My particular past has a lot of darkness. A lot of trauma. A lot of drinking to numb the pain. Which increased the trauma, the darkness and the pain. Counter intuitive I know, but I have a lot of company in that particular mindset.
I think things happen to us in our lives and we make judgments about them and then relate that back to self worth. When horrible things happen, we believe that we deserved them in some way. That because we were defective or bad or wrong that is why the thing happened. And I can boldly state that is never the case. Things happen. We are all affected by karma, ours and others. Sometimes, there is shit that takes many lifetimes to work out, the accumulation of merit is slow and painstaking. Other times we just happen to be standing there minding our own business when someone else’s karma comes spilling over into our lives. It isn’t because we were bad or wrong or really all that important, we just happened to be standing there. Casualties of being present.
I believe that we are all basically good. A lot of shit happens to us from birth until death if we are lucky enough to have that dash between the two be long. A lot of stuff that happens and depending on so many other factors it either breaks us down or builds us up.
In my own life, I can see that as a kid I was filled with light. I was happy, carefree, alive. Then some shit went down and that changed me. It altered the inside of me and planted a seed of darkness. I became confused about why it was there and what should be done with it. I mistakenly believed that I somehow caused it to be there, the blackness. So I allowed it to remain. Small at first but then without my permission or consent, it grew. It grew exponentially and quietly over the years. When I was a teen I was so tortured by the ever growing darkness that I could have easily succumbed. But I found booze and that allowed me to disconnect from the pain, from the ever growing malignancy.
And it worked until it didn’t anymore. What I found at the bottom of a bottle was nothing until that was all I had. And I met a lot of people out there who were equally haunted by their own darkness so much so that they became afraid of their own light. I understood this and so I sought them out, the darkness bearers. I sat with them in equally dark places while we all tried to forget.
But darkness envelopes more than it reveals so the more we descended into it the less aware we became that the light still existed.
It took me a very long time, and it is still a daily decision. Which direction to move, which concept to feed. I am amazed at how long I have lived and how many lessons continue to come. I can see how very much I still have to learn about my own darkness as well as my own light.
But I guess what I want to say today is that I see them both, in tandem with each other. Perhaps no longer mortal enemies, as each coexists with the other, having to make way and room for the other’s existence. A kind of blending of the two, while neither ever giving up its form and shape completely.
The darkness grew in me until it almost took me over. But that tiny particle of light was always there and has been reclaiming my interior for decades now. I feel more light, I know that I am becoming light more intensely every day while also allowing for the blackness to show itself when it needs to and allow the light within to heal.
Light heals. Light relieves. Light changes spooky corners of my mind into welcome retreats with the past. Those things I have survived, when examined and discussed, no longer kill my soul. I bring them out into the open, secrets of myself no more.
I find myself wondering how did I get to be this old and still feel I have so much work to do? But then I look around and I see others on the path and see that we are all right where we should be. And we are never done. It is a constantly changing and shifting evolution of exchanging the darkness for a lighter mantle. For allowing there to be a crucible of change that alters the soul, reorients it toward the light.
And some of you may ask, “Why bother?” “What is the point?” And I know you ask it because I have asked it too...but I know now, I see it and feel it on a cellular level. I bother because the light is a gift that is hard won and long fought. It is not so easily found and even harder accepted. So those of us who have been blessed with this healing need to help the others, help them see and feel and move ever toward the light. The light is a gift but with all gifts, there is responsibility. To give what was freely given. To ensure that to whatever degree you can, the path you followed, no matter how convoluted and twisted it might be, is life alteringly useful to another who is stumbling around in the dark. Consumed by their interior blackout, forgetting in real time that any light ever existed there at all.
Those of us who have become the light, have a duty to share our light with those still encased in the gloaming. We know the way, perhaps not the only way, but we have found a path, a light beacon that has called us forth from the all consuming shadows. Becoming light means that we allow it to shine on whomever we encounter, wherever we may be. Light cares not what it shines upon, and neither should we. Light only cares to shine, so shine on we must. Always remembering we may be the only light another ever sees.
