Id squink :-)

Like squid ink, only different...

It’s what the id squirts out to protect itself, to hide its fears and shame – a powerful, *potentially* noxious substance that wells up from the subconscious in times of great stress/distress.

Use carefully. Like an acid? it can etch a beautiful work of art on a hard surface – or, it can do great damage.

I guess it’s time that I accept that I can’t have one without the other. That I just have to learn to be *careful*, and not throw out the good with the bad.

It’s *not* inherently evil – "Nothing is either good or bad, but thinking makes it so." (Hamlet).

***
I felt a space, a hole, as if something had been removed, or cut out.

I tried to imagine what it might be, and then it occurred to me: It’s a channel for something to flow in. What is it that’s been cut off or disrupted so that it’s not filling this space?

I thought of the Chinese idea of kidney and sexuality and the raw life force that flows from these sources. I thought maybe I’d been cutting this off in myself, and so I don’t have the ‘power’ of that so-called ‘darkness’. By judging it as ‘bad’, I lose whatever ‘good’ it contains, as well.

It seems that, even as a non-religious person, I am unable to escape the influence of such thinking. Religion permeates the culture, just as a fish cannot escape the water it swims in. Just sitting here thinking, by myself, in my own house, with *theoretical* control over the influences that enter my life, and mind, I *still* can’t seem to block it out.

And then, of course, any time I leave the house, and am confronted with any other human being at all, of any shape, size, age, gender, what have you, I’m *immediately* aware of ‘the rules’ yet again, and my hard-won, house-of-cards edifice is toppled.

Ach.

People judge this ‘darkness’, say it is *always* bad.

The trouble with seeking saints? is that we’re *all* sinners (and not in the biblical sense).

“I’d rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints, the sinners have much more fun – you see, now, only the good die young.” ~Billy Joel

We *all* are drawn by ‘the dark side’. It’s what makes the ‘light’ seem so bright...

I’ve always (or often?) been afraid of it. Afraid of the damage I’d do; afraid of hurting other people. It’s a bit like giving someone a rapier, or maybe a broadsword? but not teaching them how to *use* it, and expecting them to just figure it out for themselves.

That’s why we have laws, rules, social codes of conduct, what have you. Religion is just a more – what – structured? long-standing? established? way to attempt to enforce the boundaries between black and white.

But GRAY is where it’s at, where most of us *actually* live. The rest is stuff of fantasy – exaggeration for the sake of making a point, ‘teaching a lesson’.