Once upon a time, I had a vision.

I was contemplating the Yin and the Yang, at the time. You know the one, the black fish chasing the white fish. Well, all of a sudden the white started bleeding into the black, and the black started bleeding into the white.

What was left, was a dull grey colour. The symbol was entirely gone, only the grey remained.

At the time, it scared me. I was terribly afraid of the black. And seeing the yin and the yang reflected in everything around me, from the human psyche to the day and night cycle, I was envisioning a perpetual twilight world where no day was possible, but also no true night.

I love the day. And I love the night also. They both have beauty the other does not. So this dull grey, I perceived it as a threat.

But that was then.

I have since come to understand that what Carl Jung wrote about when he spoke of shadow-integration, to make the darkness conscious, involves precisely this "greying" of oneself.

I used to identify with only the fish I called good. The other fish, it was evil and terrible and I had to control it, erase it, fight it. My ego was caught in a dualistic fight against myself, and it caused me an awful lot of pain and suffering.

Because I could not deny that the black fish was also in me.

Now I deny neither, and the Yin/Yang within has become grey. I no longer consider myself purely good. Nor do I consider myself purely evil.

It sounds terrible, does it not. But is it really? I wrote about this in another earlier post "Who would you ask for forgiveness?" (see the attached tree for quick link) about this.

Who would you ask for forgiveness? The one who shares your sins, or the one who himself is blameless and therefore expect you also to be blameless? Who is the most likely to forgive?

Let others play at being saints and sinners. I think I prefer being whole. And what would have happened, had I erased the black fish? I have explored that also, through the lens of J.R.R Tolkien's Lord of the Rings (tree link)

As Jung said:

"I'd rather be whole than good.