what color is dark???

What are some similarities between pop-psychologist of the soul Thomas Moore and the young Darth Vader? How can I possibly concentrate enough to answer my own question with a big old buzzy fly on the curtain above my head and an craving for a Heine Bros. Chai-berg which has gone unsatisfied for three nights?

After resisting the second Star Wars trilogy through the first two movies, I finally broke down and saw "Revenge of the Sith" with my mom a month or so ago. I was captivated as Anakin (sp?) who was a great hero among the Jedi was lured over to the "Dark Side of the Force" --- he can't bear his prophetic dreams about his wife dying in childbirth, so the possibility of possessing the power to override death excites him to the core. The virtuous Jedi are presented by Anakin's mentor the prime
minister (who turns out to be a Sith lord) as lacking depth, as ultimately less powerful.

Thomas Moore's book "Dark Nights of the Soul" is just out in paperback.
Since I felt a little dark, engaged as I am in such existential struggles as quitting smoking and writing my ECE, I purchased the book, and I've been stealing time from critical writing and arranging sessions in the La-z-boy chair on the front porch to give Mr. Moore opportunities to educate me. Of course everybody knows dark nights of the soul are times of depression, illness or other difficulty; Moore suggests that "the dark night calls for a spiritual response." He almost ridicules anyone who would want to have their dark night over with quickly, or who would seek a merely therapeutic answer. The dark night of the soul can be a deep character-building experience.

OK, we're talking about two very different people, two very different concepts, right? Anakin, who becomes Darth Vader, is EVIL. We all root for the Jedi knights when we watch Star Wars films. There are unsavory qualities to the Sith, and they don't know how to love.

"Imagine that you didn't feel a stranger to your dark night and that you had a key to entering it and leaving it." Thomas Moore suggests that exploring our dark qualities makes us deeper and being deeper means possibly being stronger.

OK so the thing is, Moore isn't suggesting to anyone that they try to take over the universe. He offers no sinister powers, like newfangled ways of killing people, like special skills with the lightsaver, like replacing human body parts with whatever it is Darth Vader always wears after he gets burned up in that weird fiery place.

Moore has the following arguments to anyone who thinks they are exclusively virtuous beings of Light:

"However you present yourself to the world, on some level you are a dark person. You have thoughts you don't usually tell people. You are capable of things that your friends may know nothing about. You are probably more interesting sexually than the world realizes. You probably have some anger and fears that you don't tell people about. You may have secrets from the past that make you more intriguing than your persona would suggest. Certainly your potential for darker thoughts and behavior is rich."

To go along with Moore's argument for a moment. I would suggest that many of those of us who write poetry have explored the darkness even if only under linguistic cloaks of secrecy. Moore actually says that poetry is the perfect genre for such exploration. It is not necessary to be "confessional" --- after all, George Lucas certainly must have been exploring his own darkness with all those big expensive movies, but I don't know one single fact about his life. In the quote unquote real world, the dark side isn't literally populated with all those creatures and different types of space vehicles and weapons. The world of dreams, where most of us probably regularly encounter the dark side, is another story. Moore is certainly not the first in the field of psychology to suggest
that we can ignore the dark side when we're conscious, but it'll git us when we go to sleep.

The possibility of bizarre dreams aside, what would be the problem with avoiding dark nights of the soul, and living a carefully planned life of goodness and light and love??? There are spiritual traditions such as Jewish Kabbalah and Buddhism that suggest negativity, or darkness, can be willed away. We can become such creatures of Light that we don't express anger, that we don't worry or obsess, that we never become depressed. In layman's Kabbalah this is called being "proactive," in Buddhism there are three "afflictions" which are to be conquered, hatred or anger, craving or attachment, and delusion, and in theory a person can aspire to live without these.

Moore suggests instead that we burrow more deeply into negativity.
This is how we become people of character. The Sith do not rule anything out. They believe that power is what is most important and they will acquire it "by any means necessary."

Oh yeah, Darth Vader howls to raise the dead when he finds out that his wife has in fact died in childbirth. This is the heartbreaking fact of this evil one's more human past. So, if keeping his wife alive was the main reason Anakin went over to the dark side, could it be said he did this out of LOVE???

What IS the difference between good and evil anyway??? I don't think I have the answer today. Rae, who is somewhere close to the last page of the new Harry Potter, probably has a better answer than I do.

--- Harriet.