Tuesday, November 29, 2011

The Dark Side of Light By Guest Blogger Eliza Fayle

Eliza Fayle

There is a tendency among people who seek enlightenment to look for the good and positive in all things. Look for the cloud's silver lining. Seek out the lesson to be learned. To focus on the light and ignore the dark.

Oh, I am as guilty as the next enlightenment seeker.

I should know better. My particular spiritual beliefs teach that without darkness there is no light. I mentor women to get their hands dirty. Acknowledge their dark recesses and accept them with as much unconditional love as they do the bright spots of their souls.

Throw me into a real crisis, however, and I will struggle to cope by looking for the cloud's silver lining. Perhaps I struggle even harder because I am an energy healer. "Dag nab it," I chastise myself, "you have to turn this negative energy around, and right quick!"

This behaviour cropped up recently in the wake of my dad's life threatening injury and his ongoing long and painful road to recovery.

I wrote a gratitude list a mile long on the human kindness my family experienced and continues to experience.

I renewed my passion and commitment to the healing arts.

I doubled my efforts to keep my own energy pure and balanced.

I used my power of visioning to help my father's health improve.

I poured out white light of love to support my mother.

And I completely squashed my anger.

Anger that the fittest and healthiest 79 year old man I have the honour of knowing was paralyzed from the neck down in a freak accident.

Anger that the Canadian health care system fails to provide adequate care and actually reversed my father's progress.

Anger that my mother is struggling to advocate on my father's behalf while providing his primary care and still doing all the little things that need to be done each day to maintain a home.

In crisis mode, what I completely forgot is that sometimes bad things happen to good people.

Therein lies the real lesson to be learned. There is a dark side to light.

And it is okay, necessary even, to surrender to the darkness. To stumble around blindly in it. To really feel the anger and frustration and lack of control. To fully experience your mucked up energy.

Doing that is every bit as part of the healing arts as all the positive work we do.

Embracing the dark side of light is very much part of the path to enlightenment.

Eliza Fayle is an international intuitive mentor focusing on helping women over forty embrace their fun, sexy, intelligent and real selves. She can be found at Silver & Grace and she invites you to join her growing community of vibrant women on Facebook.