Taking a leaf out of Kylo Ren’s book: What lurks in your Dark Side?

It’s not what you think it is.

Warning: Spoilers ahead*

In the latest installment of the Star Wars saga, The Rise Of Skywalker, the epic battle between the light and the dark continues. 42 years after the first film was released, we’re still captivated by how our heroes will defeat the villainous Siths to restore peace to the galaxy. And as the conflict of bloodline, destiny and choice come into play for Kylo Ren and Rey, the battle between light and dark have never been more personal and existential.

This struggle between light vs dark, good vs evil, is something that we’re all too familiar with, perhaps even more so than we’d like to admit. There’s a lot of talk about love and light, especially with the rise of New Ageism. We all want to be part of the movement towards the light. We associate the light with qualities like happiness, kindness, compassion, generosity, it’s angels, rainbows and unicorns. While we associate the dark with depression, hatred, apathy, stinginess, the work of the devil and his minions. We do everything we can to reject the dark. We sweep it under the carpet. We dismiss and deny that any of this exists within us. And even if we embody any of these dark qualities, we tell ourselves that its for the greater good.

However, there is an underlying expectation of what the light and the dark is, and we’re taught these preferences as we grow up. We have been socially conditioned to judge and label certain behaviours as being undesirable and dark based on the current outlook of society. If we examine many of the condemned behaviours, they are usually accompanied with a set of conditions that make them unacceptable today. For instance, polygamous relationships are treated as a backward, lustful and odd relationship model in today’s modern societies. But if we go back in time, we would find nothing wrong with polygamous relationships. Even if we turn to look at something we deem to be a universal virtue, the act of killing another person, there are also social conditions with which it’s acceptable. In war, self-defense or criminal sentences, killing can be justified. Otherwise, it’s murder. When we put these undesirable behaviours against the test of time and space, they’re not so universal or intrinsic after all. We are socially conditioned and informed of what makes a person good or bad.

Of course, this doesn’t give us the mandate to commit crimes or indulge in harmful behaviours. What we need to understand is that society influences us to distinguish between what’s desirable (light) from the undesirable (dark). Our need for social acceptance has driven make of us to deny and hide the ‘undesirable’ parts of ourselves. And the more we try to repress these parts of ourselves, the more destructive we become. Ask a hot-tempered person to keep his anger in check by suppressing it and you’ll only get greater outbursts when the right emotional buttons are triggered.

The actual interaction between the forces of light and dark are in reality quite the opposite from how it is being portrayed in the Star Wars series. The dark side is not some compelling, more powerful, evil manifestation of a metaphysical bubble. The dark side is…

The unknown and unseen parts of ourselves

What’s really dark about Kylo Ren is what he repressed within himself — who Ben Solo is, and the expectations that his parents and Luke Skywalker had placed on him. His identity crisis in turn fuels the impulsive, murderous rage of Kylo Ren.

Many of us fall into the trap of becoming Kylo Ren, when really we are Ben Solo inside of us. We conveniently chuck what we think are the bad sides of ourselves underneath a beautiful carpet, and only display the good side of ourselves to the world. This carpet becomes the identity and image that we portray to the world. It becomes our mask. But that’s just what we think.

So what’s really underneath the carpet? What have we swept down there that we don’t wish to reveal? The dust beneath the carpet actually takes up a large percentage of our who we are. Based on the iceberg analogy by Sigmund Freud, we know that our subconscious and unconscious, the portion of the iceberg below the water, take up over 99% of who we are. While only 1%, our consciousness, is what’s above the surface and what we know of ourselves. That 99% is what makes up our darkness. Everything that we repress, reject and fear lie deep within the darkness of our subconscious and unconscious. And if all you’re expecting to find in the dark is a murderous, impulsive, destructive, Sith-like version of yourself, then you’re terribly wrong. The truth is you simply won’t know what to expect down there because you have never seen it before.

Embracing your dark side

So many of us suffer from an identity crisis because we’re not able to reconcile who we think we are, and who we truly are inside. It’s a disappointing and soul-crushing feeling for those who have came to the realisation that they’re not really the person they thought they were. On top of the 99% of subconscious and unconscious thoughts hidden from us, we make things worse by continuously repressing things we don’t like about ourselves. We end up being like Kylo Ren, who becomes crippled and torn by his association with the Sith, and yet still without a clue about what it means to be Ben Solo.

Embracing your dark side is not the same as turning to the dark side. It means accepting and acknowledging yourself for who you are. It means going down your rabbit hole to discover who you really are, beyond all the societal expectations and labels. It requires you to take a close look at the good parts about yourself , as well as everything that is fucked up about yourself too. It takes responsibility to truly embrace yourself, as it calls for you to no longer hide parts of yourself, and take action towards the problems you’ve created in your life.

There’s a lot of talk about self love and acceptance, but it doesn’t start with mindfulness, or writing down a list of what you think are your flaws, or eating healthy. The truth is you can’t love yourself if you don’t know who you are. You’d be falling in love with the wrong person. It starts with getting to know who you truly are. Loving yourself is not just for a feel-good effect. Loving yourself for everything that you are is also not a justification to act destructively or impulsively on the negative parts about yourself. It’s about loving the entire sum of who you are, and what makes you you.

Bringing the light into the dark

The most satisfying character redemptions are those who redeem themselves by acknowledging who they truly are inside. That’s when we feel the character has come full circle in his story arc.

When we bring light into the dark, we illuminate the unconscious parts of ourselves, thereby making it conscious. Unlike painting over a dark sky with rainbows, illuminating the dark means allowing the sun’s rays seep into the dark clouds, so we can finally see the sky clearly.

Think about it, your entire reality is currently shaped by the 1% of consciousness in you. If you could increase the conscious parts of you to 2%, 3% or 4%, imagine how much more you could become. Ben Solo, without the mask of Kylo Ren, is the collective sum of all his mistakes, as well as the courage in him to act upon what he really wanted to do. His integrated identity makes him more powerful and complete than he ever was as Kylo Ren or the old Ben Solo.

Putting consciousness into your unconscious is no easy feat. It takes decades of work to face the truth within yourself, and a great deal of courage and strength to take ownership of your life and redeem yourself for all that you have done. Your flaws and mistakes are a part of who you are, and embracing that part of you means no more crying over spilled milk or sweeping the dust under the carpet. It means seeing it for what it is and no longer running away out of fear, shame, regret, guilt or anger. It means taking responsibility for everything that you have done in life, all the good and bad combined.

And it all starts with stripping the societal expectations and labels from your identity, and embracing everything you find in that rabbit hole of yours.

With that in mind, let’s end with a quote Carl G. Jung,

“One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.”

Carl G. Jung

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