PATHWAY TO JOY AND HEALING

I have been contemplating the idea of light versus darkness for some time now. I have often wondered from where darkness comes as it appears to be within all of us, and just as light is within all of us.  Darkness is a response to fear.  It is the negative action we choose after fear has been triggered based on a prior negative experience or primal instinct with corresponding feelings of negative emotions.  I am not talking about danger from which we must protect ourselves, like an attack from a wild animal or mugger. I am talking about fear, the perception of danger.

If we do not have awareness to our choice of a negative response to fear, we may choose it automatically such as learned behaviors from our parents, family, community or society.  We will choose the negative response to this triggered fear every time. For example, the perception that immigrants are taking American jobs (triggered fear), and they must be stopped (automatic negative response).  When we have awareness that immigrant are not taking our professional jobs, but working at jobs most of us don’t want, such as migrant farmers, custodial workers, and housekeepers, we realize that we do not need to automatically choose the negative response.

Awareness is a form of intelligence that the human mind naturally possess. It is the ability to tap into this awareness that helps us make conscious choices rather than automatic ones.  How many times have we made choices after feeling fear and responding with a knee jerk reaction without conscious thought or awareness?  I believe we all do this every day with others without ever realizing what we actually are doing.

As fear is so pervasive in our society and used to motivate others, darkness appears to dominate in our world.  Light appears to be just a glimmer of hope in this darkness.  Until we have conscious awareness of intentional or unintentional triggers of these fears within us and the automatic negative responses we choose, we will continue to choose darkness in our world.  Light is not just a positive outlook, but a conscious choice to positive action that we make to help others rather than hurt others.  Therefore, living in light is a conscious choice. (Copyright 2015 Awakening Journey with All Rights Reserved)