I’ve been playing around with this concept of light and dark in my head over the past few days, inspired by the thoughts of a yoga teacher a few sessions ago. Her challenge to us was to accept our “dark” because it is already exposed to the world even if we don’t realize it.
Hmmm. So if we take this concept as truth, if only for the sake of thinking about things in another way, which quite frankly is something I LOVE to do whenever possible….then why do we spend so much time trying to hide our “dark” and assume that our “light” is all people want to see or will accept in us? Aren’t we all dark and light? Good and Evil? Well, everyone else apparently because I took a VERY reliable Facebook quiz and it indicated I’m “100% good! An angel!” Really? Wow! I must be then, right?
When I think about it, as I’ve made an effort to let down some of the well constructed fortress that surrounds me in my adulthood, originally erected to protect me from hurts and disappointments and fears and sadness in life as a child or teen or young adult, I have seldom found my effort to be ill-received or push me further into my own inner darkness. Sure, there have been hurts along the way, sure there has been disappointments and I’ve been fearful and sad, but with each time I’ve learned if I’m to be too harshly judged or shunned by those I’ve chosen to confide, then really are they worth the effort anyway? Sometimes that has helped me to better define “who” I want to continue to have in my life.
I sat down with my first interviewee for my upcoming book. I love that can say that, my upcoming book, makes it sound so much more real. In the session, I found the most beauty in her story not the times that were easy or blissful, but rather the times that we painful and dark and morose, and in those times, somehow she began to crawl her way back out of towards the light and beauty and now presents as this amazingly beautiful beacon of peace and light and joy who inspires others, daily……It opened my eyes, deepening my sense of amazement of the truest sense of beauty and peace a person is capable of having. Accepting your dark, and moving through to light.
Would she have been able to do that if she lived a permanent state of harmony and happiness? And do we really think that’s possible anyway? Isn’t life really about light and dark, joy and sorry, peace and chaos, good and bad? I’m learning, relearning actually, that life is much more about accepting the entire range of emotions in life, as not only is it impossible to avoid the dark, it is often in the dark that we are pushed to grown and truly celebrate the light that comes after the darkness.
Found this quote and it touched me today….
“Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don’t resist them; that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like.” Lao Tzu
So in final thought for this moment in time, may you embrace your darkness as much as your light, for sometimes it is in the pure and innocent acceptance that we find the strength to grow.
Peace…..
peaceinthejourney 