As I descend into basement shadows, I am washed in red.
Smoothness is not a choice on the earthly plane.
As light reveals, so also shadows are spawned.
With this I must learn to rock my ignorance to sleep to await its hungry cry.
I must feed my insincerity its milky gruel.
I must give my meanness rapt attention.
I must dine with my shallowness and play chess with my incompetence.
I must massage my cruelty’s neck and let my coldness share my bed.
I must serve tea to my gloom and warm my fear’s cold feet, while tucking in my weakness for the night.
I must play cards with my animal passions and wrap my ugliness in my favorite silken robe.
I must sing to my conceit and pick up my naivete and hold it close in my arms.
All these folk live in my house, as they must.
I must honor their darkness for in it they help make the light shine.
With this, all at once and in balance, the wholeness of soul can be truly found.
Happy is the house where all sleep warm.
Where no one must lie in the basement, damp alone and afraid-
and enraged at the one who locked the cellar door
All those many years before.
— Unknown