Dear friends, I am Jeshua, an old friend who loves to share this afternoon with you, simply being together in the energy of love and unity. This is something you desire so much, because quite often you feel adrift and lost in life on Earth. I am here to remind you of the truth that lives within you, in your soul. It is not observable with the naked eye, and you often lose touch with that truth when you are busy and involved in your many activities, duties and responsibilities.
Please take a moment to become still and let all those external pressures fall away. Sense the silence deep within you. The silence in your heart is not a void, but a full presence that can only be sensed if you take a step back from the hustle and bustle of everyday life. We are here today to take that step back in order for you to remember who you are, and to revitalize yourself with the fullness of silence in your heart. This enables you to begin to live again, but now with more ease and joy.
Life seems to be a battle at times, but that is not how it is meant to be. You are here essentially to experience yourself, to remember your strength and your beauty as radiant angels of light, and to share that light with others. By doing that you will feel at home on Earth. Life will become simple again, easy and joyful.
So go within, together with me, and remember the source from which you came: the imperishable, eternal Light that is ever moving and changing, taking new forms, and still always undivided and One. You are part of that stream, and in fact, nothing can happen to you. You are safe and whole even now, dwelling in your earthly body. You are safe even in this world, which seems to be dominated by struggle and conflict.
Today we talk about Light and darkness, and about bringing Light into darkness. And what is darkness? It is something that evokes resistance in you as a human being. No one wants to experience darkness; no one wants to suffer pain, sadness, or fear. Yet it is part of our life. So why is that darkness there?
People have asked this question for centuries. Now, to start with, much depends on how you ask the question. Do you ask the question from an attitude of openness: “Why is there darkness, why is this happening to me, what should I do with it?” Or do you pose the question from fear, anger, and resistance: “Why on earth is that darkness present in my life, and how can I beat or avoid it?” Feel the despair and the resistance the latter question expresses, and recognize those emotions within yourself, because it such a human reaction to resist what feels dark, unwholesome, or difficult.
The deepest challenge to you as a human being is to say “yes” to situations that you initially refuse to accept; to say “yes” to what you want to avoid at all costs. It requires great inner strength to say “yes” to what comes in your life in the form of darkness. If you can not find that strength, which is understandable, and you say “no,” you harden in opposition to that which happens, and the darkness becomes deeper and the despair increases.
There are actually two kinds of darkness in life. The first darkness is something external that happens to you on your path in life. It can be a divorce from someone you love, the loss of a loved one, a disease or an accident, anything that deeply distresses you: a crisis, a major setback. I will call this darkness one.
And then there is your reaction to it, your emotional response. Every human being is inclined to initially resist fate, to rail against the darkness. But if you keep up your resistance and close down and keep saying “no”, by passing judgment on what is happening in your life, then there is an additional layer of darkness, a second kind of darkness. I will call this darkness two. It surrounds darkness one.
Darkness one brings you into a level of intense, deep emotions. Something happens in your life that brings a lot of grief, fear, and pain, and as you experience those emotions, you are very much alive. Life flows through you as a thundering wave. Can you allow this to happen? Deep emotional burdens strike you – they shock you – and then it becomes a question of whether you have the strength to trust that there is something in that experience that will take you somewhere. That you trust that life has meaning, even though we, as human beings, often do not understand the meaning.
To put it in even stronger terms, to accept that your soul may have chosen to have this experience, perhaps to bring something hidden to the surface, to heal something you did not know needed healing. There is then a moment of choice when you are confronted with strong emotions: acceptance and surrender, or resistance and closing off.
It is most human to want to say “no”. I will not say it is wrong, but by doing so, you are putting an extra layer of darkness onto the darkness already present. This layer I will call “darkness two”, a second kind of darkness. This darkness comes from within; it is your reaction to darkness one. If you persist in saying “no”, the flow of your emotions will come to a stop and you will become stuck. “No, I do not want to experience this; I refuse; I cannot accept it”. If you persist, you will be filled with resentment, anger, and bitterness. These sentiments are not emotions really, they are judgments that freeze the natural flow of emotion inside you. Darkness two prevents life from flowing through you; you have put up walls and defenses. In the end, this may attract grave forms of darkness to you, such as deep despair, alienation and depression. When you are in a depression, the flow of life has almost halted. You feel dead inside.
Life is always subject to change. Life inherently holds the possibility for growth and healing, for a new birth, if you trust it at a basic level. But if you persist in saying “no”, you shut out that possibility. You keep insisting that life is not as it should be and as you judge life in this way you disconnect yourself from it. In this way, you reach the deepest darkness that a human being can experience. It is not darkness one (external situations) that brings people to the deepest level of darkness, it is the persistent refusal to accept the emotions arising from darkness one. This is darkness two: an inward hardening, a shutting down of your feeling nature.
How does one bring Light into this kind of darkness? If someone arrives in the first kind of darkness, and becomes very sad, anxious, and distressed, you can still reach them. They are still alive, they are in touch with the emotions running through their body and psyche and they actively seek for the meaning behind what is happening to them. This person is still whole and healthy from a psychological standpoint, even if they face very grave situations. A person dealing with darkness one is in need of comfort and compassion, and they are able to receive and appreciate a loving gesture from another – they are still very much alive.
