I have completely fallen in love with the [Dark Stance](). Unfortunately, I'm having a hard time finding people in recent history who have done serious work with it or explored the vast and interesting terrain it offers. There are traces everywhere, but no fully developed path, at least not in any language I understand. However, the further down in history I go, the more prominent the Dark Stance becomes, clearly guiding the old [Cynics]() and various forgotten gods, but history has been filtered dramatically, both by our forgetting and by rival memeplexes trying to erase all competition. But I like the challenge; I always wanted to construct a religion from scratch. It seems I will have to.
Unfortunately, I fear I am losing the ability to show *why* I am so fascinated by the Dark Stance, what exactly it is that draws me in. It is not a reaction to disappointment, not motivated by some negative expectation or personal failure, and certainly has nothing to do with transformation. It derives solely from the immediate emotional experience of awfulness. It just made \*click\* one day, feeling "this is entirely awful" and "this is the right thing to do". There is no justification, no goal, no purpose at all. It just is the right thing to do.
All happiness and its related emotional states, at least as I have experienced them, are fundamentally *betrayal*. They are distractions, always distanced from what I can only call [suchness](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tath%C4%81t%C4%81/Dharmat%C4%81). I don't like the term either, but I lack a better one. All this talk of beauty, of love, mercy and bliss, over so many years, and it all amounted to nothing, but within pain I finally find clarity. Not peace, mind you, nor surrender. The Dark Stance is entirely dissonant. It devours me, is violent, uncontrollable, but always... *there*. I am in a state of constant agitation, yet I find clarity. I do not know if this is a special property of these states, or just testament to how twisted my mind has become, but I value the experience greatly regardless. As the great [Lepht](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-Dv6dDtdcs) has said, it is not self-harm if it does something.
I find this approach deeply ironic because it is essentially the exact opposite of what I was doing back in my vipassana days. Back then, I spend most of my time sitting in the so-called Dark Night jhanas, mentally curled up in a tight ball of anxiety, trying to make progress, *any* progress. I was throwing more and more energy at the problem, hoping I could at least reach equanimity. I was always disappointed when I had temporarily reached peace-of-mind, only to slide back into anxiety. Now I'm doing the reverse. I have come to *despise* equanimity and actively try to *prevent* any transformation. I want just anxiety, just disgust, just hatred to exist and not *go* anywhere. It is almost effortless. However, I am constantly being pulled *towards* transformation, could very easily go into equanimity, but I refuse. This strengthens my intuition that all mental difficulty is imagined, is really just an adversarial mental process trying to scare you away. Unfortunately for this adversary, I don't care anymore. I do not want the progress it protects anymore. Once you choose Hell over Heaven, Satan loses all importance.
