September 21: Day 83

STEP TWELVE CONTINUED: Having recognized the difference between religion and spirituality, we strive to be true to the Spirit within all of Divine Creation and to be a Light to point the way.
 
Instruction: Release the darkness.

At night when we’re walking in the dark, we can allow our minds to imagine all sorts of sordid terrors that might happen to us. If we were walking the same path in the daylight, our minds probably wouldn’t drift to such terrifying scenarios, because the Light removes shadowy, un-seeable, unknowable, and illusory images and replaces them with what is real. Our dreams can also lead us into terrifying storylines that, for the most part, completely dissipate and are forgotten after we wake. It seems that in our real world we often allow moments of darkness to overshadow our better judgment. At times, we might be prone to interpret things that we see and hear as if the worst case scenario is about to unfold. We might think that a person’s body language is threatening when all it might be saying is that they are having a bad day and they don’t want to be bothered.

We come more fully into the Light when we choose to release the darkness. When we are walking in the dark through a strange area, we can choose what we will allow into our imagination. We can still our minds from any horrors that might have involuntarily come into our thinking and decide that there are no terrors around us but only inanimate objects. We can imagine a restful, slumbering world full of wonders around us that we might not have noticed in the daylight. We release the darkness of fear and allow the light of love to move us past the physically dark world and into a spiritually lighted world. In the waking world we often let our negative imaginations lead us into dark conclusions that are often no more real than our night monsters. People aren’t necessarily talking about us, and even if they are, it doesn’t necessarily mean they are saying bad things behind our backs. There probably isn’t a conspiracy lurking in the shadows waiting to lure us into a trap of destruction. People are not always judging and condemning us for our beliefs, actions, and associations. Most people have enough to take care of in their own world, and they are not trying to devise ways to disrupt our worlds. When we determine that we will see the good in people and refuse to believe that everyone is out to get us, then we are releasing the darkness and allowing the Light to take its place.
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Take a moment today to consider your response to the darkness, both physically and spiritually. Are we afraid of the dark? Do we imagine monsters and other creepy, crawly things? We do not have to live in fear of physical or spiritual darkness. The light shines within our being, and we need merely to allow it to surface so that we may see the world in all its beauty and love.