But someone who persists in their refusal to accept, who keeps saying “no”, such a person closes off from receiving love. They shut down, not only against their inner Light, but also against the Light from outside that wants to come to them through others. That is loneliness, that is being lost – that is hell on Earth. And I tell you that each of you knows this hell from within. Maybe you are not quite aware of it, but for most people, a process of shutting down already started during their childhood.
You know how a child stands spontaneous and uninhibited in the world, and how their emotions flow easily. These emotions often pass quickly through their being, because there are no barriers put up, no closed gates. Generally, life freely flows through a child. There are exceptions, of course, because some children carry burdens from early childhood or past lives, but you get the point I am making. Being a child is to be in a state of relative openness. A child is alive and spontaneous because it can not be otherwise; it has not yet learned to rein in itself the way adults do.
But as you grow up, you start to experience emotions which you don’t know how to deal with. People are trained by society to shy away from difficult emotions, so often the adults around you do not help you understand those emotions and speak about it. Most of you become confused as a child. You start to believe you are strange and different. Maybe as a child you were still full of inspiration, enthusiasm, love, dreams, and those dreams bump against the harshness of reality. Without understanding what is happening, you begin to put up barriers created by the fears and prejudices that exist in your family environment, or later at school and in the people you meet. Doors close, and this often happens subconsciously, but some of you may remember it as an old grief.
See if you are able to find the child within yourself, the symbol of your spontaneity. A child who is outgoing, uninhibited, alive, and someone who says “yes” to what presents itself as experience. Can you see that someone who says “yes” to joy, pleasure, and enjoyment, as well as to grief, fear, and anger? Imagine that this child within wants to come to you. It is still there; space and time are illusions. In the inner reality nothing is ever lost. Your original life stream is preserved, and still wants to join you.
Imagine for a moment that a smiling child is coming to you with an attitude of openness. In your imagination, hear it say: “Do you remember who I am?” Look at that child, and ask what you can do for it. There is a heart-wish the child wants to see fulfilled, something you may have pushed away for a long time. Let the child speak for a moment. The child stands for the “yes” in you, the part of you that wants to live, so let it speak.
A child still possesses trust. As adults, you have absorbed ideas that are full of fear and mistrust, and that feeds the saying “no” to life and contributes to the darkness two in you, the second kind of darkness. Consider if you can now give shape in your imagination to darkness two; that part of you that is opposed to life, which no longer wants to experience pain, and which actually wants to escape this life. Can you feel that element of hardening and contraction within yourself? Can you feel it physically, or perhaps see a color associated with it?
There is a part in you that is very tired and no longer wants to live because it has seen and experienced too much pain and struggle. Feel the weight of that part. Can you say “yes” to it? Do not try to change it immediately; try to understand how that has come about. No one deliberately closes themselves off because of an unwillingness to live. It is an act of desperation; it is the not knowing that there is another way to live that leaves you with that reflex of shutting down, of shrinking back, of saying “no”.
I do not ask you to only say “yes” to darkness one in your life: the difficult events, illness, pain, suffering, or whatever. I ask you to also say “yes” to darkness two, to that within you that has closed itself off from life as a result of painful events; to that which no longer wants to experience life and refuses it. And to reach that part in yourself, you have to be very gentle, because insistence and coercion do not work there.
That is the essence of Light; the Light that can flow into the darkness. This Light can reach every corner because it carries no judgment. It does not say, “Oh, this is bad, we must break down this defense or that blockage, because life must flow again”. It never says that. The Light simply says: “I understand”. The Light says: “It has been so very difficult for you, I can see that. I can see how you have tightened up, how you have closed off yourself, and how that contraction has eventually made you tired and empty.” Light is gentle and fluid. It can penetrate into the deepest pain and suffering, and the most hardened human soul.
I ask you to again open yourself to that Light. If you cannot find that willingness within yourself, if you do not feel the openness to let go of the “no”, then allow that to be as well, because the Light is always there. It is with you even in moments of despair so deep that you feel that there is no more Light within you. It is there during those times, and in those situations, where you have totally lost touch with it and never again expect to see it.
The fact is, the Light is not yours, it belongs to all that is. The entire universe, and all Creation, is Light. Everything is imbued with Light. Know it is there and put your trust in life. As soon as you allow even a small opening for trust and surrender to enter into your life, you are opening the door a crack. You know that even during the darkest night, your soul is always near to you and reaching out to you with Light and consolation. Although that door is open only a tiny crack, the Light will find that opening. You do not have to do anything except allow it to happen. The Light is with you, life is with you. Ultimately, your “no” to life can not maintain itself.
I ask you to surrender to the Light, where Light means saying “yes”, not only to the difficulties in your life, but also to your problem with saying “yes”, the resistance you put up against deep emotions that make you feel naked and vulnerable. Become like a child again. Live! Say “yes” to everything. Envelop yourself with compassion and understanding. In doing this, you bring flow into your life, and you can do it! I see your strength. In each of you is a flame of consciousness, a bright flame of Light. I am here to remind you of it.
Translation by Maria Baes and Frank Tehan
© Pamela Kribbe
www.jeshua.net