Why You May Be Afraid of the Dark (Spiritually)

Were you afraid of the dark as a child? Are you afraid of it now? Fear of the dark extends beyond normal consciousness into the subconscious.

Many people’s fear of the dark began at an early age. You and others may have opted to sleep with the lights and/or TV on or with parents in fear of being without a lick of light. You may have still been in the dark, but someone was with you. You weren’t alone.

What are some other reasons? For one, you can’t see a thing in total darkness. You have no idea what’s in front of you, the side of you, or worse, behind you. While fear of the dark is something physical and conscious, it’s also invisible and subconscious.

Metaphysically, the dark is the unknown—what you can’t see, what you don’t or can’t know. It’s also what you can’t see, don’t know, and what you don’t want to know. It’s hidden from sight until illuminated, unearthed, or brought to the surface. Of course, many of us don’t like the idea of not knowing what something means, what the outcome’s gonna be, and other things that we have no awareness of. We definitely don’t like not being able to see. We could run into something, dangerous or not. Something could run into us.

Now, let’s go a little deeper.

One day I came into work and was “blinded” to know that I’d be sent to a training for a new department that I didn’t ask to be in. It threw me off, but I just rode the wave and braced myself for where it might take me. I had been communicating to my management team that I was ready to experience something new instead of doing the same old thing day after day. I was put off by not having a warning or awareness of this transition, but they say you “never” know, so why not just go along with it and see what happens sometimes? The outcome could be great—and of course it could be a not-so-great experience, but you won’t know until it comes to light.

It was everyone’s in the class first night of this training. There was a girl in the class that stood out to me from the very beginning. She was from Philly, which she was loud, proud, and boastful about. She was extremely upbeat, confident, and was the most talkative person in the class. One day we all walked into the classroom and the lights were off, the room only partially illuminated by the projected screen. She quickly turned on the lights and yelled, “Nah, I’m afraid of the dark!” The class giggled at her dramatic animation, yet the first thing it made me wonder was “What about the darkness really scares her?”

Now me, I’m a darkness enthusiast. Like Drake says, “I come alive in the nighttime.” I even worked overnights which works better for me than waking up extremely early to be at a job.

Working the night shift with lights blazing can be jarring at a certain point of the evening/early morning so many of us at work prefer a lights-low environment when possible, during breaks in the breakroom for example.

There’s a bathroom on each floor of the building that isn’t occupied as much as the main bathrooms on each floor, so there are many of us who prefer the bathroom that is less busy, including myself.

A lot of us like to go to this bathroom to have a few moments off our feet and to recollect. Or to simply be able to use the bathroom in peace. I myself will turn off the lights at times if I’m the only one there.

One night during my moments of silence in the bathroom, I heard someone walking in a few minutes later. I heard their feet walking in, then stopping abruptly, most likely bracing for the lights to automatically come on like they usually would. They scurried to the switches turn the lights back on. When they sat on toilet, I recognized the boots. They were “Philly’s” from my training class.

Remember earlier in the post when I mentioned the fear of the dark when younger? If you were one that feared the dark, what type of feel did it have? It probably had an undeniable stillness and silence about it that was loud. Ironic, I know. There’s a lot about metaphysics that are, but they also go hand-in-hand.

Silence being loud? How? I may go into this in another post. I don’t want to veer too far off track.

In darkness and/or stillness, you have time to think and ponder. In other parts of the day or in our lives, we are too busy and consumed with other endeavors and tasks, so there’s not much time to reflect and mind our thoughts. I was doing some browsing online one day and came across a blog post that mentioned that the brain experiences about 60,000 thoughts a day (it could’ve been 600,000. Either way, that’s a tremendous amount of thoughts!). You’ve probably heard the sage, “What’s dark comes to the light.” Many of us don’t like what may emerge in darkness, similar to what I explained about having a physical fear of darkness, the unknown, the unseen.

Earlier I mentioned being a darkness enthusiast, which is true in a physical sense, but I do realize my “fear of the dark” has always been not knowing enough information and not knowing exactly what the future holds. During the course of my life and on my path, I’ve realized that I don’t have as much control as we’ve always been taught that we do. We are in “the dark” about a lot in our lives until they’re unveiled. With this I’m learning to be more present and focus on what I can control in the moment.

If you’re afraid of the physical dark or the darkness of your mind, some questions to ask yourself are, “What am I afraid of confronting?” “What am I afraid of confronting me?” “What am I hiding? From myself or others?”