The election shouldn’t have come as a surprise, even though it stunned many of us who had hoped it was time to move forward together. It was bound to be this way. We the People are split, fractured to the soul, living in two realities.
In reality, it is we—all people—who are split.
For millennia, we’ve been schooled in the clear distinction of light and dark, good and evil, inner and outer, black and white. One is not confused with the other. We grew up in the shadow of good guys vs bad guys—the Axis of Evil, the Cold War, Cowboys and Indians, Superheros and Villains—trusting that the Force was with Us. Many of us are immensely comforted by the promise that the light shines in the darkness and the darkness does not overcome it, as the prologue to the Gospel of John so eloquently phrases it in our English translations.
But what if this very framework is inherently wrong? Or, at very least, incomplete?
Our translations come to us primarily through Greek texts, steeped in the heavily Platonic influenced Greco-Roman worldview. Jesus and his followers, by contrast, spoke in Aramaic, a Semitic language closely related to Hebrew and Arabic, with a rich and nuanced worldview. They would have found this dualistic phrasing utterly unfamiliar.
Semitic languages, such as Hebrew and Aramaic, contain all apparent opposites within the whole. Within every aspect of day, there is an aspect of night. Just as in every aspect of night, there is an aspect of day. So, too, with inner and outer, masculine and feminine. Light without shadows is harsh and unforgiving. Darkness without relief is equally so. Rather than pitting darkness and light against each other, the intent is more likely:
I cannot help but wonder, how might our world be different if we had inherited this as our primary perspective? As long as we persist in seeing through the good/bad lens, we remain trapped in an endless, vicious cycle, manipulated into fighting each other for power, wealth and control by those who already have them.
Mystics, artists and our Indigenous siblings point to a far more complex and beautiful reality. Science, at both the macro and microcosmic levels, daily challenges our Newtonian mindset with breathtaking mysteries such as quantum entanglement, black holes and wave-particle duality.
None of us are wholly one extreme or the other. We are always an interplay of both. For too long, we’ve been unable to hold the nuance within nor behold it in the other. We’ve projected our fears of the light as shadows on those who are themselves a harmony of light and dark. When we choose to embrace this mystery, we become complete human beings.
In the midst of the chaos swirling on the larger national and world stages, I know that I must first ground myself in Love—embracing the light and the dark, the radiance and the shadows, within me—or I risk acting out of this ancient split, perpetuating the systemic problems I yearn to heal.
By honoring my own wholeness, and the wholeness within those I love, I begin to shift this pattern. So that I may stand up to power from the place of love not hate, of integration not projection, wisdom not reaction. As passionate as I am about what I believe to be loving, I must remember I’m not completely right nor is the other completely wrong.
Committing to this contemplative path is both powerful and challening. Ian and I continue to expand and explore the harmony of light and dark through the lens of love and density in our December Opening the Aperture teaching video, which will be coming out in the near future.
Finally, if you’ve ever listened to people who have gone through near death experiences, they often speak of life-changing encounters with light and love on the other side. For those interested, I’ve included below a powerful 20 minute video by a woman who experienced this truth. She shares with us why it matters for our own life as we walk our walk through space and time. I highly commend it.