Turning on the Lights

Sitting in the dark, figuratively speaking, feels like anxiety, fear, stress, and sorrow, to name a few. It can manifest in either chaos or stoicism. Regardless of how you manifest sitting in the dark, it is always disempowering. It can often lead to more stress, anger, and overwhelm if not complete apathy, self-pity, and resignation.

Sitting in the dark distances us from ourselves because the deeper we fall into it, the harder it is to hear our souls.

Sitting in the dark is not necessarily the enemy though, it can actually be a very useful learning experience, propelling us towards the people we are truly meant to be at great speeds. To take advantage of these moments of pressure, we have to be open to looking at the stressors in our lives square in the face.

Its all about perspective really because stress is unavoidable. It is part of the Grand Design. It would not exist if it could not be of service.

Think about it, if you could do your favorite thing everyday for the rest of eternity, you would eventually get bored and restless. Stress.

Stress and all of the other ‘ugly’ emotions are signals that something needs to change. Think of them as the check engine lights your car. They let us know when we are running on empty, allowing others to cross our boundaries, lacking boundaries, heading in the wrong direction, and when we are stagnant. The last one is the hardest one in my opinion.

It’s generally easy to understand when we lack the respect to set and uphold our own boundaries, or wen we are part taking in activities that are out of alignment. They don’t feel good, and they are generally obvious about it.

Stagnation is a little bit more subtle, at first at least. We think we are just a little bored or tired, but life is generally good. It might even be great on paper, but something is missing.

When we stop learning, we stop growing; when we stop growing, we stop living.

Let that sink in.

Time, while an illusion constructed to ground life in this plane, is forever moving forward at a steady pace. Eventually we grow old and transition from this human life, so why would we want to waste that time by staying in the same space? A space that is no longer in alignment? And you know maybe it never was in alignment, but we stay in these spaces because we think its what we are supposed to do.

So what is the solution? Turn on the lights.

We have to get clear on which signal light is actually flashing. What message are we trying to send ourselves about where we are in life? This is often times easier said than done because it also means we have to take responsibility for our part in creating and maintaining the situations causing us pain, which usually feels more painful.

All problems/stressors are both practical and spiritual. Problems/issues in the practical world are reflections of the problems we have in our inner/spiritual worlds and our own spirit communicates them to us through emotion.

So to solve our problems and dissipate stress we must take a holistic approach.

Step 1: Identify the emotions you are feeling.

We gotta get clear on what kind of dark room we are sitting in to figure out where the light switch is.

Step 2: Identify the light switch

Follow your emotions to the situations triggering them. This is usually not hard, though often times our instinct is to pull the wool over our own eyes.

You can approach this from various different angles but my favorite is automatic writing.

I usually choose an indica dominant strain to smoke before I start writing as it helps cut through some of the white noise that can come up. Once I have chosen my strain I pray over it. I pray to my Soul, asking that it come through to me through the automatic writing and I have not been disappointed yet. Your Soul is your truest ride or die best friend, build that relationship.

After smoking, I take three deep breathes to center myself in the moment and I start by writing down my sitting in a dark room feelings and let my Soul take it from there. If you feel like you are making it up or if nothing comes up, keep writing the feelings and back tracking. Channeling your own Soul doesn’t feel like an entity outside yourself giving you information, because its not. If your write something its for a reason. Trust the process, don’t judge what come out. Just allow it all to come the the surface.

When you identify the situations you keep in the dark, turn on the switch. Acknowledge them. Write them down.

Step 3: Turn the lights on

Once you have identified the situations or the dark room and you have turned on the lights, you need to examine what is in the room. Look at the situation in its entirety for all that it is. Be very honest with yourself about the situation and about your own ability to go to a different room. Certain situations are easier and faster to fix than others. If you don’t get realistic about the logistics of the room and either rearranging the room or getting out of the room a ll together, you won’t change your situation.

Sometimes we pull the wool over our own eyes because we find ourselves in predicaments we truly are ignorant to. Don’t be afraid to ask for help with problems you don’t know how to solve. If a career change is in order but you don’t know what you want to do or how to make your resume stand out, find help from someone. There are a ton of articles with free information out there and if money is not a problem there are coaches for pretty much everything and most of them offer remote coaching thanks to the internet.

Being honest about your situation and creating a realistic plan for how you can start to tackle the situation is turning on the lights, but it doesn’t mean you get out of the room.

Step 4: Change the Scenery

Sometimes you will find that you want to high tail it outta there and others, the room you’re in just needs some redecorating, either way you have to do the actual work to change your scenery. You will also have to be the one to not go back to the old scenery. This is where your Soul comes back into the picture.

Our inner and outer worlds are connected, interwoven, two sides of the same coin. It is not enough to live in one of them as they exist in the same space, we just don’t often perceive it. So don’t forget to change your inner scenery too.

I like to follow up with a Ring of Inclusion meditation. This is a meditation I started doing after reading a channeling of The Tablets of Light by Danielle Hoffman. Simply cross your legs, place your hands palms up on your knees, and close your eyes. Take a few deep breathes to center yourself in the present moment and then envision a ring of moving light, bright white, circling around your body. It may help to move your torso in clockwise circles. Allow the lights to be turned on energetically in this space. Let go of the exaggerate worse case scenario metal traps you walk into and give that nervous energy back to the light. Let it be transmuted. Stay here as long as it takes to feel the calm. Then breathe in the clarity and open your eyes.

You have to keep doing the work to change your scenery to maintain the calm though. If the anxiety creeps back in and your don’t have time to meditate, shake it out. Shaking is another really great practice to clear out your energetic spider webs in the attic so to speak. Put on whatever music feels right and just shake it out. Let the emotions flow through and out of you.

But again, you gotta keep doing the work to change your scenery for the peace to last.