I am wary of people who claim to be lightworkers, working only with the light. As a Reiki teacher with nearly twenty years experience I can say with a great deal of confidence the dark has taught me far more the light ever has. We have been conditioned to fear the dark, to avoid it at all costs which means we have no personal experience of its true nature and have to rely on other people’s opinions. When we look to others to guide us we put our trust in their counsel, but there is a very fine line between guidance and control. One looks to educate while the other seeks to indoctrinate. One desires only to free the mind, while the other needs to control our thoughts and ultimately the path we take.
The dark gets a bad press and the majority of it is caused through ignorance and fear, which is one of the best forms of manipulation and control. What we fear or don’t understand we tend to avoid or destroy, but either way the outcome is the same, we remain trapped by ignorance, lacking knowledge and understanding of anything we perceive as different or threatening. Our comfort zone takes many forms; from the battlements of the castle keep, to racism and bigotry, but regardless of the form it takes ignorance and fear is the mortar that holds it together.
We have been conditioned to imagine darkness as a spectre of evil, the stereotypical dark destroyer, the enemy of the good guy who always wears white. While this may bring comfort to some, the reality is far more complex and confusing. The good guys are no longer identified by the colours they wear, or the banner they salute. The black and white scale used to help us choose sides is no longer clearly defined, it has become a sliding scale of grey more in keeping with expediency than a naive ideal of right and wrong.
Spirituality and faith offer no cast iron guarantees as to the right path. With over five thousand Gods available worldwide to choose from, it’s literally about paying your money and making your choice as to which belief system you choose to follow. When religion denounces money as the root of all evil, I find it interesting that so many of its branches have a joining fee, and weekly subscriptions in the form of donations. Those who have given themselves the authority to speak on behalf of their chosen deity usually do so in a way that ensures they are exempt from the hardships, trials and tribulations visited on lesser mortals as a form of penance, punishment or adoration. I find it strange that behaviour we rightly find intolerable and totally unacceptable in an enlightened society suddenly becomes praise worthy when attributed to the actions of a God. Maybe our salvation lies not in the hands of unseen Gods but our own. It’s a radical idea I know, but one worth considering. How about if we get all of our Gods to sit down around a celestial table and start talking to each other to sort out their imaginary differences, and we stop killing each other and do our best to get along.
Image by webandi
If we take religion and politics and make them sit in the corner out of the way so they can’t do any more damage, we are left with science and spiritual teachings that have been working together trying to sort things out for many years. Initially they were using different languages to discuss their own area of expertise, but with the advent of quantum physics and quantum entanglement they have found common ground and a language that speaks to them in a way both are able to understand. Science provides the how it works and the wisdom of old explains how and why it should be used for the benefit of mankind and not for just a select few.
The ancient Chinese symbol of Yin and Yang provides an idea example of balance and harmony, the bringing together of apparent opposites. This symbol encompasses the duality of light and dark, the black and white of balance and harmony. If we only had the light to work with this symbol would be monochrome, but it’s not for a very specific reason. The Yin and Yang is a pictorial expression of a universal truth and as we are an expression of that universal energy it encompasses our very existence. No matter how spiritual we strive to be, how enlightened we become we have chosen to learn through a physical experience. Our eyes may be looking towards the heavens, but our feet are fixed securely to the ground. If Yin is our spiritual aspirations, then Yang is the darkness of our physical core, a place that contains all of the lessons we need to learn in order to get acquainted with the stranger that lives our life. The person we need to get to know in order for global and personal healing to take place in the presence of the physicians, Dr’s knowledge and understanding.
The light is symbolic of our comfort zone; it’s safe and secure. It’s also sterile and devoid of new life new ideas, expansion or personal development. Darkness is the place of growth, where the seeds of knowledge and understanding take root, a place of uncertainty and sharp edges that catch us unawares. It’s a place of discomfort that comes from not knowing, but understanding requires us to trust and embrace uncertainty and let go of the reality we once held to be true.
The darkness is a place of study and learning and of personal growth. Fear would have us run from it in the belief that it hides all manner of evils, but the only person we will meet in the darkness is ourselves, and the only demons we will encounter are the ones we have created and carry with us.
Phillip
Article by Phillip Hawkins
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A Reiki practitioner since 1999, Phillip started teaching Reiki in 2000 and using those skills and abilities he has spent the majority of the last seventeen years working with a wide range of social and educational needs including Autism and ADHD. Working with addicts dependent on alcohol and drugs, people whose lives were extremely violent and abusive, and others who had to deal with severe mental health issues. This has enabled him to work extensively in the private sector, schools, colleges, education and care in the community, the prison service and psychiatric units.
In 2016, Phillip decided to semi-retire from full-time employment to concentrate on developing his career as a published author and the setting up of his Reiki personal development programme at the Chilton Community College.
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