it. Nothing truly stands alone. Everything is breathing, in constant exchange with what surrounds it, and no single thing can be honestly named without its opposite standing somewhere nearby. To grasp this is to stop treating the dark half of life as a mistake that should not be happening.
There is a story of a worn and ill-tempered warrior who came to a holy man and demanded to be told the difference between Heaven and Hell. The holy man answered with contempt, mocking him, calling him a failure unfit to hold a sword, until the warrior, enraged past bearing, drew his blade to strike the old man down. In that raised-sword instant the holy man looked up calmly and said, this is Hell. The warrior froze, understanding, and lowered the blade in shame and relief. And this, the holy man said gently, is Heaven. The same moment, the same two men, the same small patch of ground. Only the state within had changed, and with it, everything.
There is an old line about a sword lifted high, that beneath it lies Hell to make you tremble, and yet if you step forward through it there is a land of bliss on the other side. Every raised sword is like that. Every difficulty bearing down on you also opens a way through, if you are willing to look for the opening instead of only the blade. The darkness is not as solid as it seems. Look straight into it, without flinching and without filling it with frightened thoughts, and you often find it is mostly empty, and that the emptiness holds a quiet light of its own.
This is the practical heart of it. When night falls, whether the literal night or the dark that comes over the heart, the instinct is to pour thinking into it, to explain and rehearse and defend. But darkness is only emptiness, and it does not need your commentary to be survived. Let it be, and let yourself exhale. Awareness is like a blade that cuts through illusion while harming nothing real, and what it reveals, again and again, is the opening that the fear was busy hiding.
Anyone who has lain awake through a long anxious night knows how huge the dark thoughts grow in the small hours, and how the first grey light at the window shrinks them back down to their true size. The light was never actually far away. Meet your darkest feelings the way you would meet the night itself, remembering that morning is built into it, that this too is half of a pair and will turn. And whatever you do, take care never to act from the worst of what rises in you, for the blade swung in darkness only breeds more darkness, while the one who waits for the light finds the way through.
Questions that arise
Why do good and bad seem to depend on each other?
Because opposites define one another; each takes its meaning from the other. Light gives darkness its name, silence gives sound its shape. Seen this way, the difficult side of life is not an error but part of a single, interdependent whole.
How do I sit with my darkest emotions?
By letting them be present without drowning them in frightened thinking, and by exhaling rather than bracing. Look directly at the feeling instead of the story around it, and you often find it is emptier and more passing than it seemed.
What does it mean that Heaven and Hell are within me?
It means they are states of being rather than places, and the same moment can be either one depending on what is happening inside you. The warrior found both within seconds, on the same ground, because only his inner state had changed.
Isn't it dangerous to just accept darkness?
Accepting darkness is not the same as acting on it. You let the feeling be, but you never lift your hand from its worst impulses. Acting from darkness breeds more of it, while awareness reveals the opening that leads through.
These contemplations are drawn from The Sound of the Bells by Jussi Niittyviita, the story of a dying man who learns to hear the stillness beneath his life. More of his books, audiobooks, and courses are at www.jussiniittyviita.com.