EMBRACING THE DARKNESS

I was on a packed Greyhound bus the other day on a 6 hour journey from Grande Prairie to Edmonton. My heart is always happy when I'm travelling regardless of the conditions. It's always interesting to me to observe human behavior (my own included). I noticed in amongst the complainers (because the bus was an hour late) and just general complaining, there was also sharing and laughter.  That's duality and shows me that life looks different to everyone and how I used to be the complainer myself.  To some, life looks grim and hopeless, and to others, it just is what it is and will be what it will be.

At one point on this journey I pulled my handy dandy little laptop out of my purse and decided to listen to some Spiritual type recordings I'd saved along the way for times like this.  I like to feed my soul with positivity and a higher view of what appears to be happening.  I was guided to listen to an interview with Neale Donald Walsh, the author of Conversations with God.  If you are not familiar with him, his journey has been an interesting one.  He was on top of the world in his younger years, unstoppable in fact.  Or so he thought.  Yet in his later years at one point, he found himself having lost everything.  His job.  His relationships. His home.  He lived on the streets for a year as a result of this experience and this is when he was opened by the darkness that surrounded him at this point on his personal journey, and found the voice of Spirit talking to him.  He named that voice God, and later shared his experience and these conversations with Spirit through a series of books called 'Conversations with God'.

A particular part of this interview stood out to me so I whipped out my little notebook and drew on my old mad steno skills and wrote it down.  Here it is.

"You are (I am) the light.  Good.  Now how would you know you ARE the light if there weren't darkness?  God said I will surround you with darkness.  Raise not your fist to heaven and curse the darkness not, but USE the darkness so you may know who you really are.  BE a light unto the darkness so that all those who see YOU might know who YOU really are and by the light of your example, who THEY really are as well."

It reminded me of how many times I shook my fist at life and how jaded I was most of my life being angry at Creator by refusing to believe he even existed!  Even when I found my spiritual path and belief in a higher power and purpose, when I found myself in places of struggle, I did raise my fist and curse the darkness and God!!  I see clearly now, it was because things weren't going MY way or on MY time schedule!  Yet looking back on all the times of darkness I've experienced, it is crystal clear to me that they were meant for me to use as an opportunity to grow and find myself.  To become stronger.  To question why I was here on this Earth.  

The other snippet of the interview that stood out to me was this: "If you judge it (the darkness and struggle), resist it, make it wrong, it will become (in your imagination) virtually insurmountable.  Only by embracing and accepting it, by actually BLESSING it, is to learn who you really are".  

To surrender our expectations of how life 'should' be according to us, is to free ourselves from alot of pain.  We don't know all of the answers and we won't see the reasons for many things here on Earth until our soul leaves our bodies to go home.  Trusting that our souls have chosen this experience here and now for a reason is empowering. 

Today I am most grateful for all of my darkness, and as it continues to show up I embrace it, knowing fully that there is a grander plan and I'm not working alone here.  I say to Spirit, I know you can see ten steps ahead of me and trust that all is for a reason I'm not able to see yet and there is some opportunity in this for me (us) to grow stronger.  Show me.  I'm listening.

Peace, Love and Embracing the Darkness

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