Confronting Your Abyss.
Gaze upon that which you are most terrified.
We stopped looking for monsters under our bed when we realized that they were inside us. ~ Charles Darwin
In mythology, the Abyss is a dark and bottomless realm where heroes make their last stand.
The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche used the Abyss as a metaphor to personify the infinite depth of our psychological complexity. He saw it as a place of untold danger where we struggle to confront the deepest, darkest parts of ourselves.
But he also saw it as a place for growth and transformation. If we dare gaze into the Abyss, we are not just looking into a void of emptiness but at our most deep-seated problems and emotions:
Our demons.
But he believed we could help ourselves by dealing with them. Facing our monsters is a terrifying prospect, but it has the potential for profound and transformative discoveries. Our responsibility (and maybe even our destiny) is to want nothing more than to embrace our Abyss, confront our anguish head-on and purify ourselves of the pain.
The darker alternative is if we can’t find a way to free ourselves from purgatory, the Abyss will consume us.
