Finding the Light in the Darkness

“We are all meant to be mothers of God, for God is always needing to be born.”

~Meister Eckhart

With the winter sun sinking below the horizon by 4 p.m. in Seattle now, there also seems to be a corresponding dip in many people’s spirits as we enter into the darkest days of the Northern Hemisphere. When all around the culture and religious festivals shout “Rejoice!” some people struggle with grieving the passing of loved ones—glaringly apparent during festive family gatherings, others with Seasonal Affective Disorder (with the appropriate acronym, SAD), and still others with losses of various kinds the holidays can emphasize in painful contrast, like a season sculpted in high relief.

Even if this is not your own reality during the holidays, if you’re human, you’ve experienced down times, pain and suffering, and perhaps even a more intense “dark night of the soul.”

What is this dark night written and spoken about for millennia by saints, mystics and everyday people of faith? All those “d” words come to mind: death, disillusionment, depression, despair, or even worse, dissolution, the void, the place thought of as the absence of everything. Many fear it, flee it, or avoid it until the darkness can no longer be denied, and even when there is no more ignoring the fact that they are smack dab in the middle of it, they resist it to the seventh heaven.

For example, this was recently tweeted (on Twitter for those of you still catching up to the digital age) referencing God:

“I PRAISE YOU 24/7!!!!!! AND THIS HOW YOU DO ME!!!!! YOU EXPECT ME TO LEARN FROM THIS??? HOW???!!! ILL NEVER FORGET THIS!! EVER!!! THX THO…”

Sounds like modern day Job questioning epic-sized suffering during a dark night, eh? Alas, no, just Steve Johnson, receiver for the Buffalo Bills football team, after he dropped a game-winning pass. Still, Johnson’s protest is characteristic of responses to God during dark seasons of life.

I am surrounded right now by people who are, if not smack dab in the middle of a dark night, are at least dipping a toe into those deep waters and finding themselves chilled, fearing a frozenness of spirit if they descend into that icy sea.

In my present paradigm (always subject to change without prior notice), I embrace a reality of unity or non-dualism. Darkness is not, from this perspective, the absence or the opposite of light. Darkness is nothing to be afraid of. Darkness is necessary and even good. But in order to not be afraid of it, we need to understand it.

Michael Bernard Beckwith teaches there are three types of darkness:

1) times of deep cleansing: during this type of darkness, our shadow or subconsciousness is brought more into our awareness so it can be integrated.

2) times of gestation: during this darkness it may seem like “nothing’s happening,” but it is a necessary time for the seed to lie fallow underground waiting for the right season to call forth new growth.

3) times of temporary blindness: this darkness happens when the next stage of our growth is so overwhelmingly beyond our current vision that we are blinded by its light and we only see darkness…until we catch up with our soul’s paradigm shift.

My own dark night of the soul (which, interestingly, was NOT my whistle-blowing saga as you who know my story might suppose) in addition to the being all three of the above was also an initiation into mystical spirituality, though I didn’t know that at the time. It would lead many years later to an even greater initiation (now the whistle-blowing saga comes into play!) with a full-blown mystical awakening. This, in fact, is what I believe is a rarely grasped but crucial nuance in the Job story. After his long and painful dark night, he is initiated into direct communication with God (a signature of the mystic). After God speaks and answers Job with a whirlwind tour of the miracles of the universe, Job capitulates: “Before I had only heard rumors of You (indirect), but now my eye (singular) sees You (direct) [Job 42:5a]. Job’s dark night then is his initiation into unitive vision (another signature of the mystic). Jesus said, “If your eye is single (or one), your whole body is full of light” [Luke 11:34a].

When you can see all as one and God in all, you see darkness or the void for what it is, that space of the pregnant womb, where the new is ever-born. Then you can see God and see as God sees, that “even the darkness is not dark to you, the night is as bright as the day, for darkness is as light to you.” [Psalm 139:12].

One mystic, Mellen-Thomas Benedict, was initiated into the Light, then into the Void/the Absolute during an “after death experience” (his body was clinically dead from terminal cancer for more than 90 minutes). This is, in part, what he says about his experiences with the Void:

“It is less than nothing, yet more than everything that is! The Void is absolute zero, chaos forming all possibilities. It is Absolute Consciousness, much more than even Universal Intelligence. The Void is the vacuum or nothingness between all physical manifestations. It is the SPACE between atoms and their components. Modern science has begun to study this space between everything. They call it Zero point. Whenever they try to measure it, their instruments go off the scale, or to infinity, so to speak. They have no way, as of yet, to measure infinity accurately.

