Enlightening the Darkness

For thousands of years, it was a customary theme of the human story (particularly as a consequence of war), for the men to be slaughtered, the women to be raped, and the weak and the children to be enslaved. There is none of us alive today who does not owe our lineage to either the rape of women or the slaughter of men.

It has been a long and arduous journey, shaking off these shackles on our minds, to have come to where we are today: able to see ourselves through the eyes of the Other. While this has always been written upon our hearts, that our minds can comprehend this, conceptualize it, verbalize it, and speak it freely, we owe in greatest part to the western tradition — from Christianity to the Enlightenment. That man is endowed with freedom and dignity, that we can tolerate difference, that we can substitute our words for violence, this is true western exceptionalism.

We hold Hitler to a different standard than Genghis Khan because Hitler was part of our modern and respectable world. We judge him more harshly not just because his awareness of morality makes his deeds that much more atrocious, but because we fear what it says about ourselves. We think we have transcended the darkness of our past, but something still lurks there. Even in this modern world, these ancient spirits still live in us, waiting to raise their head once again.

And they’re coming for us. But as they come, another force is coming, that rushes forth from the soul. There is an energy flowing around the world, that is calling us to enlighten the darkness, to forgive and heal the past. This love that crosses universes to find us. But it won’t be that easy. The old world conspires for a false awakening. In the coming confusion, when there is nothing we can be sure of, hold on to the love you know, to the light inside you, that has been hidden there in our hearts.