Dark Balance & Black Flame

The last few months have been anything but balanced for me but it is these moments that we are most able to see where it is that our faults lie, it is in my own current situation that I stop blaming others and ask what it is that I could do differently to improve my situation or ask what it is that I did to lead myself to this place that I am currently at. It isn’t to say that there aren’t things about my situation that I am not pleased or happy with, but when it comes to cleansing ones own spiritual pallete there are things we don’t want to exit our lives that inevitably do because of their connection to the thing that needs to be removed it doesn’t mean that the connect aspect needs or will be removed forever but for the time that is needed to the reset to take place. When we seek balance, and ask for renewal in our lives it is a painful process of growth.

When we grow, true expansion of self takes place painfully, and if not for the pain and sacrifice that is made where the growth happens, the growth that takes place isn’t true growth. If we avoid the pain of change we will never grow beyond that which limits us. We must remember that sacrifice doesn’t mean gone forever but gone for the time that it is needed to be gone. This isn’t to say that some sacrifices aren’t forever, they are, but there are some in special circumstances that need to be sacrificed in order for the right parts of self to grow.

Dark Balance isn’t some spooky name for evil but rather understanding the dark parts of the self need to be balanced with light for without it, it isn’t true balance. Trying to reach balance by ignoring the light or the dark is not balance at all but instead feeding and enabling unbalanced behavior. The shadow like in Jungian psychology allows us to understand that there are parts of ourselves that are important to incorporate into our daily lives; and if we do not, we are denying an aspect of our very existence the darker scarier parts of who are. These parts are not evil but something that begs to be understood first by you, then removed from the shame of being in the light, allowed to be shone with the light side of ourselves, the parts we deemed appropriate for the world to see.

To know the true parts of yourself there must be time spent with yourself. This task is not easy as we are not talking about an afternoon with a book and tea, we are not talking about a relaxing time with soft music and a walk on the beach, we are talking about time putting in work on yourself in deep meditation and asking the hard questions about the most difficult times of your past, and even asking how much if any fault of your past traumas rests on your shoulders. Most of the time when we repress and push down trauma and we are easily triggered by the memory or things that remind us of it, it is of self hatred that we find ourselves hating the world and people around us that remind us of this pain. This happens because we very deeply blame ourselves for these situations and the trauma work we do around these things tells us that none of any of these situations are our fault but it is not in seeking fault but accountability and personal responsibility in our past that we can truly move on and this isn’t victim blaming or anything of the sort but rather a way for us to take back control. If we can understand the parts of a situation where we failed then we can maybe help ourselves avoid these things in the future. Actions perpetrated by others that effect you are not your fault. It is important to remember we cannot control the actions of others. It is however to our benefit to ask ourselves the burning question - “what could I have done differently there?” Maybe nothing different could’ve been done but in the off chance we find one, that situation becomes not only something that happened to us but something that is teaching us a lesson, and it is through that lesson that we are able to grow and no longer be the victim. We regain our autonomy and power, because knowing what it was that we could’ve changed gives us our power back to be able to make that change in the future.

Again it is important here to understand that this isn’t saying that a situation beyond your control that made you victim is in anyway your fault as again you do not control the action of others. However if we are to understand the full extent of involvement we may have put ourselves in these situations or aligned ourselves to be more likely put in dangerous situations where we could become a victim. For the most part the easiest connections we can make to our past traumas is ignorance and naivety and understanding where it was in a time line we showed ignorance. When and where we are able to draw these lines we working our way from that by learning the full spectrum of knowledge available to us through what it is we suffer in our lives.

The Black Flame when we talk about the black flame we think of power and control of our own lives we but like with any flame controlling it requires us to be burned and to learn from the burns we suffer during the work we do in this stage of growth. Many occultists talk about the amazingness of working and growing your black flame but very few dive into the pain required for you to reach that point of control of your black flame mit is through the understanding of your trauma and the lessons in your life that you can and will begin to learn the control of the black flame inside of yourself. These are not easy paths to follow because they require you too look deep into yourself and the life you have lived and the things you have been through.