Do you think though that drug use inherently brings darkness into ones life?
Yes and no.
Not inherently. But it tends to, so as a rule for a human being you can say it does. Sadly I can look back and think of much darkness it has brought into my life in different ways. One main one is the way it dims your consciousness and concern for how the way you live impact the society you live in and especially those close to you.
I mean, my dad drives me mad, but it must be torture living with a child "lost" to drug-addiction and knowing, for all they know, it could kill you any day, aside from all the bad things it can draw you into, both as a victim and perpetrator, as well as how your reationship can be ruined or nearly always will be harmed.
I like the darkness of mystery and the obscure, not the darkness of confusion and pain; I wonder if the two can be safely/adeuqately seperated?
"Darkness" can certainly be comfortable in many ways, and make life easier in many ways, depending on how you define it. Lying can make your life easier, for one thing. Also, dimming your consciousness, in general and to specific things, can make life easier to life and many things easier to deal with.
Certain drugs make "dimming your consciousness" that way more easily (and this can include lowering your awareness or even refuse acknoweledging things that cause you pain, the things you do that cause others pain, your own conscience, what is destructive to your life, awareness of the past and future, and many things). But it will also be very unpleasent when you have to, especially if it's over night, and you all of a sudden are made aware of all these things again. Then you're suddenly not able to dim them out as much and are forced to face up to all that you have suppressed and br tormented by your subconsciousness. Indeed it is almost enough to kill you if the shift is sudden with no gradual transition (which it typically is for a drug-addict). So the pleasure or help you can gain from darkness in different ways has a powerful backlash as well. This also includes different forms of selfishness, or putting yourself before others, in the end you also suffer for that.
Although this might be a more unsual way to see darkness, these are the forms that tend to make their ways into our everyday lives, and do insidious damage in a way we might not even be aware of. And darkness is most powerful when it's undetectable or seen as something positive. But then lack of knowledge or awareness of any one thing can be seen as a form of darkness aswell. It's a misunderstanding to think wisdom is a part of darkness. It's the opposite of wisdom, the dark counterpart of wisdom is ignorance, lack of understanding, deception. It might come, and usually will to be accepted, in the form of truth and some form of enlightening knowledge or wisdom. But this is just superficial, and for the truths it brings it brings many more lies, and for all the helpful things it has to teach you it teaches much more that is harmful and destructive.
But there are certainly many ways to glamourise darkness. And this is also how it normally appears, as no one would take it at face value, so it steals beauty, knowledge, and love from the light to be accptable. Some things literally work as a form of brain-washing that makes someone more receptive to that path. Like popular music and movies especially. In real life, though, it's mostly not as romantic. The "beauty" of darkness depends on illusion to a great degree, definitely, especially as the human soul is engeneered to only love the light or what is of God only. It's like it has a way of automatically rejecting what is not, so all darkness has to be blended with some light to be acceptable to the human soul, otherwise it will just be thrown out. I remember Aivanhov once saying if you ever were to be faced by "the Devil" that you would just fall down and scream in unimaginable pain.
I guess this could be compared to how I imagine if you were able to see a visual translation of the beauty of "God", from the perspective of a human being, you would probably be tormented in agonising bliss. As being confronted with more light than you can handle is also very painful and I think one way of seeing enlightenment is learning to handle higher degrees of light or high consciousness. Which are different words for the same thing, although most are more gray, or lukewarm like Jesus would say - I agree "lukewarm" is boring and cowardly in many ways and he had a point, but he always had a point, he was a bastard like that.
I think that relinquishing control of one's life to outside forces is either completely mad or completely brilliant. On one hand, I hate the idea of not being in at least cursory control of my own life, on the other hand my sometimes overwhelming need for guidance and support makes me desperate (at times) for help from beyond. I wish that angels and demons were constantly battling for the prize of my soul, and that this was more significant then it probably is. It would make the probable reality more interesting at least...
