Shadows do not exist without light.

September 12, 2022

God, who is the author of all that you know and all that you do not know, leads the pathways that are directed toward the center of the loving spirit. 

Each of you experiences in your life moments of crisis as well as joy. There is a balance that belongs to every human being. That balance exists despite the outward appearances of what the life of another may seem to be. Those whose lives can be characterized in great measure by others as lives of torment and difficulty also have within them the capacity to balance, to stabilize their lives. Such lives, difficult as they may appear, exist in a kind of yin and yang balance, a relationship of shadow and light. Where the shadows are the deepest, the contrast of the light is most intense. 

Some individuals prefer not to acknowledge the balancing presence of God with their own experiences. It is easy to become overwhelmed by fear and anxiety, but what is needed to find that balance is nevertheless always present. Just as we say you are never away or hidden from the light, we can say you are never separated from that which can provide balance and light. 

You are given life in order to experience this balance. There are lives that may be characterized as being with seemingly continuous challenges and darkness, but people are not destined in some metaphysical way to lives of hardship and pain, for the truth is, balance is always possible. The light is always present. You may choose, consciously or otherwise, to shield yourselves from the loving balance that is needed, but that presence is always with you. We can also say that conversely you are aware of those whose lives seem unusually fortunate, that for them there seem to be no worries, no anxieties, no pain. Everything comes up roses. But such observations do not reveal true reality. 

Yes, of course there are those who try to deny their difficulties, but when they deny difficulties, they deny experience of life in its most honest and shared way, shared because all lives have these contrasting components of light and shadow. It is in acknowledging the shadow in your own experiences that you are empowered to witness and respond to the shadows of others. Isn’t that response an exercise of love? Of course it is, but without allowing yourselves to be vulnerable, you remain insensitive to the vulnerability of others. 

What we are saying here is that all lives have the potential to achieve balance. For some, the awareness is on what is positive. For others, it is what is felt as being negative. Living a life that is reflective of your understanding of God means living a life that brings into clear view the reality that there are positive and negative experiences, emotions, events that belong to all people. In acknowledging those contrasts, you are creating conditions necessary for truly witnessing God’s presence in your lives and in the lives of all.

No one is destined to a carefree life. No one is destined to a life that has only misery. When you are feeling grateful, recognize those moments when such gratitude is absent, and when you feel that you are being assaulted by only negative energies, dig deep and find those events in life that teach you what is good, what is positive. 

We speak of health as being defined by balance. Health does not mean all is perfect anymore than illness means all is bad. Health is the achieving of balance in one’s life. It is acknowledging the wide range of events and experiences that broaden your understanding of what it means to be alive, and it is that understanding that brings into clear focus the truth that you are united as one because you all have within you the contrasting elements that can provide balance and perspective. 

No life is all easy and nothing else. No life is all difficulty and nothing else. When you seek unity with others, seek first evidence of what in your life provides for the balance that is possible. In understanding what feels absent at the moment, you are in truth seeing the bonds that bind you all, one to another. You then sense more completely what is meant by the stableness of life, the unity of all. There are not those who have it all and others who have nothing. 

How is all defined? How is nothing defined? For every person, the answer to those questions will be different. Some find that a greater understanding of the Spirit Center is really what is sought after. For others, they may not identify the Spirit Center as a reality, but rather a spirit of giving to another is that reality, devoting themselves to what is best for others. Every person fills out the definitions in their own way. 

There is life as you define it; there is death as you define it. There is a sense of belonging; there is a sense of being isolated. There is joy; there is sorrow. There is love; there is animosity. There is recognition that God is indeed present, and there is the despairing belief that there is no God. Each of you can think of moments in your life that affirmed your faith in God’s presence, but each of you can recall when you were filled with uncertainty about the reality of God in your present understanding. You may feel that your lives are intensely and fully blessed, but if you go through life feeling that you are fully blessed and others live a life that seems cursed by pain and misery and suffering, then you do not see the unity that binds you to the others. The way to achieve that unity, the way to achieve an affirmation in your belief that all is one, is by fully embracing the reality that there are two opposing energies in the lives of all, and those opposing energies exist for all. It is, in many ways, the reality of those opposing energies that is a strand of the tapestry that unites each of you to one another. 

It is good to rejoice when you are in the presence of light, and it is natural to despair when you are in the presence of shadows, but always remind yourselves of the fact that shadows do not exist without the light, so both exist in the present. Both exist in the now. No human being is fully light. No human being is fully the shadow. Embrace the shadows as you embrace what is life-giving, welcoming the reality that both belong to what it means to be human.

When you live in a condition of just spirit, the shadows fall away, and the balance that is necessary is a balance of acknowledging that there is the light of God and the light of all that has been created. The two together represent the true reality of the oneness of all. 

Acknowledge the gratitude you feel. Acknowledge the joy you feel, and recognize at the same time that those darker moments, those shadows, when combined with that which gives great joy are precisely the elements that bring you into a union of all. So often we speak of unity, and the fact that all contain a portion of God within, and therefore all are truly part of the reality of God. But that unity is more than just thinking of the spirit within as the unifying factor, for even on human terms, the reality of that balance that we speak of is the surface of the trampoline that we’ve spoken of. It is that entity that is radiated outward and is felt and known by all others, for all experience light and all experience shadows. 

You are all one. Together your lives, our lives, and the lives of knowing spirits who have not experienced human life are absolutely integral to the presence of God’s light. Be warmed by the light. Be warmed by an acceptance and understanding of the balance. Be warmed by your full embrace of the unity of all, and be warmed by the presence of God’s love as it is felt in the shadows and in the light. 

Amen.