Vachon Imagined

We live in a world where certain forms of violence are praised. Billions of dollars, perhaps more, flow into entertainment that glorifies it. Violence has become such an acceptable part of society that we reward it. Athletes, actors, celebrities, news cycles—everywhere there are incentives that keep our attention fixed on conflict, domination, and force.

Even our condemnation of violence can become another way of rewarding it. We put it on television, discuss it endlessly, and give it a permanent place in our collective consciousness.

This is the world we inhabit, and it offers us a landscape upon which to observe the mind.

How does anyone become anything?

They think upon it.

A thought appears. A desire. An image. A dream. Then it returns. It is repeated, rehearsed, strengthened, until it becomes action and eventually a lived reality. No professional athlete becomes great overnight. No artist, actor, musician, or leader arrives fully formed. A life is built through repeated attention.

The same principle exists in darkness. Acts of violence do not emerge from nowhere. They begin as thoughts, impulses, fantasies, wounds, fears, and desires that are practiced until they become embodied.

Consciousness is always practicing something.

This realization humbles us. We look at another person’s creation and say, “I am nothing like them.” Yet if we look honestly, we may discover that the seeds of every human possibility exist within us. Not equally expressed, not equally acted upon, but present nonetheless.

Perhaps this is why excessive thinking often creates confusion. Thought hardens into identity. Identity creates separation. Separation makes judgment easy.

One who becomes intimate with consciousness does not destroy the ego; the ego is part of nature. It has its place. But they also begin to see that every judgment points toward something unseen within themselves.

The darkness we fear in others is often the darkness we have not yet met in ourselves.

And yet there is good news in this.

What is brought into the light cannot remain what it was. The moment darkness is fully seen, it begins to lose its power. It cannot survive awareness indefinitely. It cannot remain hidden once it is known.

In a sense, it is already over.

It is already dying the moment it is discovered.