There is an old story, told in different ways across different traditions. The essence is the same: if the slain are not mourned, they do not depart.
Not because they are evil. Not because they seek vengeance. But because an unclosed death is an unhealed wound. And through it, into the world of the living, continues to seep that which should have departed with the dead.
I think of this when I think of peoples who have survived great wars.
Imagine a land holding millions within it. Your own and strangers, victims and executioners, heroes and those better left unnamed. The earth makes no distinction. It receives all.
But the living—they distinguish. Or they think they do.
They say: these are our dead—they are saints. These others are cursed. We will mourn ours, erect monuments, remember them on holidays. The others we will bury and forget. They are not worthy.
This seems just. The victor has the right.
But here begins the spiritual trap.
Because what is forgotten does not vanish. What is repressed does not die. That which is given no name, no place, not even the right to be spoken—sinks deep. Into the earth. Into the body's memory. Into what is passed to children not through words, but through something more subtle—the intonation of fear, the habit of silence, the reflex of submission, or conversely, the reflex of hatred.
An old visionary, carried out as a child from a great battlefield, used to say: the bones of enemies poison the land. They laughed at him. But he spoke of something real.
He spoke of the fact that unprocessed evil is not neutralized by time. It ferments—like unsealed wine, like an unhealed abscess. And it seeks an outlet.
An outlet, it always finds. The question is only when, and through whom.
Usually—in a moment of weakness. When the old order has collapsed, and the new one is not yet built. When a person, or an entire people, finds itself in confusion, in pain, in the feeling that the ground is slipping from beneath their feet.
In that moment, something rises from the depths, offering simplicity. Black and white. Us and them. An enemy onto whom all the accumulated fear, humiliation, anguish, and restlessness can be directed.
And people accept this offer. Not because they are bad. But because pain seeks an outlet, and this outlet is the nearest one.
But here is what is crucial to understand: the force that rises in such moments—it is not new. It is old. Very old. It was once defeated—on battlefields, through tremendous effort, at the cost of unimaginable sacrifice. But defeated from the outside, not from within.
The inner work was not done.
Because inner work is something else. It is not victory over an enemy. It is confronting the question: how did this force ever become possible? What within us allowed it to grow? What did we do—or fail to do—that brought it forth?
These questions are painful. They shatter a comfortable self-image. So they remain unasked. A celebration is preferred—without judgment upon one's own shadow.
The shadow—that's a Jungian term. But the thing it describes is known to all traditions.
It is that part of us—personal or collective—that we do not acknowledge as our own. Which we deny, hide, project onto others. "This is not our sin—it is their fault."
The longer the shadow remains unrecognized—the stronger it grows. The more unexpected its emergence. And the more terrifying—because a person seized by an unacknowledged shadow is sincerely convinced they are doing righteous work.
This is precisely what makes it so dangerous.
Not the villain who knows he is a villain. But the person who believes they are fighting against the darkness.
Symbols are more honest than people. Symbols cannot lie as deftly as words.
It is the shadow which has finally waited its hour and risen from the earth—to where the light used to be.
What is to be done with this?
Spiritual traditions give one answer, in different words.
Name it. Acknowledge it. Mourn it.
Not the enemy—yourself. That part of yourself that could have done the same under different circumstances. That part of your own people which did do it—and which it was more convenient not to consider your own.
This is not weakness. This is the only path to true spiritual victory.
Because a people who have looked into the face of their shadow and did not flee—are free. But a people who have not done this—walk in circles. Again and again, reproducing the same ancient darkness.
The earth remembers everything. It is patient.
But we, too, can remember—and choose differently. This is what distinguishes a living soul from bones in the ground.
The capacity—to pause. To ask. And not to fear the answer.