“There is more of the zero space in your own body and the Universe than anything else! What mystics call the Void is not a void. It is so full of energy, a different kind of energy that has created everything that we are. Everything since the Big Bang is vibration, from the first Word, which is the first vibration. The biblical “I AM” really has a question mark after it. “I AM—What am I?” So creation is God exploring God’s Self through every way imaginable, in an on-going, infinite exploration through every one of us. I began to see during my near-death experience that everything that is, is the Self, literally your Self, my Self. Everything is the great Self. That is why God knows even when a leaf falls. That is possible because wherever you are is the center of the Universe. Wherever any atom is, that is the center of the Universe. There is God in that, and God in the Void.”

Benedict’s own death led him to his greatest discoveries, including finding God in the Void.

The one question that seems to be at the heart of dark nights, though, goes right back to Job and to Steve Johnson’s tweet: Why does God allow pain, suffering, and loss in the first place? I myself have worked through this question at deeper and deeper levels and am okay both with this question and the resolutions I have discovered. I am often reluctant to state these resolutions because for me it has been that in searching and staying true to the questions themselves that have emerged in times of darkness, this is when and where the light has been reborn for me. If you can hold on during dark times, calling out for the help you need from God, your angels and your human angel friends, and accept that you are in a dark night rather than resist it and fear it, so much more soul strength and illumination can come. You may even be initiated into the journey of your greatest rebirth, your Self-discovery (yes, capital S, the divine spirit Self).

And so during this season of darkness, that is difficult for so many, I hold space for you in great love and in great expectation of the Light that will shine forth again for you and your loved ones. The pregnant void, the Great Womb that holds all in pure potentiality is ever-birthing the eternal Light. If you can stay true to the birthpangs of this spiritual labor, the newborn Light will dissolve the darkness like the brilliance of the morning sun at dawn and you, too, will become a mother of God.

How to set an intention in 5 steps

I just finished a great book, The Intention Experiment, by Lynne McTaggart. As a journalist, she has been following and working with physicists and other scientists to study if and how consciousness impacts life. In this book, she summarizes the results of many experiments showing that, indeed, our intentions can positively and negatively affect our daily and global life. Mind over matter is a little too simplistic of a summary of the studies, but as a healer I often see how a client’s beliefs and thoughts directly impact every aspect of life, from health to relationships, and from finances to the earth’s environment.

However, setting an intention is a little more challenging than just wishing upon a star. Based on the experiments detailed in her book, McTaggart gives some great tips that significantly affected the outcomes of intentions. I’m going to combine her suggestions with my own non-scientific and somewhat biased observations, along with other teachings from healers.

To demonstrate how intentions work, let’s use the metaphor of a balloon.

If you have ever entered a party supply store in recent years, you know that the types of balloons you can choose from are practically endless. The party store in my town has an entire wall numbering up to over 100 types, and that’s not counting all the traditional latex balloons they offer, available in the myriad of colors and sizes they come in as well.

1) This is akin to the first challenge of setting an intention: choice. We have an infinite supply of time and energy at our disposal (believe it or not, this is true, according to me anyway). This follows from my belief that we are, at our essences, eternal, infinite beingness. You may not believe this. That’s okay. Bear with me and join in the fun of experimenting with intention anyway. Even if you do believe this, you may not yet be able to access infinity and eternity in your body. That’s okay, too. Neither can I. Other than a few yogis, mystics, saints and shamans, most of us for the time being are limited to our bodies and 24 hours in a day (and even that isn’t quite true, but moving on…).

However, you still have a nearly infinite amount of choices and options in a given day. You may think your day is “set” and “pre-ordered” for you, given your job or family obligations, school homework, etc. but this is false. You have these conditions because you are choosing them. You can leave your job, relationships, school at any time, if you choose. You remain in them, because you are choosing to do so or at the very least choosing not to experience what would happen if you walked away from these experiences in your life. And choosing anything, anything at all, begins to focus the unlimited supplies of opportunities we have available to us in any moment. You begin to funnel the ocean of infinite possibilities into the pipeline of your life. Or keeping with my initial metaphor: you begin to narrow down the choices of balloons. Maybe a “have a great day” balloon is good for you today. Or maybe just a nice cherry red balloon.

