Through Darkness

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.”   

For most of my life, I’ve dealt with a lack of perceived willpower, a lack of perceived effort or toughness. But that is a lie. Ego.  

I am where I am now because of my ego. My own determination to prove that I'm not weak, that I’m not a quitter.  

“If I trained like this back then, If I was ready would I have passed?”  

Or 

“If I get to a place where I have the readiness to pass, then maybe I’ll be enough.” 

Ego.  

Ego is never satisfied. No matter how many marathons you run, how much weight you lift, how much suffering you endure, ego has a hunger that can never be sated.  

Ego is like a black hole, pulling everything into its orbit. And, like an actual black hole, you can’t escape it. You have to go inside it. Into the unknown.  

In the dark, you come face to face with your demons and monsters. The ones you spend your life hiding from. Those demons are you. Your darkest parts. Your deepest traumas hold the parts of you that were forced down. Neglected. Repressed. They scare us because they are also our most powerful and creative forces. What terrifies you is what can transform you. 

The same force that whispers “you aren’t enough” is the same force that drives you into a fulfilled, creative, and disciplined existence. It drives you because the psyche seeks resolution. That tension between what you are and what you could be creates energy, discomfort that begs expression. If you face it consciously, that energy fuels creation and growth; if you avoid it, it mutates into anxiety and self-loathing.

Through darkness, you find the light. The light that shows the truth: man is not bound by any system. At any moment, he can decide to become more. He can find his weaknesses and overcome them. Not for some hat or badge or somebody else’s validation. But for himself. To realize his true nature. The path isn’t about becoming stronger—it’s about becoming whole. Integrating. Bridging the light and the dark.