The Wholeness of Light and Dark

By Andrea Avari Stevens, Ph.D. 

After reading an inspiring article about Peter Kater in Science of Mind magazine by Claudia Abbott, I wanted to share some of his thoughts on creativity. Peter has been nominated for 5 Grammy Awards, written musical scores for a number of documentaries, and his Healing Series of music used in the healing and therapeutic arts.  

No stranger to life’s ups and downs, Peter Kater was raised by a single mother who died when he was just eighteen creating an early life of poverty and hunger.  Being aware of the interplay of the light and dark in our creative lives, Kater states “….so often we are light chasers, so concerned with creating our lives and moving into light, that we often overlook the importance of the dark.  What we don’t know and cannot see becomes disturbing.  But it is so obvious to biologists and physicists that the darkness is essential.  Light and dark can’t exist without each other.  We have to have both to create.  We have to learn how to integrate darkness and be curious about what is hidden inside.  When we imagine a world that works for everyone, we need to explore the pain and integrate it.  You cannot sustain a light, bright experience 24/7.   Darkness becomes dysfunctional only when it is denied.  Looking at our pain, understanding the shadow, integrates the darkness into wholeness.  We have to see the value of all life’s experiences.  We have emotions for a reason.”  

When I was teaching creative thinking at an art college, a few students would be concerned that if their depressive perspective on life were taken away, they would be unable to create.  These students were very protective of their anxiety and depression as an integral part of their art.  For some, the more positive aspects of life did not generate the depth of emotion that they wanted to touch in their process.  Remembering the wholeness of the experiences of our lives means we appreciate both the light and the dark.  I think Kater’s words might help bring a balance to the fear of those students who so embraced the dark. 

 

Andrea is a spiritual coach focusing on the process of awakening.  She will be offering Mindfulness Teleclasses through her website at andreaavari.com.  She is the author of A Hit of Heaven: a soul’s journey through illusion.  

How do you manifest your creative vision?

Are you having one of those days when you feel like you are spinning your wheels? Maybe you have a lot of ideas floating through your head but somehow they don't manifest into actual substance. Here is an interesting exercise in strengthening your intention to create your purpose that is summarized from an article by Robert Gass in Utne magazine, Jan-Feb 2006.

1. Write a short statement that is presented in the positive nature of what describes your personal vision, what is important to you, what you truly want for yourself. Practice makes it better when working with refining the statement. The words need to drop from your head into your heart so that you can feel the resonance. Of the few choices Gass suggested, I chose "In everthing I do, I am guided by love." That is the vision I want to live.

2. This second statement required patience and practice as I tend to rush into things and forget to center. After taking several deep, relaxing breaths, say your phrase quietly or out-loud at least three times. Take a few moments and really feel this relaxing energy moving through your body. Slow your roll and just allow the energy to vibrate through all your cells. Gass says to "remember what is most important to you, why you do what you do." Just stay with that reflection as the words settle into you.

3. Now you are ready to translate the feeling of your vision and deeper purpose into a specific action you want to take. Perhaps you are considering a significant communication with a face-to-face meeting with another or others, an important phone call, a writing that you considerable valuable to your process. Taking the action step consciously. Your relaxed body and focused heart and mind are accompanying you in moving forward.

4. Gass suggests journaling daily about how this practice is affecting how you experience your day. Thoughts and feelings which might lurk beneath the surface of consciousness, may appear on your page of writing and assist you in growing from the daily practice.

5. As with any practice, we tend to fall asleep at times. Gass reiterates the importance of not criticizing yourself or allowing analysis of your lack of focus to become a distraction. Acknowledge and release. Surround yourself with compassion and return to your practice with a relaxed breath and a re-envisioning of what is most important to your purpose.

This process can be a simple loving practice and gift to ourselves in the present moment that empowers us to live our creative purpose at a deeper level.

Look in the Mirror: Your Teacher Awaits You

It is time to stop looking for others to guide us to inner peace. It is time to look in the mirror and see our teacher. It is us; it has always been us.

We have been looking for signposts to guide our way and somehow we tend to get caught up in another’s story and their interpretations. The bookcases full of books we all have may have been helpful and uplifting in some cases but after awhile we realize in different ways and in different words, they all say the same thing: inner peace is within us.

There are self-proclaimed gurus and spiritual teachers everywhere and a new product to buy to help us find enlightenment at every turn. They all hold the hope that we can make it; we can get where “they” are. There is no ‘where’. We are the ones we are seeking.

It sounds so simple as we put down the books and discuss it with our friends, but then life happens and we are challenged to respond in non-attachment and allowance rather than falling back into the same old thinking and reacting patterns of lower vibrations. How do we actually create and sustain the process within ourselves?

Look in the mirror. There is the person who knows, who contains the essence of inner knowing and always has. This person knows by an inner resonance. There is a felt sense of knowing what is true in the heart and the body. When this person is quiet and calm, the inner voice can be heard whispering the way. This person is each one of us.

A life has been lived by each of us and continues to evolve from fear to love if we make a higher vibrational choice in every moment. Our entire life is a meditation. Each one of our lives is continually pointing to that which yearns to be gathered into love. Sometimes we are embarrassed by choices we have made in our lives but these points of shame are the very points of healing for us, if we are willing to hold them in the transforming light of acceptance.

Sometimes we may feel victimized by relationships or events in our lives. In order to be a victim there must be a persecutor for us to blame for our troubles. And then we hope for a rescuer to ease our pain. That ‘saving grace’ may come in the soothing form of another person, approval, chocolate, sex, TV, drinking, something to smoke, shopping, anything that suppresses the painful feelings for a while.

If we can see the distressing event as a gift for our growth, a doorway of opportunity to learn how to love ourselves more deeply, then we create our own process of healing. We can learn to observe the distress within a state of mindfulness, bringing our full attention to it. We learn to hold the circumstance with compassionate awareness as it dissolves. By allowing the highest vibration of compassion, we transmute the fearful thoughts into light. We take responsibility for our lives rather than turning our attention outward to temporary external solutions.

The life that has been living in fear keeps knocking on the door of healing which is our heart. Our stories contain every bit of wisdom we need. And then we realize that we are not our stories. We remember that the earth is a classroom for our learning. Our own particular stories were created by our souls to help us transform the places of fear into places of awareness and acceptance. And in that way our human opaqueness becomes translucent and luminous and the world becomes brighter because of each individual process of courage to open to what is.

It is our job to hold those points of blocked light in an embrace of compassionate awareness. We know those areas of resistance better than anyone else. The old proverb says when the student is ready, the teacher will appear. So often we thought it meant someone else was coming to help us find the way. We are the way.

The signposts on our path are the circumstances and relationships in our life. We become our own best friend who will never leave us as we continue to act out of that place of self-compassion. We are not our life stories. Our lives are not something that happens to us or is done to us. Our lives are our most profoundly creative meditation.

Copyright 2008