What is the Dark Side?

I think the best part of your answer was "I dont know", because you have the frankness to admit it, which is very honorable Connor L., and you know what? Me neither because what is at the heart of my inquiry is not physical, temporal or metaphysics.

But simply the logic of things...

Do you agree?

MTFBWY

Yes, I do agree.

Khaos wrote: What is the Dark side?

A choice.

My choice.

Anymore than that would be like trying to explain to someone why I like a certain type of music,food,wine, etc.

At one time, when I first started down the Sith path, this question was super important, and I answered it in pages of text, then one page, then one paragraph, then one sentence, and finally, I wondered why I went through all the trouble.

At its core, when I think about it long enough, I always come back to one word, if I absolutely have to explain it.

Passion.

Certainly, others use this word, regardless of alignment or discipline, but it holds a different kind of weight in the Dark. That word, is a lynchpin that holds a Dark practitioners core values together, everything starts and ends with it.

I cannot give it its due justice in the meaning it has for the Dark path, but at the same time, like most things in the Dark path as I have come to understand it, it is not about explaining, it is about doing, and feeling.

The Dark is very much experienced on a somatic level.

could i interpret this to mean that the dark side is about following ones passions? enhancing passion?

and what makes something "dark"instead of "light"?

you mention "core values" - what sorts of values does this actually mean/what ARE the core values?

Could i interpret this to mean that the dark side is about following ones passions? enhancing passion?

You could interpret it a multitude of ways, and you will certainly see it how you will like.

Still, I will try to answer, but keep in mind that I said I could not give the word its due justice as it pertains to the Dark path.

It is not about "enhancing" ones passions. If you need to enhance it, its not passion, and im not a fan of a plural use of the word. People these days use it far to flippantly. Not every passing fancy, or interest is a passion. Also, more often than not, one sees a plural when they are connected.

It is in part about following ones passion(s), but that is far to small a container. That is but one small part of the word and its weight in the Dark, what it really entails. Not just the word, but to follow ones passion.

I could give you links to some conversations and some works in PM that you could read at your leisure, as this is simply too big a word, a topic within my path to explain out in a simple couple paragraphs.

Also, as I said, it is more about doing, and feeling, on a somatic level within the Dark, it is an awareness, and intuitiveness, born of experience. Not unlike "Sentiment du fer" is developed in fencing.

and what makes something "dark"instead of "light"?

As with what would make something "Light" instead of "Dark". Choice, experience, and perspective.

A small example is that Jedi are commonly interested in the Heroes journey. A Dark practitioner is interested in the Villains journey. Mr. Campbell did not flesh one out, and so, like most with the Dark we have crafted it as we have gone along because we did not until extremely recently( at least within the SW universe) have such fleshed out. Not unlike the Sith code, which we predate by three years roughly. Work is still being done on it even as we have this conversation.

You mention "core values" - what sorts of values does this actually mean/what ARE the core values?

Its not the "THE" core values. Everyone has core values, those things we prioritize about us in degrees of importance, whether we are aware of them or not. It is best to be aware of your values, and as I said, ones passion, is the lynchpin around what becomes the individuals core values in the Dark path.

Khaos wrote:

Could i interpret this to mean that the dark side is about following ones passions? enhancing passion?

You could interpret it a multitude of ways, and you will certainly see it how you will like.

Still, I will try to answer, but keep in mind that I said I could not give the word its due justice as it pertains to the Dark path.

It is not about "enhancing" ones passions. If you need to enhance it, its not passion, and im not a fan of a plural use of the word. People these days use it far to flippantly. Not every passing fancy, or interest is a passion. Also, more often than not, one sees a plural when they are connected.

It is in part about following ones passion(s), but that is far to small a container. That is but one small part of the word and its weight in the Dark, what it really entails. Not just the word, but to follow ones passion.

I could give you links to some conversations and some works in PM that you could read at your leisure, as this is simply too big a word, a topic within my path to explain out in a simple couple paragraphs.

