THE DARKNESS AND THE LIGHT

Luke Skywalker: "Is the dark side stronger?"
Yoda: "No, no, no. Quicker, easier, more seductive..."

- Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back

Humans have always thought in terms of abstract and conceptual mind-created opposites. God and the devil, life and death, pleasure and pain, good and evil, yin and yang; my truth versus your truth, my God versus your God, my religion versus your religion, even duality versus nonduality. Some people see life as a never-ending battle between darkness and light. Some hope that the light will win. Some take the side of the darkness.

But is there really a war? Shadows only appear when there's a source of light. Shadows have no existence separate from light, no true power of their own. Shadows cannot truly oppose light, for without light they are nothing at all. They receive all their power from light. They are utterly dependent.

Light never needs to fear the shadows or long for their death or destruction. True light knows no opposite, no opposition, no mortal enemy. We pay so much attention to the darkness, to the 'negative' aspect, to the shadows, to what we see as the "absence of light", not realising that the only reason we can recognise the darkness is because the light is still very much switched on. No light, no darkness.

And we are that light, the timeless light of consciousness itself.

Do not fight the darkness. Use the appearance of darkness to remind you of the ever-present source of light that you are. Don't oppose the shadows you see, but know yourself as that timeless and limitless light of consciousness with ever more conviction and clarity, and you will come to realize that darkness was never 'against' you at all - it was only a reminder to never forget who you are, to wake up from the dream of opposites and end the division in yourself.

The war between darkness and light can never be won, for it never actually began.

So shine on with courage!

Self-care is often a very unbeautiful thing.

It is making a spreadsheet of your debt and enforcing a morning routine and cooking yourself healthy meals and no longer just running from your problems and calling the distraction a solution.

It is often doing the ugliest thing that you have to do, like sweat through another workout or tell a toxic friend you don’t want to see them anymore or get a second job so you can have a savings account or figure out a way to accept yourself so that you’re not constantly exhausted from trying to be everything, all the time and then needing to take deliberate, mandated breaks from living to do basic things like drop some oil into a bath and read Marie Claire and turn your phone off for the day.

A world in which self-care has to be such a trendy topic is a world that is sick. Self-care should not be something we resort to because we are so absolutely exhausted that we need some reprieve from our own relentless internal pressure.

True self-care is not salt baths and chocolate cake, it is making the choice to build a life you don’t need to regularly escape from.

And that often takes doing the thing you least want to do.

It often means looking your failures and disappointments square in the eye and re-strategizing. It is not satiating your immediate desires. It is letting go. It is choosing new. It is disappointing some people. It is making sacrifices for others. It is living a way that other people won’t, so maybe you can live in a way that other people can’t.

It is letting yourself be normal. Regular. Unexceptional. It is sometimes having a dirty kitchen and deciding your ultimate goal in life isn’t going to be having abs and keeping up with your fake friends. It is deciding how much of your anxiety comes from not actualizing your latent potential, and how much comes from the way you were being trained to think before you even knew what was happening.

If you find yourself having to regularly indulge in consumer self-care, it’s because you are disconnected from actual self-care, which has very little to do with “treating yourself” and a whole lot do with parenting yourself and making choices for your long-term wellness.

It is no longer using your hectic and unreasonable life as justification for self-sabotage in the form of liquor and procrastination. It is learning how to stop trying to “fix yourself” and start trying to take care of yourself… and maybe finding that taking care lovingly attends to a lot of the problems you were trying to fix in the first place.

It means being the hero of your life, not the victim. It means rewiring what you have until your everyday life isn’t something you need therapy to recover from. It is no longer choosing a life that looks good over a life that feels good. It is giving the hell up on some goals so you can care about others. It is being honest even if that means you aren’t universally liked. It is meeting your own needs so you aren’t anxious and dependent on other people.

It is becoming the person you know you want and are meant to be. Someone who knows that salt baths and chocolate cake are ways to enjoy life – not escape from it.

Lose yourself...

Lose yourself in this love.
When you lose yourself in this love,
you will find everything.

Lose yourself,
Lose yourself.
Do not fear this loss,
For you will rise from the earth
and embrace the endless heavens.

Lose yourself,
Lose yourself.
Escape from this earthly form,
For this body is a chain
and you are its prisoner.
Smash through the prison wall
and walk outside with the kings and princes.

Lose yourself,
Lose yourself at the foot of the glorious King.
When you lose yourself
before the King
you will become the King.

Lose yourself,
Lose yourself.
Escape from the black cloud
that surrounds you.
Then you will see your own light
as radiant as the full moon.

Now enter that silence.
This is the surest way
to lose yourself....

What is your life about, anyway? -
Nothing but a struggle to be someone,
Nothing but a running from your own silence.

~ Rumi