“We are candles burning, sometimes sputtering, sometimes steady, with the same task as the stars in their majesty making light.” ~ Elias Amidon
When our light dims
We all have times when we feel as if our light has dimmed, or even gone out altogether—times when we experience the challenges and deep fears of existence as too much to bear. We want to quit, throw the towel in, and walk away from whatever appears to be the source of our pain.
From my personal life experience, as well as witnessing many people over the years, those are the times when the wisest choice is to source from the deepest well inside your being, what I call your loveseed, to remember who you are and what you truly want. The past may exert its fierce pull to ruminate and regurgitate what has gone on, leaving you with feelings of failure, frustration, resentment, helplessness, and all the other emotions that come when what you planned is being thwarted.
In those moments you must remain fluid, and remember to “courageously inhabit the past the present and the future all at once.” as David Whyte says. Ask yourself what you desire in the future that is waiting for you, and begin to walk in that direction.
The tendency is to blame
In the moments of our candle sputtering, the tendency—or shall I say, my tendency, is to seek blame outside myself, and shrug off the responsibility for what is happening. If I make up some really big story to become a smoke screen for the real story that is of being deeply wounded when I was young (mostly, we all were in some way!), then I get to believe that the source of my irritation, rage, terror, grief, etc, is the person, place or thing I am presently engaged with.
The 90/10 principle says that 90% of the reason you react a certain way to someone else is something that you brought to the relationship. It’s your “stuff,” the baggage from childhood and previous relationships. 10% is about the other person, although when you are triggered, it feels as if it’s 100%, and the entire reason for your reaction is attributed to outside circumstances.
In these moments of our candle sputtering and projecting blame, we disconnect from the essential source of our light, which is connected to all things. We buy into a story of separation and experience the fear that accompanies that wound. We now view the situation or person in our present moment as the enemy.
The power of emotional blindspots
All human beings have emotional blindspots. At these moments, our brains are triggered to feel emotions that we dissociated from, because we have been afraid of what would happen to us if we felt them fully. This avoidance leaves the unconscious emotions within us, waiting to be felt fully in the present moment. We begin to feel the burning.
We create and attract these challenges due to the powerful vibratory point of attraction of our emotional blind spot.
When we are in our blindspot, we have dissociated from our original pain, and the reaction to the pain of the moment is intense and at times debilitating, and all we want to do is make it go away. Our attention becomes transfixed by the person or event in the world around us, most often an intimate person, and we often feel the helplessness of the original pain. We blame them for this pain, which is our very own.
Welcome the burning
What is this need to blame, when we are are all made of light???
We possess the consciousness to see, to look at what is happening with open eyes in the present moment, with an open heart.
Damn, that is hard!!!!!! Our reptilian brains are simply not wired to have vision.
When we are ready to face a great change, we are often faced with what seems like the impossible task of remaining in our center, in the midst of a chaos. One of my first reactions is to contract and block the light that is both coming toward me and and from within me. I may resist, and attempt to take control with defensive maneuvers of my personality, until I remember that I am being asked to transform, and must allow the burning to happen.
David Whyte speaks of these moments as doorways to maturity: “Maturity is not a static arrived platform, where life is viewed from a calm, untouched oasis of wisdom, but a living elemental frontier between what has happened, what is happening now and the consequences of that past and present; first imagined and then lived into the waiting future. “
Maturity asks us to stop and calm ourselves down long enough to take a good look at what is happening—to stand in the fire long enough for the necessary purification that is required—of old beliefs, habits and ways of relating. Sometimes a therapist, friend, colleague, or someone whose judgment you trust, is a very good mirror to have, so that your own emotional blindspots are held in love, rather than acted upon.
Because a larger horizon is about to be revealed, it is wise to welcome the burning!
Busting the story of separation
The story of the myth of separation goes back to the beginning of time, and has been replicated in countless domains: the financial, the emotional, the physical, the sexual, the mental. We are all wrought with the experience of difference, separation, possible betrayal, and mistrust, at a primal level of survival. The world economy thrives on this myth.
The truth is that we are so intimately interconnected, and have the privilege and honor of being very close in with some, such as family, about whom we say, “we can’t live with them, and we can’t live without them. The whole world exists in the worlds we co-create with other beings, and we are as interconnected as the cells in our bodies as they perform the miracle of life.
As Bruce Lipton says, in The Biology of Belief: Unleasing the Power of Consciousness, Matter and Miracles
“The Universe is one indivisible, dynamic whole in which energy and matter are so deeply entangled it is impossible to consider them as independent elements.”
If we are so interwoven, I am led to ask, “what is my part?”
Taking full responsibility
Your reactivity is actually 100% your responsibility, but if you look at the trigger, it is a combination of your emotional blindspot and your outer circumstance. It's about how you dance with what life has presented you. Making that distinction can make all the difference in your ability to have a healing experience when chaos has erupted. Being able to discern what is true creates new neural pathways in your brain. You surrender the need to hold onto the pain, and simply allow yourself to experience what is happening without attributing blame.
In such a moment, the task is to revision your partner or the challenges as an ally in raising your consciousness and fully maturing as a human being.
This is a powerful and intentional way of keeping your passion and purpose alive, holding the tension of conflict to step into the field beyond right doing and wrong doing. It's a part of the template for a new and better world.
I want to leave you with a prayer I have written about Faith, Love, and Desire, that can support you when you find your candle sputtering. You can access it here.
May we all embrace those moments when we can fully feel our love and desire, without fear.