Whatever it is: you choose.

So to set an intention, you must choose what you want from an infinite supply of possibilities. To not be overwhelmed by this, start small. Make an intention for one day, either today or tomorrow.

2) Now that you’ve chosen what day, choose a specific intention for it: A “have a great day” balloon in silver or white background; Or the cherry red latex balloon in extra large size. So let’s say you’re setting an intention for tomorrow. Tomorrow I intend to experience peace in all of my relationships.

3) Now that you’ve ordered up your intention, you need to energize it. So just as you would order up your balloon to be filled up with helium at the balloon store, imagine now that your intention you’ve set is fulfilled. What would that look like? Imagine it in your mind as vibrantly as you can. What would it feel like? Imagine this feeling. Feel this feeling. Feel it all the way from your head to your toes. Living in the energy of your intention having already been fulfilled, helps to bring that intention’s vibration into being.

4) Now you’ve got to go outside and let that balloon go! Rather than try to “make it happen,” which is a controlling and therefore fear-based way to go about life, instead play with the universe by sending it out into the sky and seeing what happens. Follow your balloon’s intention as it floats through your day. Observe it. Learn from it.

5) The universe communicates and responds to each of us uniquely. So as you observe and learn how the universe responded to your balloon intention being set free, alter or add, or delete as necessary to any of the above steps as they work/don’t work for you. Repeat and practice. Perhaps continue the same simple intention for several days in a row to get the hang of it and to see what variations occur.

I did this the other day to be my own guinea pig for this blogpost. I set an intention to have a joyous, awesome day and I did! The next day I set the same intention and bam! Everything that could go “wrong” seemingly did go wrong. Nothing had changed with my intention. In fact, I realized I was being tested on my intention: Could I hold a joyous, awesome state of mind despite my circumstances? Yes, I did pretty well and the next several days after setting the same intention, I noticed a shift in the level of energy I was working with and a corresponding shift in circumstances.

Some other tips from scientific experiments:

*Set your intention in the same space every day. A regularly highly positive, energized space greatly impacted the effect of setting intentions.

*The timing of intentions is a little trickier, involving sun, star and planetary events. Rather than look it all up, I just say trust your gut and follow your intuition as to when during each day seems to be the best time to set your intention. It may be different every day and the best time may NOT be in the morning when you get up. Whenever it is, how you feel does impact the effect of the intention so make sure your body feels good and general health is well.

*Before you set your intention, calm your body and increase your mental focus by doing some conscious breathing or other meditative practice such as chanting or drumming that gets you into the “zone.” Also, having a sense of being one with the universe or one with another person if the intention involves that person or your relationship with him/her, helps as well.

*Focus on your heart and on feeling compassion when setting the intention in addition to feeling whatever feeling you believe you will have after the intention is fulfilled.

*Be as specific and positive in your wording as possible. Eliminate no’s and not’s.

*A group intention is stronger than an individual intention so you may want to start a group or ask others to join you in your intention. Make sure everyone is stating the same specific intention.

Final Advise:

If the intention you are setting is not working, it may be for the simple reason that while your conscious mind is all set to go, your subconscious mind is saying exactly the opposite. And it is a general principle that the subconscious tends to trump the conscious mind. Seek out friends, healers, therapists, spiritual directors, etc. you trust and ask them honestly where your own blindspots may be blocking you. Energy clearing and breathwork are very helpful in helping you let go of old energies that are keeping you from moving forward.

Many blessings to you as you use your intentions to move into greater creative expressions of your innate bliss!

What happened when I went to a mosque

At the time I visited a mosque, I was a curious college student majoring in cultural anthropology and cross-cultural communications. The study of world religions was a particular love, even obsession, of mine. During a class on said topic, I was required to take a personal field trip to a place of worship outside of my religion. I selected a mosque for my assignment, and since I had many international student friends from around the world, I asked a few of the Muslim Arabs I knew about visiting their mosque in the Northgate neighborhood of Seattle. One friend from UAE told me where I could purchase a head scarf (or hijab) —which I bought in basic black—and then he said he’d meet me on Friday evening right before services to introduce me into the mosque.

