In an era where it became the norm to pose into a virtuous academic man, we tend to fall into the trap of dreaming to become such a man. A man for whom success and prosperity, as well as kindness and consideration for the good of mankind, are presented as if they were his second nature. We dream to become the man that comes so close to the definition of purity and goodness that we fail to recognize the bond between excessive “goodness” and evil.

How sharp are you drawing the line between good and evil? How simplified is your vision of yourself, when you only identify with the aspiration of goodness? How much are you denying your own darkness, losing contact with the evil within you, splitting yourself more and more, and ignoring the fact that the things that you are trying to separate yourself from are taking over?

In a time when you are bombarded with positive messages that reinforce the idea that kindness, generosity, and humility can be achieved with only the power of thought, you will be inclined to assume that you are what you think you are.

If you pay close attention to your ideas and actions, you will realize the discrepancy between the goodness mask that you are portraying every day and the cruel reality in which you are actually becoming more rigid, close-minded, and filled with fear.

In this reality, you are fearing “the fall” into your own darkness and are afraid of being possessed by the power of the elements that you are trying to reject within yourself in order to maintain your “angelic” and “holy” status.

If you already chose the one-sided and over-intellectualized path of manhood, in which you reject any thought or idea that might conflict with your “pure” and “holy” vision of what it means to be a man, much of your unlived potential will remain “locked-away”, repressed and hidden and, with time, this potential will demand attention.

Being an honest man, while fully rejecting even the idea that you are capable of deception, being a loving man, while refusing to accept your potential for hate and desire for vengeance, being a gentleman while denying your capacity for brutal violence will make you blind to the other side of you, which walks with you in the same shoes and breathes with you the same air.

Keep in mind, that if you follow such a direction in life, you will shrink as a man, preferring to put an innocent face for the world, while keeping your dark qualities hidden in the hope that no one will discover their existence.

You will end up entertaining the idea of “losing” your dark side, disowning it from your personality and pursuing Utopia, where evil is unknown, and darkness doesn’t exist, taking comfort in the false phantasies that evil lies not in your nature but in the corrupt “society” that holds you in chains.

Holding this idea as a possible reality will make you disapprove and condemn all the so-called dark qualities that you repressed within yourself, but the anxiety that haunts you will remain. Anxiety and panic, not because of your fear of being exposed for what you really are, but because of the fear that the darkness inside you will get out of control, and you might end up absorbed by the lust of your darkest impulses.

The danger is never the presence of your dark desires, but the possibility of being devoured by them and becoming identical with the nature of your dark side.

As shocking as this may be, whether it is the powerful impulse for sexual passion or the far more disastrous desire for power and destruction, you do not have the luxury to reject or deny these elements from your personality without paying a higher price in the end.

It will be your duty, as a man, to observe and integrate these elements within yourself, if there will be even a remote chance for you to become the kind and honest gentleman that you aspire to be.

The moral burden of this immense task is greater than any other task you can conceive, and your destiny and the destiny of the people around you is in your hands. Only by becoming conscious and by coming to terms with your own nature – with the evil and dark elements that you are trying to reject – can you hope to avoid a total catastrophe in your life and become the kind of man you would admire.

Allow yourself to be humbled by the true nature of your being, drop your ignorance and choose to meet your darkness on even ground. Remember that both repression of your dark desires and identification with them will result in chaos since both are fearful attempts to lose the bonds that hold within you a light and dark side.

Be the man that is not trying to escape the pain of the problem, and have the courage to remain suspended between the two opposites, your good side and your vicious side, because carrying this pain may give you the possibility of wholeness.

Carry the burden of the opposites in your nature, and embrace the fusion with your dark side. Blur orderly the fixed line between good and evil within you and find a way around seemingly unbeatable obstacles, by bringing some of your darkness into your life.

Every man carries with him a dark side, including you, and the less it is expressed in your life, the darker it becomes.

Have the courage to become a complete man rather than only a good man.

NEVER FORGET WHO YOU ARE!