The Balance of Light and Dark

I recently heard a radio show (David Franklin Farkas' The Farkas Files) where his guest Papa Coyote talked about needing to have the balance of light and dark. This past Saturday I was working a psychic fair and had a conversation with a vendor about something. He also talked about the need for the balance between dark and light. I knew from the context of both conversations that they were both talking about good and evil. But is good and evil really the essential balance of light and dark. Or is this something else entirely? Is the necessary balance of light and dark actually about the dark, fecund void out of which everything was birthed, while light is the creative force that took the fecund energy and created the universe?

It strikes me that, if the balance of light and dark is really this deep, creative action (which might actually be continually creating life and love, and in the process keeping the universe going), then maybe we don't always have to have evil to balance the good. Then the good/evil balance is not what is the creative force of the universe, is not what keeps things flowing, moving. Maybe we don't have to submit with resignation that evil must exist.

Destruction does exist in the light/dark balance. Kali is a prime example of this balance. She is the creator and the destroyer, the birther and the bringer of death. But, somehow, I don't see evil in Kali, or the Kali metaphor if you prefer to look at her that way. Kali is life in the fullest, from beginning to end. Things arise and they die away. This just is. It is neither good nor evil.

This doesn't mean that good and evil don't exist. They do. I'm just coming to think that they are not at the heart, the essence of all things. 

Both images are from my book, Opening the Heart: Meditations on How to Be (here).