<The Gleaming Obsidian Shard>

"This is the gleaming obsidian shard I safeguard above all others." This obsidian shard is something that is inside of us all and it pricks us. It is a beautiful, prickly, and hard piece of rock that all of our hate and bad energies are stored up in. When one is able to except it, that person is must safeguard it from the world for fear of exposing all of the negative energies one has. For if one was to uncover all of these negative energies, one would be looked down upon in society and people need human interaction to survive. When Jenny speaks of this "obsidian shard", she as well speaks of being young and when she was young she felt naïve. Now that she has accepted her innards, she has grown open to other things and is no longer naïve. In "The Heart of Darkness", Kurtz has realized his obsidian shard and has let it go to his head. By accepting this thing inside him he has come to think of himself as better than others because of his self-realization. Whereas, Marlow, who has not accepted this thing inside of him, goes through the story ignorant to almost everything that is happening to him. For example when the man falls dead on his feet and all he can worry about is the blood in his boots, which he tosses into the river. This means that he is still naïve because he doesn't know what is happening and has not had even a glimpse of this thing inside of him and doesn't even have a clue that it exists. There are even laws in science such as the law of conservation of mass which states that matter is neither created nor destroyed, it is simply transferred. So in effect when people have negative energies that seem to go away and are never resolved, they simply are stored up in this obsidian shard and are forgotten about. When a person realizes this shard, all of that negative energy is released and hits them like a raging river. If this happens, then most people can handle it depending on how much negative energy there was. Kurtz had a lot of negative energy and he was not able to cope with all of it when it hit him. This in effect drove him insane and when the thought of letting his shard start to form again by leaving, he almost did it but turned around even after a long journey down the river. Most people in this world want to believe that they do not have this obsidian shard inside of them. They think that they have accepted it and that will lead to them having a harder time coping with it when they actually realize it. Although some people can go through their whole lives without recognizing their shard, all through their lives they will feel as if something is missing and that there must be something more to life. They will feel as if their life was lived for nothing and will go searching for their shard. This is what happened to Jenny. She had all of these things from her childhood that she bottled up inside of her obsidian shard and she didn't know they were there. She thought that they had gone away. She thought that she had forgotten them. But in effect, they had just been growing inside of her making her shard bigger and bigger until it's pricking finally hit a nerve and it all hit her all at once. This negative energy which she had been storing up for her entire life. But when it hit her, she was able to cope with it somewhat but afterwards, she could never go back to being the same person she was. Such as the scene in the coffee place where she went to work after she left. This is where Ty approached her and asked her to come with him and she simply refused him and said that she could never be like that again. That she could never be naïve. The same thing occurred with Kurtz and Rose. When they were faced with a chance to go back to where they were, they did not want to close their eyed and go back to being naïve. They wanted to be open and know what was happening to them. Although some people are able to expel their shards when they realize them, some people are only able to see parts of them and thus they think they are gone yet the shard still thrives inside of them. This is why many religions find reincarnation fitting. They believe that one must go through many lives to get to a state where one has no shard and then can become one with God for all of eternity. Whereas Christianity and other western religions believe that one has one shot at getting rid of the obsidian shard and if one cannot get rid of it, then that person goes to hell. As my good friend puts it, "Learn to look within even as you look outward. Learn to listen within even as you speak outward. Learn to see that everything is part of God, even as you focus on one thing. Learn to do this well, and you will achieve God." Meaning that one must see everything as God and then that obsidian shard inside will disappear if one can accept it as what it truly is, God.