Blog #98 Light Lessons with Patsie McCandless -When Life Gets Dark

Finding Light When Life Gets Dark

When life gets dark, we all wonder how it has happened. even as we try to understand our pain and grief, and strive to return to our Light.

We all live in both dark and light. It is the bad-good struggle that is part of being a human being. Sometimes it comes in a terrible personal event, and settles into the mind and heart and body in traumatic pain that can feel like it will never go away. It is challenging to understand it, and we struggle to make sense of it.

Finding Light When You Are Stuck in the Dark

Dark emotions can be seductive. They ensnare you into floundering in self-absorbed unhappiness over your troubles. They make it easy to rant and berate and rebuke all the best in your life – to turn your back on your Light, in truth, because you feel powerless.

But it is not the Light that has betrayed you. All your power and love is still there in your Light. Your protection from the dark feelings is always there – in the Light.

As Becoming Jesse continues, from the above quote:

Jesse, you separated yourself from the Light. That’s why you feel so bad. The Light always IS. Always here. Always shining inside you. Love-love-love. When you quiet yourself and drop the dark, bad feelings, you will naturally move back into that Light. It’s waiting for you.”

You see, the more you rage against your pain, struggling to unearth why this bad thing has happened, the deeper into the dark you descend, experiencing the worst emotional suffering. All you truly want is to climb up and out of that pain.

 Finding Light When Life Gets Bad –  or Good!

There is something of everything on this earth – good and bad. Inexplicable bad often happens as a mishap, a misadventure or mischance – a mistake. An accident. Life is as full of accidents as it is full of lucky, fortuitous coincidences.

The song called, “Turn, Turn Turn” (The Byrds) expresses so many of the opposites – good and bad –  that we experience in this life, and our own ability to turn to which side we choose.

What is clear is that what brings bad can just as easily bring good. For instance, our human bodies have bones that can break and organs that can become infected; and yet our bodies are also a chemical factory that can cure and heal and restore our health. The wind: it can flatten a village, yet it can also bring soothing breezes – filled with the clear oxygen we need to breathe. Water, too, can flood an entire city, yet it also brings us life sustaining hydration.  Both. Good. Bad. Dark. Light.

Finding CONTROL in your Life – Good or Bad

Your control is all yours. But it does not lie in figuring out what caused the bad thing… asking, WHY? Why ME? HOW COULD THIS HAPPEN?

For, even if you were somehow given a reason or a cause or an answer – none of that takes the pain away. Your power lies in taking the bad – and deciding – or fixing upon – or choosing – HOW you will respond. How you deal with your pain is everything. You choose the way in which you deal with it. You. Choose. No one else. You.

Finding CHOICE in your Life – Good or Bad

I believe that each one of us chose to come to earth – chose to be an earthling. Why? Because here, human beings are sensates – we all experience this earth through our smell, taste, sight, hearing and, most of all, our touch and our feelings. You have to be a physical being to do that. You have to live in a physical environment to do that. I believe that was our very first choice. To come to earth for this magnificent experience. It is embedded in our free will: we can always choose how we will respond… to everything.

Finding Life’s SENSATIONS: Good or Bad

Think about our physical being-ness. How we use it here on earth.

Even people who have suffered terrible tragedies still find deep, abiding comfort in the sight of a beautiful sunrise or sunset. Upon hearing a gorgeous rhapsody, or quiet adagio, that person discovers intense, enduring serenity. Sometimes, even the taste or smell of pure, clear water has a mysterious quality of well-being. And the sense of touch  – in a caress or embrace – can summon re-newed and heartfelt solace.

ALLOWING Life’s Dark Pain

When a person suffers a tragedy, pain can fill all the senses. Often, other humans, wanting to help, to soothe or to calm, will use tattered phrases, like, “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.”– or “What’s meant to be is meant to be.”

These sayings might be excused as a human being’s effort to comfort, or at the very least, fill the painful silence. But they are rather useless… meaning, baseless for truly helping another person or a situation.

Being in a mindful place – allowing, permitting or supporting the silence or the tears – when you are with a person in pain, can help you remember that there is pain – or darkness – in life. Everyone has something they are struggling with at some point. Being thoughtful and allowing the pain to run its course can be very helpful to the person suffering.

Remember my Light Lesson about worry and anxiety. They do not help.

Finding Life Energies for Good in your Light

As a human being, you always want to DO something. Are there ways for you to support someone in pain? To help bring them into the Light?

Yes: Love > In Becoming Jesse, when Jesse is recovering from a cut-and-bruised black eye, Grams Maguire is stunned by his persistent, loving energy, which she calls, “Jesse’s brî.” No blaming, no finding fault. Jesse just ‘loves’.

Yes: Be > Be in the present moment. Again, in Becoming Jesse, when Jesse suffers a tragedy, Billy is there with him.

“He held Jesse’s hand and took him to the quiet of the rooftop. Billy took off his jacket and hung it over Jesse’s shoulders. They didn’t say anything. Billy just stood with Jesse. Looking. Listening. They stood. Together. Silently looking out at the city that went on about its business, as if the world had not turned into a tangle of upside downs. Jesse breathed. A real breath. He liked the quiet. Just… being.”

Yes: Help > Words that help are not about trying to relate to the suffering person by telling a tragic story of your own. Misery begets misery and does not help.

But a simple gesture of simple words – like “I am thinking of you.” – or – “We are sending you our Light energies.” – or – “I’m here if you need me.”  – can help restore a sense of serene well-being.

Food is also a way to help. A person in pain does not think about eating or nourishment. A hot meal can be a thoughtful and very generous way to let someone know you truly are thinking of them.

Finding Life’s Bad and Good MEMORIES

Years ago, my father died in a sudden collapse, directly after delivering a speech on Veterans’ Day. I still recall how traumatic it was. Yet, I still recall friends who showed up at our door, quietly leaving hot meals, breakfast baskets, fruits, tea and coffee – enough to feed all in our family, all suffering in the pain of such a shock.

I remember that the sun was setting… glowing… lighting up the front entry, filled with the cornucopia of food and drink. I saw more than the physicality of the food – it was the Light… loving, helping, being. The Light of other human beings, shining upon us… bringing us into the Light of choosing to acknowledge such tender blessings.

The shocking pain eventually melted away, but the feeling of that Light is always with me.

In dark times, may that Light be with us all.

Light On!