The next Friday, he did as promised and I was ushered up the stairs to the women and children’s section above and partitioned away from the main prayer room by glass. In the church I grew up in, such a room was called the “cry room.” It was provided for the parents of restless youngsters so the cries of their little ones would not disturb those in the sanctuary and yet the parents wouldn’t miss out on the main service as it was broadcast through the sound system into the cry room.

As soon as I emerged at the top of the stairs, I was greeted with warm welcomes, hugs, and cheek-to-cheek double kisses from many if not most of the women there. Few spoke English but their hospitality I remember vividly to this day, some twenty-five years later. They had absolutely no reservations inviting a white-skinned woman from another religion into their midst. None. I wonder how many churches would be so welcoming with the situation in reverse?

As I observed the prayer service for the men through the glass, I noticed that only a couple of women in the “cry room” were following along with the prayers and prostrations. They seemed to be older women, perhaps beyond the years of mothering youngsters, who therefore had some time and freedom to devote to worship and spiritual practice. (On the other side of mothering young children myself, I know how hard it is to devote oneself to one’s spirituality, when diapers, feedings, tantrums, and general lack of sleep intrude.) Otherwise, the room full of Muslim women and children was joyous, with lots of quiet laughter, playtime, and community-making going on between the children and moms.

At one point toward the end of the service, my black scarf, having not secured it very well, began to slip off the top of my head, revealing some of my hair. I kept pulling it all the way forward of my bangs, not wanting to offend them in their place of reverence.

However, after several futile attempts at keeping it up, one of the older women decided to help out. She came over and rather than helping me pull it up or retie it, she simply pulled it down all the way and said, “There.” The rest of the women gasped and came forward, admiring my golden blonde hair, touching it, commenting on it—clearly not offended in the least.

Soon after this event I would spend a summer in the Middle East with Muslim Arabs. Again and again I was treated with ultimate respect and generous hospitality in every house I entered, even though I came from America.

If you have never been friends with a Muslim or an Arab or have never attended a mosque, I would encourage you to do so. Fear of the “other,” the “stranger”, the unknown is what fuels the fire of assigning blame to whole people groups and entire religions for the actions of a few extremists.

Love thy neighbor as thyself. Muslims taught me what this looks like.

A Great Undoing

This is the time of a Great Undoing. And this scares many people to their core, so much so that denial, adamant pushing ahead, forcing things to be as they've always been, pushing to do things as they've always been done, can produce crazed, anxious patterns that end up crashing and burning in the end. Understanding that times of Great Undoings are necessary and beneficial can go a long way to helping you ease through tough times with grace and peace. Collectively, we have gotten ourselves into many knotted up patterns that are not sustainable for the human family as well as the plant and animal families, let alone all of the other interdependent eco-systems on earth. We know this. We KNOW this, yes? But what do we do with the seemingly insurmountable number of things that need to be fixed in order to be sustainable and functional?

I've found that understanding how to heal huge systemic problems is much easier when there is a simple metaphor that can be used to grasp the nuance, the symbolic message, from the macro to the micro. So here's one for you: What do you do when you find your favorite shoes have somehow sprouted large entangled knots in their shoelaces seemingly overnight? If your shoes are going to continue to be functional to you, you are going to have to do the work of a Great Undoing. Of course, you can sit and ask forever "How did this happen?" "How did all of these problems/knots come to be?" Asking this may be useful for the future in order to prevent future Big Knots, but sitting and fretting just uses up time you could be using to start the Great Undoing. You may be tempted to just cut the laces off and buy new ones. But we can't really do that with humanity and planet earth. Throw it away and start over? Nope, not an option. We are here. The planet is here. Denying the Big Knots isn't going to work.

For the present time and the present situation, the only thing that's going to work is simply doing the work of untying the knots. Untying Big Knots can be slow going, frustrating work. I've found that it takes a lot of patience and focus. Tracking each curve of lace through every twist and turn and gradually untangling the stuckness. Being the expert knot-untier of the family, which probably goes with being "the mom", I've also found that once I've worked on a knot for a certain period of time, all-at-once the knot completely untangles the rest of the way easily and effortlessly. It's like the knot simply "dissolves."

This is the potential benefit of a Great Undoing. By tracking where and how our own energy is knotted up and begin the untying process, we can free up an amazing amount of energy that allows us to be in greater alignment with the Flow of Love-purpose in the divine unfolding of the universe. The greatest benefit to the Universe is for you to look within (first) and see where there is stuckness and begin to untangle, dissolve, and free your energy in that area. Then you will see clearly and passionately where you can be an instrument of divine benefit to healing the world.

