Darkness to Light

(4-minute read) – I’ve heard it said, “God is always trying to give good things to us, but our hands are too full to receive them.” Of course these are metaphorical hands representing all our capacities as humans to receive good things from the world around us.

But our metaphorical hands are full of a million and one thoughts, activities and distractions that fill up our day-to-day lives.

Our metaphorical hands are full of things we have to do each day to maintain our lifestyles, to put food on the table for our children and to live up to our responsibilities. They are also full of things to which we are addicted, things which we think we cannot live without.

Our hearts, minds and days are clogged with addiction. From habitual thoughts, to strivings and desires, to excesses of all kinds – things that we think we need. Our addictions fill up the spaces within us, spaces that good things might otherwise fill.

Paradoxically, exactly the things, the relationships, the conceptions that we think we need, are obstructing what we really need.

Tragic

It is the saddest tragedy of our lives that we are so busy, so stimulated, so motivated and so driven. Even when we wake up in the mood to slow down, to stay in bed a bit longer, we proudly pull ourselves together and get going. It’s a pity we don’t like our minds to be vacant, our days to be slow, for we have been misled by our culture to think that this is lazy or even sick or just plain dangerous for our wellbeing.

We may not be addicted to a thing, but to the lifestyle that the thing gives us. We may be trapped in the work we do because we are attached to our lifestyles, or the sense of security or status it brings. Without the work we cannot make the money to do the things we never get to do.

It’s such a pity… because we can only find the fullness of our souls in emptiness – in the vacant spaces of our mind, if only we would let go of all that’s keeping our metaphorical hands full. If only we would release the grip of those metaphorical hands and just let go a little bit.

But how do we see the light?

How do we let go? Life is life and it has to go on. We all have to do, to be busy and to get done all the things that have to be done.

Letting go is scary because it truly changes our perspective. Our lives, our attachments, are all we know, and our lives are all our friends and family know of us. Surely, we think, stopping would be a failure.

We don’t want to start letting go, because we think we may end up with a misconceived nothingness. Our addicted minds tell us we may end up dispossessed, de-motivated, trailing behind our friends, unsuccessful or even depressed.

The emptiness, the nothingness is not good, says the ego, because it is precisely there that the ego comes to die. Our ego is our abiding reality of what it is to be ‘me’, so its death feels like our death – a darkness we cannot endure. The journey to a place where we can open our hands and let go seems impossible.

Burning love

But this seemingly impossible journey continues to beckon us at times in our lives. At these times, we are lured by a positive burning love to change from our mundane lives. This lure of more love, more belonging, more connection is a basic drive of all humans, although it is so veiled that we don’t recognise it for what it is.

Even though we may feel this draw of love from time to time, we resist change and we convince ourselves we can have it in our busy lives. We think we can have it without making any changes – without clearing out the addictions to make space. We want the best of both worlds. So instead of letting go of all that is not love, we try to find a way to the love we want while holding on to our addictions. We try to find the love in our addictions.

Deep down we don’t want the emptiness of stopping our lives. We avoid darkness because we have an egotistical love of our lifestyles as they are. So we carry on in the dim light of our lives. Darkness is severed from its developmental place in the nature of consciousness, and treated as an undesirable end state.

Beautiful darkness

Darkness is part of the journey towards the soul being illuminated by and transformed in Love. We have to pass through the darkness when we leave our lives behind, and then emerge on the other side of the darkness into bright, beautiful light.

The light of a simple life. A slow life that appreciates the free gifts of being alive and conscious. Gifts like a yellow-glowing sunrise or a clumsy hug from a child that’s up too early. Gifts like breath, like warm blankets on sensual thighs, or silence with distant birds joyously living. Blessings like transcending our worries and our self-conscious egos and going to the realm of connectedness beyond.

At their extremes, addictions may be severe. But severe or hardly noticed, they are all ultimately attempts to find some happiness in a world that has us too stuck to let go. There may be this one an alcoholic, that one a sex addict and all reportedly unhappy. The serious addicts are also seeking consoling love, but they are unable to see the reflection of this love in the mirrors of their souls. Instead they seek fulfilment in moments of addiction’s cruel pleasures.

We are all serious addicts.

So we seek ultimate and consoling love outside of our selves instead of exploring the silent depths of our souls, in the darkness and beyond where the source of all love resides

The line between dire sadness and glorious freedom is a fine one. In fact freedom is most glorious in the strange sadness of the emptiness. The sadness comes from relinquishing what is familiar and what gives a certain degree of security – certain coping mechanisms, be they physical or emotional.

From birth we learn to attach as a primary drive for survival. Relinquishing attachments that have become important over a lifetime is frightening and sad. But the path to the freedom of unifying Love must be travelled by letting go – by relinquishing the attachments of old consciousness and by passing through the emptiness to a greater consolation.

The dark night of the soul, on its path lined with potential attachments, must precede the fullness of existence, again and again in developmental cycles.

The state where no attachments compel our behaviour and incarcerate our minds is a prerequisite for the fullest outpouring of unconditional Love.

Get out of the rat race that is your life. Let go. Enjoy the emptiness. Embrace the loss, the nothingness. Be prepared for un-success. And you will journey along slow, peaceful paths to the fullness of your existence.

Follow me on Twitter @MichaelHowardZA for regular updates and join the conversation on Facebook about my articles.