The Seven Shades of Darkness

The Seven Shades of Darkness

Newton Fortuin

Copyright © Newton Fortuin 2005

Published at Smashwords

A Note to the Reader

Note that I at times make reference to negative mentalities associated with religious dogma. By this I’m not attempting to argue that being religious is necessarily bad for one’s emotional and/or cognitive development.

If one has a religious conviction I suggest you first read Connection between Religiosity and Dementia and Neo Heresy in the Appendix in order to get the overall context of the work.

Prologue

In every single waking moment we make simple choices that empower either a higher or lower reality for our lives. Much of the associated thinking taking place without our knowing.

This manuscript looks at the many reasons we in those moments consciously or unconsciously choose to walk the lower path—the path that takes us into the proverbial valley of the shadow of death.

Within the context of this book, shades of Darkness roughly being analogous with Jung’s idea of The Shadow and Freud’s Unconscious.

In The Psychology of Evil psychiatrist Stephen A. Diamond emphasizes the danger of not acknowledging one’s own shadow with the following.

While it may be very tempting to succumb to the argument that evil insidiously manifests itself most commonly in deceptively well-functioning but subtly pathological personalities—or in blatant caricatures of evil like Ted Bundy, Jim Jones, Charles Manson, or Richard Allen Davis—we would do well to remember that evil remains an ever-present, archetypal potentiality in each of us.

To naively or narcissistically think otherwise is tantamount to denying the personal capacity for evil—the permanent presence of the shadow or the demonic—forever dwelling in the fathomless depths of each and every fallible human being. Such denial is evil of the most insipid, prosaic, and dangerous kind.¹

The manuscript covers seven shadows or dark sides of our being which I refer to as The Seven Shades of Darkness. These shades are not based on any esoteric script or religious view or psychological treatise. They merely are my own formulation of seven differing subconscious mentalities which we ought to be cognizant of in our daily interactions in order to preserve our mental well-being.

The Seven Shades are The Devil (desperation), The Victim (victim mentality), The Enforcer (guilt/religious conformity), The Vortex (fear of sin), The Strangler (expectation), The Cavalier (riding ones luck) and The Conjurer (delusion).

Chapter One: The Devil

For what is evil but good tortured by its own hunger and thirst?

~~~

[Kahlil Gibran]

The Devil can be viewed as the devil within us holding us back from our full human potential. It also is the same latent devil that had created the greatest evil in human history, Hitler, who was brought to power in 1933 after the great depression had left the German people dispirited. Because of the harsh circumstances of the period after World War II allowing those with evil inclination among them to flourish.

This is as in any other evil circumstance where evildoers seek to vanquish whatever good there may be in the world. But specifically, our own devil is the part of our mentality that prevents us from reaching our full human potential within our own very limited lifetime.

The word desperation literally means being de-spirited, or dispirited—that one is depressed or spiritually broken. The name literally translated implies that one is not coming from the spirit. In the context of this work spirit referring to our inner life essence, or the energy that drives us in the world. It can either be viewed in the religious sense or as a yet to be fully understood aspect of our being.

To be de-spirited can be equated with death, at least spiritually, in that those who are desperate eventually become depleted of their life essence if the state persists indefinitely. And ironically, devil is lived turned around. In a strange twist of semantics, the word can be implied to mean the opposite of living itself—that it is a force against life, but moreover, the constructive living of it.

Jung described evil as the failure to meet the shadow—and I would suppose, specifically to meet the Devil that masks our desperation within. By the shadow Jung implied the subconscious aspects of ourselves we prefer to deny, or aspects of our natures we prefer not to be conscious of. By it he also does not infer that the shadow itself is evil, but rather the failure or refusal to meet or acknowledge it.

As with the reference to devil, evil being live turned around, and thus have equal symbolic significance. One therefore can make a similar deduction about its meaning. In this regard an important distinction we must make is that the Devil referenced in this section is not necessarily the one that is external to oneself—as a Hitler was. What it implies is that, by avoiding the destructive aspects of our natures, we can unconsciously become devilish—or evil—forces unto ourselves.

Notwithstanding how I have just defined it, desperation usually is associated with feelings of frustration resulting from our unsuccessful attempts at controlling the direction we want our life to take. And in modern times, particularly when circumstance forces us to live from paycheque-to-paycheque in desperately having to make do with what little we may have to get by. And yet despite this this effort, regardless of the size of our paycheques, not to make the ends meet. This therefore does not afford one the luxury to go within, and thus afford ourselves the luxury to live our lives from the more creative aspects of our being. Or to use the religious reference, our spirit.

So while feeling sorry for our circumstance may be our right—and beyond that, may even be very justifiable—these dire circumstances nonetheless does not allow an opportunity to align the creative aspects of our mind that will help create a better future realty for ourselves.

Nevertheless as a rule one’s relative level of desperation has very little to do with whether one is materially wealthy or not. It instead is about how one perceives one’s personal worth, irrespective of one’s finances or possessions. For instance it is reported by some studies that America is one of the unhappiest nations on earth although they are materially some of the wealthiest. On the other hand one of the poorest, Nigeria, is purported to have of the highest levels of relative happiness. This claim is according to World Health Organisation findings citing relative metrics which supposedly points to this. ²

While this statistic is not given as a credible measure to prove any significant point as there are so many studies pointing at completely divergent results, it nevertheless does strongly suggest that one’s relative sense of personal worth may have very little to do with one’s level of monetary accumulation—or at least should not. In any event one’s apparent happiness—or lack of it—should indeed be considered a shallow measure. Nigeria perhaps aptly illustrating this point in that it also is rated as one of the most corrupt nations on the planet. ³

From your perspective, what would you prefer: happiness or being in integrity with oneself and those around you?

Irrespective of what your answer may be, an interesting revelation from the above is that Nigerians are the biggest confidence tricksters in the world, and that American’s are by far their preferred target market—the Nigerians referring to them as mugu’s (pronounced moogoo meaning big fools or suckers). Based on this example the irony of this dichotomy is incredibly poignant, it is that the wealthiest of all nations in fact appears to be more needy—that is materially and otherwise— than one of the poorest.

This is not meant to be a barometer to judge the relative virtues of one society over another, except to conclude that there appears to be a definite causal link between acquisitiveness and happiness, or the lack thereof. However despite this apparent connection, the levels of desperation usually are higher amongst the perceived poor in very materialistic societies.

One’s personal sense of desperateness, therefore, appearing to be more reflective of capitalist dynamics and how societal values are shaped because of it. This is iterated by another study that uses a differing set of metrics pointing to Denmark as the happiest nation. One of the primary reasons cited by the Danes for their relative contentment being the levels of perceived equality amongst its citizens. Notably the USA was 23rd in this ranking, and increasingly becoming one of the most unequal societies and now notoriously ranked the 5th most unequal country in the world. ⁴, ⁵

Notwithstanding the findings of these studies, there most definitely are a great many Americans who certainly are living incredibly fulfilled and apparently happy lives. Perhaps even more so than the average supposedly happy and content Nigerian. And that almost every happy Nigerian would readily give up their life of bliss for a chance to live the American Dream. Another interesting anomaly pointing to this is that Nigerians are the most educated population group in the US indeed pointing to the fact that educated Nigerians would rather live elsewhere. ⁶

Though I want to restate a very important point: in my opinion the apparent levels of happiness of any society or individual is a very shallow measure of the state of well-being.

Note though that I use apparently, appears, purported and supposed quite often in this section. This is because the appearance of happiness (or the resignation to be