Also, as I said, it is more about doing, and feeling, on a somatic level within the Dark, it is an awareness, and intuitiveness, born of experience. Not unlike "Sentiment du fer" is developed in fencing.

and what makes something "dark"instead of "light"?

As with what would make something "Light" instead of "Dark". Choice, experience, and perspective.

A small example is that Jedi are commonly interested in the Heroes journey. A Dark practitioner is interested in the Villains journey. Mr. Campbell did not flesh one out, and so, like most with the Dark we have crafted it as we have gone along because we did not until extremely recently( at least within the SW universe) have such fleshed out. Not unlike the Sith code, which we predate by three years roughly. Work is still being done on it even as we have this conversation.

You mention "core values" - what sorts of values does this actually mean/what ARE the core values?

Its not the "THE" core values. Everyone has core values, those things we prioritize about us in degrees of importance, whether we are aware of them or not. It is best to be aware of your values, and as I said, ones passion, is the lynchpin around what becomes the individuals core values in the Dark path.

yeah please do PM, thanks

i respect that people believe what they believe - certainly i am no more guaranteed to be "right" than anyone else

but for me personally, any assumptions about what we experience in death are moot: i am not convinced that we experience anything at all because i am not convinced there is any more "we" left to experience anything at all

my understanding atm is that cognition requires biology, and once our biology is gone aka dead, cognition is no longer possible

to speak of the dark as a library seems very mysterious and vague - how does one access the material? what sort of material is available?

i dont understand where the metaphors end and actual events begin to happen

and i am curious how these ideas translate into actual behavior, relationships, and decision making

Open question: what makes the heroes journey different from the villains?

and if it is genuinely different, is the difference necessary?

i respect that people believe what they believe - for me personally, any assumptions about what we experience in death are moot: i am not convinced we experience anything at all because i am not convinced there is "we" to experience anymore

Personally, I have no thoughts one way or another on the afterlife. I only think about death insofar that, in my profession, its fairly common place.

to speak of the dark as a library seems very mysterious and vague - how does one accessx the material? what sort of material is available? at some point metaphors have to end and actual events must happen

We have a wiki, and various resources with podcast, lectures, etc,etc. All sorts of varied material is available on a wide variety of subjects. So its not a vague concept at all. You access it through the internet.

i am curious how these ideas translate into actual behavior, relationships, and decision making

Thats done in the living of it. You dont, and cant explain it on a forum, nor should you try. You dont translate, you apply, see if it works, if it doesnt you modify, discard, or if it does, you keep it.

Open question: what makes the heros journey different from the villains? and if it is genuinely different, is the difference necessary?

Never seen a movie or read a book?

Seriously though, in my research, classically, the hero is a reactive process to a villain looking to achieve a goal more often than not. The Villain, by and large, isnt really interested or defined at all by the hero.

Just as Luke was content to stay on the moisture farm until his aunt and uncle got nuked.

As I said though, its still being worked out. As most, though not all cases, the villain is already fully formed, and in the cases that he or she isnt, they have a horribly cliche( which may, or may not have a place, were still researching) background.

Some gems though, like Leto II from God Emperor of Dune, and others.

Clearly there is a difference, as for whether or not it is necessary, I cant see why that matters at all.

No one does everything out of necessity.

Choice, and perspective, as I said earlier, play there part.

from what i understand, the hero is defined as such because at some point he or she demonstrates a willingness to self sacrifice for the benefit of others - truly for the benefit of others, even to the point of their own death -and the villain is defined by their demand that others must sacrifice or be sacrificed for them and their demands

theres always cross over - every time a "hero" kills a "bad guy" she is sacrificing someone on the alter of her quest, and every villain who shares some of the spoils has sacrificed something to another's benefit - but even in these you will find that the greater purpose beneath the acts still is consistent with this basic alignment

i cant think of a more heroic hero in sci fi than god emperor leto

he sacrificed EVERYTHING to save the entire human species

once the transformation reached a certain threshold - which was all in all very quickly, he was no longer human, and no longer could be human

