The Dance of Light and Darkness

“When you make peace with your shadow, your life will transform.” — Debbie Ford

Each year, we pass through another summer solstice on June 21st — the moment when the sun’s rays strike the Tropic of Cancer directly, when the Northern Hemisphere experiences its longest day and summer officially begins. Whether it is the summer solstice, the winter solstice on December 21st, or the equinoxes on March 21st and September 23rd, only one thing truly takes place: the dance of light and darkness, shaped by the Earth’s distance from the sun, the tilt of its axis, and the angle at which sunlight reaches the surface. It is a dance whose music plays endlessly — one cannot exist without the other.

On our writing journey, we have arrived here by decoding the relationship between inner and outer worlds, between the heavens and the earth… And from here on, we will continue by unraveling these same knots. So what does this dance of light and darkness tell us about ourselves?

According to Carl Gustav Jung, the founder of analytical psychology, we also carry within us archetypes that mirror the light and darkness outside: the Self (Light) and the Shadow (Darkness). The Self archetype is the impulse toward self-realization. It balances all aspects of the unconscious, gives unity and stability to the entire personality structure, and always seeks wholeness. The Shadow, on the other hand, is an unconscious complex — the opposite of consciousness and ego. It contains all the unwanted, unaccepted personal qualities. Our underdeveloped and undeveloped sides belong here. The shadow is the sum of the traits the ego wants to hide from others, feels ashamed of, prefers to ignore — the lower, uncivilized, and instinctual aspects of the psyche.

The 2010 film Black Swan, directed by Darren Aronofsky and starring Natalie Portman, offers a visual feast of the dance between the Shadow and the Self. Our heroine Nina is a young, talented ballerina living with her mother in New York. Her greatest passion and her entire life is ballet. Ballet director Thomas Leroy is staging Swan Lake and decides to replace the prima ballerina. He has Nina in mind. Not knowing her dark side, Nina is unquestionably the best candidate for the White Swan. Yet because she has not recognized the existence of her darkness, she struggles to express the true emotion of the Black Swan in her dance. During the first audition, the director even whispers in her ear: “If the ballet were only about the White Swan, no one but you would deserve the role.”

Nina is innocent and has never faced her shadow, yet she possesses something no one else does: her purity — and no one can play the White Swan better than her. Although she performs brilliantly as the White Swan, no matter how hard she works she cannot bring out her inner Black Swan. The answer to her biggest obstacle lies in this dialogue with her director:

Director: In these four years, in every dance, I’ve seen your obsession with perfecting your movements more and more. But I’ve never seen you let go.

Nina: Never.

Director: What is all this discipline for?

Nina: I want to be perfect. That’s all.

The director’s other favorite, Lily, is much better at the Black Swan because she knows how to let go. Seeing her own shadow reflected in Lily, the rivalry between them turns into an intriguing relationship. Trapped by perfectionism, inability to surrender, and knowing only her bright side, Nina is forced to make a choice. What will lead her to success is accepting her shadow and allowing the Self and the Shadow to integrate.

Jung, who said, “An artificial division into good and evil creates a sense of incompleteness in the person. While striving for the good and the beautiful, we also encounter the bad and the ugly,” realized that morality alone cannot replace inner wholeness. Like Rumi’s words, “Beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing there is a field. I’ll meet you there,” Jung points to a third space between the two poles. According to him, we must also know our darkness. Only then can we truly know ourselves. Rejecting our shadow causes our personality to remain dim and limited. Accepting it, however, allows us to reach the source of spontaneity, creativity, insight, and deep passion necessary for human growth.

So the real question is this: How ready are you to face your own shadow?

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