These are darkest days of the year...LET YOUR LIGHT SHINE

This is a reprint of a popular article of mine from last year. Hope you enjoy it!

LET YOUR LIGHT SHINE!


At this darkest time of the year, light is what we yearn for most, consciously or unconsciously. That desire seems to be hardwired into us as human beings, which is to say, it is instinctive. Christmas, Chanukah, Kwaanzaa, and other spiritual observances at this time of the year center around the importance of light---the necessity for it. We light candles, burn lamps, light fires, and we feel comforted, and quietly joyful and grateful for the light they offer us.

Light is what we seek, what we ask for, on our paths to higher consciousness—it illuminates our next step, and without it we are lost. In truth, we are looking for, longing for, transformation into the purity of our true nature. How are you inviting light into your life right now? Are you aware of the shared light in you, and in others, which is the only light there is? Or is ego obscuring not only your light, but your awareness of it? And are you looking for it outside of yourself?

The path to come home to your True Self is presents many challenges, and it is only your struggling with and resisting those challenges that causes your suffering. Did you know that? So often, the ego would love to blame other people, circumstances, events for your suffering, but that suffering really comes only with your personal resistance to, and struggle against, ‘what is’. The ego wants to be right, wants to have what it wants, when it wants it, and how it wants it, and does not care one little bit about your tight solar plexus, your aching heart, your tense neck, your sore back, your high blood pressure, your tears, and your ceaseless ruminating. Your ego wants to change reality in order to have its needs met in the only way ego can imagine they WILL be met. This causes all kinds of havoc with your body, mind and heart. Emotional pain is the result of ego interfering, stopping the flow of energy from going where it wants to go, and trying to direct it somewhere else. How crazy is that? You might as well try to direct an avalanche with a snow shovel. Not gonna happen.

A Course In Miracles asks ‘Would you rather be right, or would you rather be happy?’ Your soul waits patiently until you have had enough of suffering, and begin to put two plus two together to equal four. It eventually begins to dawn on you that what happens to you is a small matter compared to what you DO inside yourself with what happens to you. So, let’s say someone is treating you poorly and you don’t like it. Do you stay in denial and hold onto false expectations, or stay angry, blaming, and self-righteous, waiting for that person to change so that you can have a peaceful heart again? Or do you take responsibility for choosing that peaceful heart yourself, and begin to work on changing your thoughts, challenging your beliefs, and shifting your vibration to create not only relief, but ultimately, deeper, genuine inner peace? The only effort truly worth making is the one that focuses on where you actually have the power to change things…within yourself.

I’m not going to tell you that this is easy work. It’s not. Usually, you will be uncovering and challenging both conscious and unconscious beliefs that you have bought into for a long time---and which resist being released and replaced. But it’s a heck of a lot easier than continuing to suffer and banging your head against the wall of ‘others need to change for me to be happy!’ Honestly. The rewards for inquiring into your thoughts, questioning your long-held beliefs, and shifting your energy are nothing short of amazing! You can change the way you FEEL in a heartbeat without anyone else changing a hair on their heads. You can transform the way you experience yourself, life and others. The ego will push against this process again and again and again, ad infinitum. That is the nature of ego….and so what? You will begin to observe this process as you would notice a child having a temper tantrum, ignore it, turning your attention elsewhere until it finally subsides. What else do you have to do? Is there something more important, more pressing than this work of spiritual evolution toward inner peace and genuine happiness?

This path of spiritual awakening requires commitment, persistence, and faith. And you can choose these things for yourself. Then, the minute-to-minute ongoing process of inquiring and shifting and changing simply becomes the way you walk through your life. I am in constant gratitude for my personal make-up which consists of very high levels of sensitivity, empathy, and feeling in general, and a very strong physical and emotional constitution which permits me to go on in the face of deep, sometimes wrenching and agonizing, ego-driven pain, and find my way out of it, again and again and again and again. Some days it feels like an uphill battle, and other days my joy is right there waiting for me to experience it. Either way, I keep on keeping on. Not a chance I will stop. And you can’t go back either—once you know what you know, you can’t ‘unknow’ it, as a good friend of mine says.

So, each time you encounter something that the ego resists and you begin to suffer, you will recognize the workings of your ego-mind sooner, you will be able to observe your thoughts in a more detached manner, and it will become easier for you to return to the path to a more peaceful heart, a lighter spirit. These things are your true nature, so you don’t have to reach far…there they are---living in the center of your own heart.

So rather than making New Years’ resolutions again, just stay on the path you have chosen; and let’s face it-- if you have read this far, then you have already made your choice about a path. Use all the resources and reminders you need every day, to keep your light shining and your footing secure, and every now and then, turn around and look at where you came from, acknowledge and be grateful for the progress you have made, for all the ways you have already evolved. A new way of experiencing life awaits you, and in truth, most of your energetic vibration is already there—and the rest of you is quickly catching up!

© Janice Masters, 2007


Brightest and Best Blessings to you and your loved ones!

Jan Masters
The Everyday Joy Coach