Don’t focus on the dark. Learning how to be the light in any given situation. The light will automatically dispel the darkness. How can you be the light? By having a perspective that enlightens the situation.
We don’t need to focus on the dark, we need to focus on learning how to be the light in a situation.
Possibly our very greatest mission in life is glowing in the dark. It’s illuminating darkness. What is darkness? I’m not talking about physical darkness, which really is a representation of darkness that we have in our lives. Darkness is a lack of clarity, it can be a lack of focus, it can be despair, where we just feel like there’s no hope. And darkness is driven by fear. And the key to learning how to glow in the dark and illuminating the darkness is by bringing clarity, by knowing what we need to focus on despite the circumstances around us, by eliminating a sense of despair, by knowing that there is something that we can do, by not being in fear of the way things seem to appear to be but by overriding that and moving forward, we are glowing in the dark.
And the way to do that is not by focusing on the darkness but by focusing on being a light. We don’t need to focus on the dark, we need to focus on learning how to be the light in a situation. When we learn how to glow, we automatically dispel the darkness.
So often we get consumed in the negativity, the darkness itself, when very often we don’t even need to deal with the darkness, we just need to shed the light. We need to be that glowing element in the darkness which suddenly dispels the darkness.
And here is a very simple way to look at darkness and light and learning how we can be the one who is glowing in the darkness. There is always a situation. And when we let the situation define our perception of what is going on, we are in a state of darkness. Because the situation is a structure, a set of facts. That’s all it is. However, when we let that situation define what we perceive is going on, which means that the external, the outside elements that we see are our depth of understanding of what’s going on, which is a very shallow way of understanding what’s going on, we stay in a state of darkness. So if things look bleak, well, then, our perception is that they are bleak. If things look hopeless, then our perception will be that they are hopeless. If right now I don’t know how to fix this situation, then I just see it as a hopeless situation.
However, when we bring a perception to the situation, that means we see a situation and we say, okay, here is the situation, what is really happening over here? I know there’s more to this than what I see. And we have a perspective that we live with, an approach to the way we look at things so that when a situation happens, we bring a perception to the situation instead of the situation defining our perception, then we are actually glowing in the dark. Because our perception, especially when we have healthy perception, then our perception actually illuminates the darkness. Because the situation is external, a perception is internal. And that’s the reason why we must begin within. Because beginning within is beginning with our perception and not beginning with the situation. We don’t let the situation define our perception, we ensure that our perception defines the situation.
So, for example, if my spouse insults me, the situation is I was insulted. The perception should be, why would my spouse, who I know loves me, insult me? Something must be going on. It could be something that I did, it could be something else going on, you know, in their day that caused them to do this. Whatever it may be. But we at least have the insight, the perception to understand that there’s more to this insult than just me. Because when we only see it as what it appears to be on the outside, when we only see the situation itself, then we become Mr. Defensive and we just start defending ourselves, how dare you say that to me. But, actually, when we understand that there’s some deep hurt going on within them and we address that hurt instead of addressing just the words that we heard, then we actually undermine, in a positive sense, the entire cause of the insult. That is the fascinating thing about the fact that sometimes a hug resolves an insult that you give me, by me hugging you. And you say, well, you insulted me, you should be hugging me. But, actually, if I look at a situation with perception, then, no. I am going to hug you because I realize something else is going on.
If someone comes to me and asks me for advice on a dilemma, if I only hear the dilemma itself, I will not give them any significant advice. But if I can hear more than the dilemma, I can perceive ‑‑ and perhaps sometimes that comes through asking wise questions, to get more information as to what’s behind the scenes, what’s going on behind what you just shared with me, then when we get to that we are getting to perception, we’re not only dealing with a situation, and then we give them advice that they need to hear.
And this is the profound beauty of spirituality and developing a spiritual perspective. As human beings we are entrenched in physical awareness and it requires enormous effort, the same type of effort as fighting against gravity, to go against the natural direction of things and to learn to see everything that happens in our lives with much more insight, to understand that there is an emotional element to what just happened, that there is a psychological element to what just happened, that there is a spiritual element to what just happened. It isn’t single dimensional, this is what happened and that is what it is. That’s an oversimplification which denies us the ability to perceive a situation. But when we take the time to develop ‑‑ and this takes many years and I would say actually a lifetime because it never ends. When we develop a deeper and deeper spiritual perspective so we see the spirit, the intangible of what we just saw happen or what we just experienced or what someone just said to us, whatever it may be, when we have that spirit, when we have the soul of the body, the soul of the matter, then we are perceiving the situation. And when we perceive a situation, we illuminate it. And that is how we glow in the dark. Not by letting the situation immediately happen with an immediate reaction that we have because we know it happened because we saw it happen, but by stopping and saying, I need to perceive what just happened. And in that pause so much can be conquered. And so much can only be conquered if we are developing and as we perceive through life a spiritual perspective so then in the pause, we can get in touch with the spiritual perspective and not get lost in the situation.
And so I want to leave you with taking on your mission and my mission because it’s every one of our missions to be a person who glows in the dark. And one thing I can tell you, if you learn to glow in the dark, the more you do the more people gravitate to you because everyone is looking for a little bit of light.