Embracing Darkness
Allowing darkness to guide us to our true selves
It’s a beautiful and divine thing to have people in our lives that don’t give up on us. Today, that is #1 on my gratitude list.
There have been many people that have given up on me, in a sense, or perhaps it was just a reflection of them giving up on themselves, or even me giving up on myself. Or heck, maybe it’s not even that deep, and we simply weren’t a fit.
Nonetheless, there’s always something and someone to be grateful for. No matter the doubts that can creep into both their minds and mine, these are the people that have truly believed and continue to believe in my healing and potential. The people that believe I am destined for greatness – because we all are, in a sense.
Which brings me to something mystics, sages, wise human beings all throughout history have spoken about, and continue to. It is also something that the people I respect and look up to most, including the rare ones that never give up on me, have brought up as a recurring theme about my past experiences and journey to healing, time and time again.
It is an interesting theory and idea to consider that when we have so much darkness we endure in our lives, we also have more chance for growth and transformation.
That is … if we choose allow the deep waters of the darkness to shape us, shed layers of that which we are not and never have been, and give ourselves the freedom to shine the light on that which we have always been and who we are at our very core.
Darkness has an incredible power that many of us try to divert away from. We try to turn away from it. It’s simply too vast, too scary, too deep and unknown for many of us. But if we can just summon up enough courage to dive deep into it, and allow it to be a teacher, friend, and ally, true authentic growth and transformation can occur.
To do this, we have to embrace it for the teacher that it is. Albeit cruel at times – darkness is a great teacher, and suffering can be our greatest guide. It shows us where we are not being authentic and where and how we are not in alignment with our true selves.
My whole life has been a perfect mirror image of that.
I experienced war to know that I am not war, to learn (or rather, remember) that I am – just like every living organism in the universe – pure peace and love.
I experienced cruelty and injustice to learn that I am kind and compassionate.
I experienced illness to learn that I am and always have been whole.
I experienced ugliness to learn that I am whole and beautiful and always have
I continue experiencing being human this lifetime, to remember that I am a soul, infinite and endless. To open my mind to the idea and Truth that there is so much more to life than just what we see.
You see … that’s what suffering can do to us. Or at least, part of what it did to me. It pulls us into an entirely different dimension away from all the worldly things, away from everything and oftentimes everyone, leaving us in total isolation to face our own selves and to find the truth.
Beauty is truth. But beauty is not the skin deep beauty we are taught to believe in as a society that we all try to get so perfect. Beauty is our light, and our darkness. It is all the vastness in us. The qualities, contradictions, and all the varying facets we are able to hold within us.
It invites us to create space to be able to hold both light and dark in an embrace, and see all the beautiful shades of grey in between, along with all the vibrant colors. It opens us to another world, the real world that is all around us that few get to truly touch,feel and experience in today’s age.
Through the darkness, the door to that portal is opened up and we can choose whether or not we step through it. Is it terrifying? Absolutely. But if we can embrace it and allow it to teach us what we came here to learn, we can chose to emerge from it seeing the world with brand new eyes.
All we must do … is allow.