so love, sex, companionship really of any significant kind, were no longer accessible to him, and in any event the entire galaxy, including those in his immediate sphere, regard him as a monster and a tyrant and a loathsome individual

the only ones who seem to have any genuine respect for him are his enemies - and they are sincere in plotting his destruction

the closest he ever gets to LOVE is hwi noree - she is the only one in thousanda of years who really does want to understand him and with whom he feels any real connection - the tragedy of this love is that hwi herself was created by the b.t. as weapon of manipulation to use against him

which btw, to even refer to him as LETO is not entirely accurate because somewhere along the line -a thousand years or so into his reign iirc) the original leto personality recedes into the background, giving way to a yet more powerful and more competent personality within his Kwisatz Haderach genetic memory

and he does not do all this simply because he wants to rule or because he is on a quest to collect power - he does this because it is necessary to prevent the extinction of the human species

HE SACRIFICES HIMSELF TO SAVE THE HUMAN SPECIES BECAUSE HE IS THE ONLY ONE WHO CAN

he is PERCEIVED as a villain by the very ones he is protecting - and in truth this perception makes the heroism of what he does MORE heroic, and also more tragic - he is the hero who no one wants to follow and who DOESNT get the girl - not even once

of course in another story this could be madness, but in the case of this story its not

as for genuine villains, are they FULLY formed? or are they DEformed?
some might say that villains are what happen when the heroes journey goes awry, since the very core of that journey is the very process of that formation of self - this is why the symbolism applies so universally; we all go through our own version of the archetypal "heroes journey" and it is that journey which results in the developed personality

which is why i ask about necessity

becoming and being the hero isnt just living up to some shiny golden cliche, it is a process acknowledging the truth of oneself, and acknowledging and of facing the hardships and dangers of the external world, and of accepting the responsibility of ones effect upon that world

this takes self awareness and then self determination - that process of honestly recognizing ourselves, and then of making a genuine commitment to pursuing the internal ideal and the external effect we believe most appropriate

so when i mention necessity, lets say that its not necessarily necessary to eat either an apple or a cupcake - but if i am going to align myself with a particular diet, the results of eating five cupcakes every day will be very different from the results of eating five apples every day - and in any even the motivation to eat the apples would likely not come from the desire to eat apples so much as the desire to be healthy - which means that we dont just make up our own rules about nutrition, and expect them to work in spite of all the evidence to the contrary, but rather we learn the rules as they have been established by those who have come before us, and then we follow them to the best of our ability

a spiritual path is no different - in fact they are the same path imo - health

now, some might say "power"

i would ask then, does this mean power over others or the empowerment of the self?

because they arent the same thing, and this is a big part of the choice which separates the hero from the villain

one may become the most powerful version of oneself without having any very extraordinary level of power over others, and one may hold a position of great power and yet be internally weak

and these polarities can be switched obviously

in leto we have a hero who ascended to great power, but regardless of how he was perceived he did this for the benefit of others

in sauron we have a villain who lusted for the power to dominate others

in the final analysis, the villain is the one who will abandon the comrade for the cause, and betray the cause to save themselves - the hero is the one who will sacrifice or at least genuinely risk themselves for the cause and often even risk the cause to save the comrade

and of course there have been crazy villains who would die for their religion and less than perfect heroes who didnt always win the internal battle against their own fear or anger - life is complicated and these ideals express themselves in a wide variety of ways

but i am describing polarities which represent real internal commitments, and these commitments have real external results

and finally, i still dont understand why something cannot be explained over a forum - ideas and results can be explained - if they cant then usually it is because either there are things happening underneath the surface which are not fully understood (and if they are not understood then you cannot know their ultimate effects, nor if these effects are going to be "good" or "bad")

or

it is sometimes because, when the reality of what is going on is fully articulated it becomes obvious that it is not good - in these cases it CAN be explained, but that explaining it would be self defeating because no one would go along with it if they really understood what they were getting themselves into

* i do acknowledge that sometimes explaining things, especially explaining them before hand, will interfere with the natural process of the experience

and sry for the long post, ive been doing my best to cut these short lately but i guess this one got away from me