Fresh Thinking, Inspiration, and Vision on the Process of Spiritual Transformation
At the beginning of the creative process, darkness is on the face of the deep. And because every moment is a beginning, we each bring our own share of darkness to our experience now. Our darkness is the unformed and the unknown. It is the unshaped depth of consciousness that powers our emotions, and it is the unformed potential of life.
How we hold that darkness in our life is a critical factor. We can believe it shouldn’t be there, that it’s something to be dreaded, something to be covered over and avoided. Or we can learn to welcome it. We can find that our darkness contains a reservoir of potential experience.
The human world has obscured darkness. The use of artificial illumination has chased away the darkness of night. There are many things that obscure the darkness of the deep that are present in each of us—television, the Internet and obsessive work, to name a few. How can there be magic in our lives if we don’t make friends with our darkness?
Darkness is a reservoir. When you welcome your own darkness, you embrace a great pool of substance. And when the focus of awareness touches that pool, the creative vibration moving through thought and feeling activates it. We become powerful in our life when we not only welcome the darkness but when we know what to do to let something happen in that darkness, when we let the reality of our own spirit engage the darkness. Only then can something new happen.
All too often, the human experience is utterly too predictable. That’s what happens when a person is out of touch with their own darkness and tries to create a life in the image of what is already in form around them—in the image of other people, in the image of what their family, friends or community does. Or in the image presented by mass media. A person can only live their own original life when it is created out of the darkness.
Recently, as I said good-bye to Ruth Buckingham and Phil Richardson in the Cape Town airport, we reflected on the time we had spent together. Over a period of close to two months we held thirteen events together in Colorado, in England and in South Africa. Through that time we met the darkness of the unknown. It was unknown how each event would turn out. And what was present in the depth of each person who came was unknown. There is unpredictability in the darkness. We found our way of welcoming that and letting creative vibration move. We found that the darkness is not just a blank. It is a rich depth of unformed possibility, waiting for the activation of consciousness. Often we would be asking ourselves and others, what is possible here in this time? What is ripe to occur? We found that, in each case, something wonderful did occur—for us and for the other people who attended these events.
But there is something else that we found, which people don’t usually think about as they embark on a creative process. If a person wants to experience the pleasure and fulfillment of creation, then old structures that are constraining them have to be left behind. Life doesn’t continue to build structure on structure, thing upon thing that keeps piling up, with nothing changing or breaking down.
Forms of life are born and they pass away. They’re not here forever. What was a form from the past becomes raw material for what’s next. Through it all, life is revealed. But where people become attached to a form out of the past, it is a difficult process when it is time for the form to pass away. That form may be a wonderful experience that the person has had. It could be a very hurtful thing out of the past. As it’s said, the person may think that the devil they know is better than the devil that they don’t know, so they may hold on to the familiar, even if it is painful.
Usually when we begin something creative, we’re not thinking about what will break. But in the world the way it is, something has to break if pleasure and fulfillment is to come. It is easier when a person participates in the process consciously and deliberately. But, for the most part, that’s not how human beings are doing it on Planet Earth. They’re trying to preserve things that are well past their sell-by date. And so something’s got to break.
The managed human life has to break open. Sometimes people manage their life very carefully so that they don’t have to feel the darkness on the face of their deep. You probably don’t want to be the one who tells someone that what they are holding on to is about to break. For most of us, that’s the last thing we want to do. But what I’ve found is that I can’t keep it from happening for people. Life is on the move, and if old experiences are being clung to, something’s got to break.
The question becomes, where is the person in the midst of that experience? Are they attached to what is breaking? That’s hard. When something is breaking in our own life, we have a chance to see that the reality of who we are transcends what is breaking. It doesn’t seem like that is the case at first. It’s so easy to become identified with the forms that are in our life. But we have the opportunity to find out that the reality of who we are is eternal being; that we are breaking open, not breaking down. And in that is power. As we come to that experience ourselves, we can assist others to see what is breaking open as the old is breaking down.
Through the thirteen events that Ruth, Phil and I held, we witnessed people breaking open. We witnessed a tremendous surge of energy moving through them as what was stirring in their awareness activated the deep. As the ancient story of Creation in Genesis indicates, there is light when divine presence moves through consciousness and activates the deep. The emerging forms in consciousness are illuminated.
There is authentic experience when this occurs. There is so much of human experience that is trapped in a mental process that has lost track of what is really essential in life—some kind of chatty opinion about what life is about, a report on what the human intellect thinks about things, while being out of touch with original, authentic experience.
On that basis, the human mind can do a lot of damage to the individual and their world. When people fall out of bed with their own original experience and fall victim to the chattiness of their own mind, they lose touch with the generating engine of their own life. They lose touch with their own spirit. Our spirit lives in relationship to our darkness. Our own spirit is at home in our darkness—not, first of all, with what we believe or think, but with the deep of who we are. That’s where life starts. That is where the creative process starts. All kinds of wonderful things can come after that. And when we are at home in the darkness, the mind can think all kinds of wonderful thoughts that are born out of that core experience. Detached from core experience, the mind has nothing to say worth listening to.
One of the favorite reports of the mind is, “Let me tell you what’s wrong with you.” That generous offer is happening inside most people all the time. Their mind is telling them, “Let me tell you what’s wrong with you.” And for many people, it just doesn’t stop. “Let me tell you what’s wrong with you.” And if somebody is saying that to themselves, they are usually very willing to say it to you: “Let me tell you what’s wrong with you.” That kind of criticism can fly around a group of people, and it can apply to the group as a whole: “Let me tell you what’s wrong with you as a group.” I say that a mental process that has left its own core experience has nothing to say on that topic that I care about. Where there is original experience, then it is useful to be self-aware and realize what might be going wrong. Detached from original experience, how would you know?
I am present in the deep. Certainly, if I am present I am not afraid of deep waters, yours or mine. There need to be people on earth today who are not afraid of the deep and who know what to do with it. Being present, we can hold what is breaking and cracking open in a person so that they can come to know their deep and all the darkness that is there, and know that it is good. Light can be shone on what is appearing in the creative process.
Put in other terms, we’re talking about Mother God. Mother God is the depth of the substance of the deep. No one knows enlightenment, no one brings light to the world, without welcoming the Mother in their experience. It is the Father principle, the activating vibration working through consciousness, that has union with the Mother. It is that union that brings light.