Where is true darkness? Where eyes don’t see; where eyes cannot see. The darkness is always within. It is inside. The place where we find what is real and what is true.
The darkness is where we see everything we are not, and everything we are. It is where there is nothing else but the truth. What this darkness is for is to see who you truly are. This is to see the pain you endure; this is to see the pain you’ve caused; this is to see the Love you’ve received; and, this is to see the Love you’ve given.
This is to see everything that is real.
And, while our being has the ability to experience the gravity of pain, our being, too, has the ability to experience the weightlessness of Love. What’s real in your heart has nothing to with your gender, age, race, religion, wealth, status or philosophy. There is no space for belief or doubt in the realm of what is only true.
We don’t make space in the darkness because both the pain and the Love that live there can be daunting; overwhelming. It can often be more than we can comprehend or make sense of; more than we can understand or explain. And, at times, pain and Love will walk hand in hand.
There is no prerequisite in having to experience one for there also to be the experience to know the other. I would argue that the degree of pain that a person has truly sat with, has truly allowed to become felt within – not on the level of anger, or blame, or victimization, but to have truly etched a moment in time of the soul, only enables the degree to which the heart is able to be open.
We can live in the darkness; it can easily consume whatever is in its path. But, there is a way to be in the darkness, to walk through it, and to walk with it, along the path.
It’s not a matter of argument in saying that because there exists “this” and so must too its opposite. It’s not a matter of argument that because there is the dark, then so must there be the light. No. It is saying that by really knowing the darkness, by really feeling that hurt, we open up our heart. The Love we’re capable of comes from many places. From joy, happiness, kindness, peace, connection, empathy, compassion, patience and, too, hurt, dishonesty, mistrust, neglect, defeat and failure.
Why else would there ever be the opportunity to experience what hurts us? It’s purpose is not to put fault or for retribution; not to blame or persecute; not to be marred or to be forever suffocated. It is, though, to be wounded; to be opened up; to feel what human emotion is capable of – its power, its strength and its weakness.
I’m not certain if I can say that a person doesn’t need the depth of pain to feel the height of Love or the height of pain to feel the depth of Love, but they’re both found in the darkness. In the silence. In the truth. In the inside.
While it’s often believed that the darkness is a place where we cannot see, so too can the light be blinding. There is nothing else other than what is real in the heart. And, for that, all that is needed is to be there. With it. Without excuse. Without compromise. Without negotiation. With honesty. With humility. With vulnerability.
Be Love.