The steps?
1. Set your intention to find where you are knotted (blocked) in your own life so that you can set yourself free.
2. Focus your attention on the knots/blocks looking at it from all sorts of angles, to find the source or core of it. It is usually a fear-based emotion attached to a limiting belief.
3. Affirm and feel your loving compassion for yourself in this area.
4. Take a tiny step of action to demonstrate your new unlimited belief and unfettered love about yourself and the world.

When we heal ourselves, we automatically help to heal the world. If you have any questions, have any comments, or want more info, let me know!

To schedule a healing session or speaking event with Monica call her at 206-306-1144, email her at monica@monicamcdowell.com or for more information, check out her website at www.monicamcdowell.com

Copyright © 2010 by Monica McDowell, MDiv. All Rights Reserved. This entry may be linked, forwarded, or copied in its entirety as long as this paragraph is included and there is no profit gained by doing so. Monica is an energy healer, speaker, spiritual teacher, and author. Her second book, You are Light, will be released by O-Books in Feb. 2011. Monica¹s first book, My Karma Ran Over My Dogma: Lessons Learned by a Whistle-Blowing Minister Turned Mystic, is available on her website, on Amazon.com or in Seattle's independent bookstores. She has the distinction of being the first ordained minister in the United States ever granted civil rights in a federal ruling.

Dancing the Dream

Today I'm recommending a great book, Dancing the Dream: The Seven Sacred Paths of Human Transformation by Jamie Sams. You can read my book review here.

http://www.sdiworld.org/amazon/book-reviews/bonus-reviews/dancing.html

You are Light Wordle

I thought I would share my next book's wordle! A wordle is a word cloud created by compiling the most common words in a selected text and making a picture of them. The most common word is the largest. I love that Light Love and Always are the most common words in my book! Go to wordle.net to create your own wordle. Very fun, fast and super cool!

A Spirituality of BEing

A Spirituality of BEing

Sometimes I wonder ~
after Rumi, why write?
What is there left to say after a master has spoken
and everything essential has already been said~

recorded for generations millennia ago?

For that matter, what is there left to sculpt~
after beholding the perfection of a single daffodil?
or to paint ~ after witnessing a thunderstorm and the unfolding skies have erupted in
an array of pinks, purples, and reds so vibrant they rival even the glory of a
peacock's green and blue plumes?

Really, who can compete with that?

And what remains to be sung in a day~
after the morning arias of the warbling winged 

 (their melodies far surpassing any diva's) 

 have finished until the morrow?

When a person has awoken to BEAUTY,
is there ever a return to sanity?
When someone has burst open with LOVE,
what is not consumed by that unquenchable flame?

When one goes beyond all Light to merge with the Deep
~that dark sea dissolving all ideas and identities of Self
~that formless Soup of non-being, less than nothing and more than everything
    ~that pregnant Void ceaselessly extinguishing and birthing all form~
Mind you, where then does one go next?

What is left to dream that has not already been dreamt?
And what of desire when one knows the secret of eternal contentment?

What is left to do? to create? to say? to write? to sing?
when the Artist Nonpareil has already upstaged everyone for all time?
Tell me, what is left?

All I ever hear in reply is:

YOU are the art ~ a living masterpiece
   forged in an alchemist's fire where creator and created forever emerge as One
YOU are the magic ~ transmuting the mundane into healing elixirs of immortality
YOU are the dancer and the dance in an infinite flow of Awareness.

All I ever hear is:

You are.

Just BE.
It is enough.



To schedule a healing session or speaking event with Monica call her at 206-306-1144, email her at monica@monicamcdowell.com or for more information, check out her website at www.monicamcdowell.com

Copyright © 2010 by Monica McDowell, MDiv.  All Rights Reserved.  This entry may be linked, forwarded, or copied in its entirety as long as this paragraph is included and there is no profit gained by doing so.  Monica is an energy healer, speaker, spiritual teacher, and author. Her second book, You are Light, will be published by O-Books in late 2010. Monica's first book, My Karma Ran Over My Dogma:  Lessons Learned by a Whistle-Blowing Minister Turned Mystic, is available on her website, on Amazon.com or in Seattle's independent bookstores. She has the distinction of being the first ordained minister in the United States ever granted civil rights in a federal ruling.