By: Matthew Schonbrun, co-author of “Navigating the Storm: 7 Truths to Mastering Our Lives.”
All of us are engaged in the process of remembering and awakening to our true essences. Each of us gets to decide how quickly or slowly would like this process of evolution to take. We do so by either paying attention to the guideposts that pop into our lives or choosing to ignore the pre-incarnational road maps we have created for ourselves.
Once awake, many of us start to examine our lives and decide to make changes based on how we would like our lives to look and in what manner that change can most easily occur. For those who are emotionally aware and introspective— who tend to look, listen, or feel within for guidance— It is likely that when evaluating the range of emotions, feelings, and expressions of energy available, we will choose a direction that leans toward the light.
This is natural because, at our core, everyone and everything in creation contains that same living embodiment of loving light within. That is why so many spiritual seekers have adopted the term “lightworker” as their statement of purpose, intent, and identification. But the conscious choice to identify with light over shadow may unintentionally perpetuate the consciousness of duality and could be a trap by prolonging the dichotomy and polarity that exists in this holographic, illusory reality construct.
Of Both Light and Dark
Imagine a 1D line with opposite qualities stationed at the ends of each pole of the line, and find yourself stationed at either extreme. You are not standing in the middle of that line. For instance, if you imagine a line with light at one pole and shadow at the opposite pole, then neither light or shadow is resting at the midpoint. Balance exists only at the center-point of the poles, and balance in this example would consist of equal parts light and shadow, both vibrating in dynamic tension as each force continually moves from pole to pole. This means that the truly balanced person contains within both aspects of light and shadow.
By moving away from the midpoint and choosing a side, whether it is light or shadow, you are moving away from balance. There is a familiar saying that goes, “What you resist, persists” (C.G.Jung). Resisting or fighting against the “other“ is simply only attracting the presence of that “other“ so that we may get the opportunity to look at this issue and examine our attitudes and feelings about it.
Resisting something out of fear simply mires us more in the illusion because the act of resisting blocks us from seeing the situation as a catalyst for growth and change. Choosing light and rejecting shadow is akin to our rejecting a part of ourselves by failing to see that we are all comprised of both light and shadow.
If all is truly one and our true state of consciousness is unity, then we must be intellectually honest and allow ourselves the freedom to admit that unity and oneness encompass All There Is, including every thought, deed, and intention, as well as every idea of light and shadow, good and evil, love and fear, and so forth. If you can think anything, then that thought is alive, as it springs forth from the hologram and is energized with the ability to think within itself, regardless of whether or not that that becomes physically manifest.
Shadow is simply the hidden counterpart of light. Choosing one and rejecting the other, no matter how evil, negative, or just plain wrong the other is, is simply engaging in the process of judgment. Once we start a judge, we find ourselves immediately in a state of separation and validate because we are failing to recognize that the “other“ is also us, and this thought further distances us from the midpoint of balance.
By remaining in the center, we can observe all sides and choose to see and feel compassion, love, and perfection in every moment, knowing that we are comprised of everything because we are everything and everything is us. Remembering this, we then might choose how we think and act in expressing our realities in the most nonjudgmental way, a way that further attracts balance back to us by no longer seeing any separation between ourselves and “other“ selves.
By surrendering the desire to pick a side and by having faith and trust that all that happens is appropriate, we allowed all opposing forces to work harmoniously. We are then able to merge external, intentional action with the inner quality of surrender, thereby creating balance.