I have become far less afraid of people who know their own darkness than of people who are absolutely convinced of their own righteousness. Because a person who knows they are capable of hatred, jealousy, revenge, cruelty, manipulation, destruction, and causing pain at least has a chance to catch themselves... They truly have a choice! They can look inward and ask- What the fuck is happening inside me right now? What am I about to do with this?

But a person who has appointed themselves a representative of Good has access to a much more dangerous privilege: they do evil in the name of God, of course... and continue believing they are a good person.

Lately I have been watching The Chosen, and I am fascinated by the Pharisees for exactly this reason. Think about who these people actually were. They were not criminals, atheists, Satanists, degenerates, or people who openly considered themselves cruel. 

They were, for fuck’s sake, spiritual people! People of God! People of Scripture! People of the Law! People who had devoted their lives to studying what was right and what was wrong. They prayed... They followed commandments... They knew sacred texts... They taught other people how to live... They believed they were protecting God, morality, tradition, and the sacred order of the world. and they were ALL waiting for the Messiah! 

And then Christ appeared in front of them! Logically, you'd think the course of events... but nope! they began to hate him! 

That is one of the most terrifying things about this entire story to me. You can spend your entire life searching for God and then hate God when He appears in a form you did not expect. You can know every sacred text and completely miss what is sacred when it stands directly in front of you. And God is social! God appears in bodies of other people... 

Because the deeper problem was never simply religion. The danger begins when spirituality becomes a politics or an identity: I am good. I am righteous. I am Christian. I am conscious. I am spiritual. I work with Light. I go to church every Sunday (my favorite is every day)!  I meditate. I practice yoga. I have been in therapy for twenty years. I know the Bible. I understand karma. I know how people are supposed to live.

And slowly, almost invisibly, a beautiful white wall grows between you and your own shadow. Everything bad is now over there! 

The witches and Liliths are over there. The sinners are over there. The adulterers are over there. The unbelievers are over there. The selfish people, the toxic people, the unconscious people, the immoral people, the people who made the “wrong” choices etc. -  all of them are over there. 

And here we are....  The good ones.... The righteous ones... The enlightened ones... As long as you remain inside the tribe and obey its rules, everything is wonderful! They love you. They approve of you. They pray with you. They sing with you. They smile at you. They tell you that you are a good person!  But try stepping outside the line? 

Ask the wrong question. Change your mind. Say, “I don't believe this anymore.” Choose another life? OH HELL NO! Another relationship? WOA!  Another spiritual path? Another understanding of yourself? Say- “what was true for me twenty years ago is no longer true for me today.”

And sometimes you get to witness an extraordinary revelation! The white robe opens, and the entire unexamined shadow comes pouring out. 

Hatred... Rage... Control... Revenge (either open or hidden)... Punishment... Humiliation... The desire to destroy another human being... And somehow all of it continues to be called love, morality, loyalty, duty, family, faithfulness, righteousness, or God.

I have experienced this myself. When someone very close to me learned about my work, I was told that I was doing the Devil's work. What struck me was not that they disagreed with me. People have every right to disagree! What shocked me was how quickly someone who had known me for years stopped really seeing me. Seeing and accepting MY CHOICE! Suddenly there was no human being to be curious about anymore. There was a category... Dangerous... Forbidden... Dark! Wrong! And once a human being has been converted into a category, curiosity becomes unnecessary. You no longer have to ask questions. You no longer have to understand. You can simply pronounce judgment.

This is exactly why the Pharisees fascinate me. Christ became a category too. He did the wrong things. He spoke in the wrong way. He associated with the wrong people! He challenged established authority! He violated familiar boundaries! He repeatedly placed the living human being above rigid interpretation of the law. 

And the more impossible he became to ignore, the more dangerous he became to a SYSTEM convinced that it represented God... That paradox blows my fucking mind: 

Human beings can become so committed to defending their idea of God that they are willing to destroy another human being in God's name.

And we are still doing it. We just use different language. You can see the same mechanism very clearly in relationships. Imagine someone discovers that their partner has been unfaithful - I mean I see marriages dissolve left and right. It is devastating, of course. It can tear apart an entire world. I have absolutely no interest in romanticizing betrayal or removing responsibility from the person who did that. But what happens next is fascinating. You can look at the entire system. At your partner, at yourself, at 20 or 30 (or more) years of relationship. At the things that died between you long before another person entered the picture. At what both of you knew but refused to acknowledge. At the compromises, at the silence, at the loneliness together, at the fear,  at the dependency, at the choices each person made, at the relationship you created together, at the life you continued living because changing it seemed too frightening etc.  You can ask the unbearable question: How did we get here?

That path is excruciating because it destroys the beautiful position of the completely innocent Righteous One. It is much easier to find "a witch" or a "warlock". The other woman. The other man. The seducer. The homewrecker. The Devil. There. There is Evil. Now destroy it! And suddenly someone who considers themselves deeply religious, moral, decent, and loving can permit themselves extraordinary cruelty toward another human being without noticing the contradiction. Because the cruelty has received moral permission. That is the part that interests me. Not Catholicism. Not Christianity. Not Orthodoxy. Not any particular religion. 

Moral permission to hate.

That tiny internal shift where a person says - “Yes, hatred is wrong, but this person deserves it.”  HAHA Humiliation is wrong, but she/he deserves it! Cruelty is wrong also, but this situation is different and special... Controlling another adult is wrong, but I have a right to control him/her.  Everyone has the right to choose their own life... Except her... or him... He already chose! sometime ago... He made a promise! He belongs to this family! He has obligations! He doesn't get to change his mind! 

