A Light In The Light
29 Oct
When two people come together, we do so to affirm something within ourselves that needs affirming. The universe does not discriminate about what that thing is. If two people come together to affirm their darkness, they can do that. If two people come together to affirm their light, they can do that too.
What is crazy about this world is that it makes no difference why two people come together. If they want to have shoot up heroine in an alley, have sex, and pass out, that is no different from wanting to be aligned on a physical, emotional, and intellectual plane before making sweet, passionate, organic love.
Is it blasphemy to write such a thing?
I’m not one to judge what is blasphemy and what is not, but I can tell you that I’ve heard – from spirit – that nothing is blasphemy. And until we understand that it is impossible to damage our connection with that which already is, there is still more healing to do.
I’ve also heard that while we perceive darkness and light as similar, they are very different. Light endures. Darkness cannot endure. Which changes almost every story that we’ve ever heard. And know. And perceive as true.
*****
In this world, it’s easy to imagine light and darkness as opposing forces – in ourselves, in others, in the night’s sky. And it’s easy to imagine that an epic struggle for control is happening. In our hearts. In our lives. In our own backyards. Because this is the story that we’ve been told. It is our cultural story.
But now we tell ourselves another story. To begin, I invite you to conduct a simple experiment with me:
Go into a dark room and pick out a thing that you cannot see. Then, note what you see. If it is a picture, can you see anything but perhaps its shadow? If it is a piece of writing, can you see anything but perhaps its shadow? If it is a thing on the ground, can you see anything but perhaps its shadow?
Now go into another room and find a special kind of object that shines light. A flashlight is perfect. A candle works well. Even your telephone LCD can do the trick. Bring that object into the dark room with you. And shine the light onto whatever it was that you had experienced in darkness. And note what it is that you see.
No matter where we live, no matter what religion we are, and no matter how pretty the dress that we’re wearing is, our experience is the same: When we hold darkness and light up to each other, darkness always turns to light. It must. And whatever it was that we perceived as darkness becomes light when we perceive it in the light.
This is a big deal.
All of our lives, we have imagined that we’ve been watching darkness and light in an epic struggle for control: whether on the battlefields of our hearts, our minds, our Gods, or our lands. And the battles always end the same: the winner perceives light in her victory and the loser perceives darkness in the winner.
The epiphany is that while this experience is true – on the level of perception – it is not the whole story. Light and darkness will struggle for only as long as it takes us to understand what has always been true: When we hold light and darkness up to each other, what was dark becomes light. And what was light stays light.
Which means that in the light, there can be no struggle. Because light knows darkness as the light. And in the light, darkness must also know itself as it truly is: a light in the light that wants to spread light. Whether it’s a poem that wants to be read, a bed that wants to be slept in, or a woman who wants to know her heart.