Darkness within darkness.
The gateway to all understanding.


DARKNESS IS THE greatest teacher.

A tribe of the Quiet Land once had a rite of passage in which the aspirant was buried alive, deep beneath the earth, where no light could find him and no ear could hear his sobs and his screams. This was the final rite; after a span of days spent in such a coffin the aspirant was released, and numbered among the wise.

They did this because they knew:

Darkness is a knife that peels away the rind of what you think you know about yourself. The shades of your pretenses, the tones of your illusions, the layers of deception that glaze your life into the colors that tint your world—all mean nothing in the darkness. No one can see them, not even you.

Darkness hides everything except who you really are.


The fear of being found out drives many people to do things they shouldn't. Yes, you are a fraud. But so is everyone else, and most of us know it. Even good people are only good on average; even bad people are only bad on average. Admittedly, sometimes averages are much higher than others. Don't worry about being a good person or being a bad person; work on improving your average. Work on having good moments, rather than bad moments.


JC Denton: And if I do, what becomes of me?

Helios: You will be who you will be. We are our choices.


"I knew that good like bad becomes a routine, that the temporary tends to endure, that what is external permeates to the inside, and that the mask, given time, comes to be the face itself."


“Ajencis,” he continued, “once wrote that all men are frauds. Some, the wise, fool only others. Others, the foolish, fool only themselves. And a rare few fool both others and themselves—they are the rulers of Men… […] What about men who fool no one?”


"But everything you tell yourself should be the truth—or as close to it as you can come. You did what you did because you are who you are. Self-control, or its lack, had nothing to do with it."


Know thyself.


Knowing others is intelligence;
knowing yourself is true wisdom.
Mastering others is strength;
mastering yourself is true power.


“Unreasoning passion is the province of darkness,” Vergere said. “But an understood emotion is not unreasoning. That is why the route to mastery is through self-knowledge.” Her tilted eyes widened. “It's not possible to suppress all emotion, nor is it desirable. An emotionless person is no more than a machine. But to understand the origin and nature of one's feelings, that is possible.”


Castanaveras: Do you know what the commonest emotion is?

McKann: I can guess.

Castanaveras: No you can't. Guilt. This vast regret for the things that they've done that are wrong. Those are the people whose minds it hurts to contact, and they are far and away in the majority. The percentage of people who don't suffer from guilt is so vanishingly small I'm tempted to say that such people are not sane. Either they're not sane or the rest of us are not sane, and those of us who feel shame for things we've done far outnumber those who don't.

McKann: Isn't that one of the definitions of a sociopathic personality? The inability to feel guilt?

(Castanaveras is silent a long moment.)

Castanaveras: I'm not referring to such people. There are sociopaths, but not many, at least by percentage of the population. (Silence again.) Some people have—well, the best way I can say it is that they know themselves. They know who they are, what their strengths and weaknesses are, and they are at peace with themselves. Those people, they don't do things that might make them uncomfortable. (Half smiles.) It must be nice.


You can't know it, but you can be it,
at ease in your own life.


“Being a god is the quality of being able to be yourself to such an extend that your passions correspond with the forces of the universe, so that those who look upon you know this without hearing your name spoken. Some ancient poet said that the world is full of echoes and correspondences. Another wrote a long poem of an inferno, wherein each man suffered a torture which coincided in nature with those forces which had ruled his life. Being a god is being able to recognize within one's self these things that are important, and then to strike the single note that brings them into alignment with everything else that exists. Then, beyond morals or logic or esthetics, one is wind or fire, the sea, the mountains, rain, the sun or the stars, the flight of an arrow, the end of a day, the clasp of love. One rules through one's ruling passions.”


Yet he who reigns within himself, and rules
Passions, Desires, and Fears, is more a King;
Which every wise and virtuous man attains:
And who attains not, ill aspires to rule
Cities of men, or headstrong Multitudes,
Subject himself to Anarchy within,
Or lawless passions in him which he serves.


"[…] any unreasoning passion would do. When anger becomes rage, fear becomes terror, love becomes obsession, self-esteem becomes vainglory, then a natural and useful emotion becomes an unreasoning compulsion and the darkness is.”


When he makes a mistake, he realizes it.
Having realized it, he admits it.
Having admitted it, he corrects it.
He considers those who point out his faults
as his most benevolent teachers.
He thinks of his enemy
as the shadow that he himself casts.


"No one gets over anything, don't you understand? Everything that happens in your life—every single thing— leaves a scar. A permanent scar. You're not supposed to get over it. To get over something—to erase the mark it left on you—erases part of who you are."


The he turned his mind to other matters and forced the mood from him. But in the days that followed, and even, on occasion, years afterward, it returned to plague his efforts and mock his joys, to make him wonder, know guilt, feel sadness and so be humbled.


All streams flow to the sea
because it is lower than they are.
Humility gives it its power.


She acts without expectation,
succeeds without taking credit,
and doesn't think that she is better than anyone else.