And here we arrive at another uncomfortable truth. We fucking love freedom in theory... And we love "love" in theory also...  Try exercising your freedom in a way that destroys somebody else's preferred version of reality, and you will discover very quickly how deeply the people around you actually believe in freedom. Or love? 

Another person's freedom is beautiful as long as they keep choosing what is convenient for us.

Can a person change their mind? Can a person who has lived one way for twenty or thirty years wake up one day and say - “I don't want to live like this anymore”? Can someone reconsider their beliefs, relationships, religion, profession, identity, sexuality, friendships, commitments, or entire understanding of themselves? Can a person discover something at 45 or 55 or whatever age then are that they genuinely could not understand at twenty-five? Or does a decision made decades ago become a life sentence? 

These questions make people incredibly uncomfortable because if the answer is yes, if another adult truly has the right to change, then we have to face something much much harder: loving someone does not give us ownership over their life. Even when their freedom hurts us. Even when we believe their decision is a terrible mistake. Even when they once promised something different. Even when their choice destroys the future we had already begun treating as our property. You are allowed to cry. You are allowed to rage. You are allowed to leave. You are allowed to say - “I will not live with the consequences of your decision.” You are allowed to establish boundaries so strong that the relationship ends completely. 

But there is an enormous difference between a boundary and control. A boundary says: “If you choose this, I will choose that.” Control says: “You are not allowed to choose this... or you WILL regret it, I will make sure of it...” And this is where all our spirituality finally gets tested.

Not when we light candles. Not when we pray. Not when we read sacred books. Not when we post beautiful quotations about love. Not when we talk about God, karma, compassion, forgiveness, consciousness, healing, awakening, or unconditional love... When someone stands in front of us and makes a choice we fucking hate.  Show me your God then! 

Show me your spirituality when you have been betrayed. Show me your compassion when somebody doesn't choose you. Show me your faith when another person's decision destroys the future you imagined. Show me your consciousness when you are jealous. Show me your twenty years of therapy when you feel humiliated. Show me your Light when there is a human being standing in front of you whom you desperately hate. Because loving people who confirm our worldview is relatively easy. The examination begins with the Other. The incomprehensible one... The inconvenient one... The one who told you "no! I DO NOT CHOOSE YOU ANYMORE!"  The one who left. The one who changed their mind. The one who chose a life you believe is wrong. 

And maybe this is why the word "witch" has never particularly frightened me.  A witch at least knows darkness exists. She works with it. She looks into places where the “good person” sometimes refuses even to turn their head: I know there is rage inside me. There is jealousy. There is possessiveness. There is hatred. There is pride. There is fear. There is sexuality. There is hunger for power. There is the capacity for destruction. There are things inside me that human beings have spent thousands of years calling sinful, dark, animalistic, dangerous, or wrong.

And my work is not to put on a white dress and announce that none of this exists inside me anymore. My work is to know that it does. Because unacknowledged darkness does not disappear. It simply finds a beautiful name. Control becomes “care.” Fear becomes “morality.” Dependency becomes “loyalty.” Possessiveness becomes “love.” The inability to let someone go becomes “fighting for the family.” Hatred becomes “defending what is right.” Cruelty  or even murder becomes “justice.” And the desire to destroy another human being becomes “God's will.” That is what actually frightens me. Not darkness. Darkness that has declared itself Light. Because at least when somebody says, “I hate you,” we know where we stand. Far more frightening is someone who hates you while saying: “I am doing this out of love.”

Someone who destroys another person while saying: “I am defending what is good!” Someone who tries to remove another adult's right to choose their own life while saying: “This is what is right!” Someone who curses a witch and then goes to pray... Someone who crucifies Christ and believes they are defending God. So I am becoming less and less interested in what spiritual tradition a person belongs to.

I want to know something else. What happens to you when another human being violates your picture of reality? That is the examination! 

What comes out of you when someone refuses to obey you? What comes out of you when someone doesn't choose you? What comes out of you when somebody lives completely differently from the way you believe they should? What happens when your beliefs are challenged? What happens when you lose control? 

Because you can study Light your entire life and never once meet your own darkness. You can read the Bible and fail to recognize Christ. You can preach love while controlling everyone you claim to love. You can preach freedom while refusing to let another person leave. You can talk endlessly about forgiveness while living inside revenge and hate. You can pray to God while destroying another human being and remain absolutely convinced that God is standing beside you, approving... is He? That is why I am increasingly unimpressed by white and fluffy. I want to know what is underneath. Because spirituality is not what you say about the Light. Spirituality is what you DO with your darkness... 

And if you need someone else to be evil in order to continue believing that you are good... the witch, the mistress, the unbeliever, the sinner, the addict, the heretic, the traitor, the wrong woman, the wrong man, the person who made the wrong choice... maybe it is time to stop searching for the Devil outside yourself? Maybe it is time to ask what exactly inside you needs an enemy so badly? A cross around your neck does not make you kind. A candle does not make you enlightened. Reading the Bible does not make you loving. Tarot does not make you conscious. Mushrooms/LSD/Ayahuasca/DMT etc. do not make you awakened. Twenty years of therapy do not make you emotionally mature. Having a guru does not make you spiritual. And believing in God tells me very little about how you actually treat living human beings. How you treat life. Your actions do! Not what you say... Especially when you are dealing with someone you consider Other. Especially when they have made a choice that hurts you. Especially when you are absolutely certain that you are right.

That is when we finally discover what you actually worship: love? or your own righteousness?