When we talk about ‘denial’, we mean that someone does not want to face a wound, a loss, a form of inner blackness. On the first Sunday of Advent it dawns on me that perhaps more than the acknowledgment of our denial, the acknowledgment of the denier in us, is the birthplace of the sense of being “a child of the Light.”
Now you could say: ‘So away with all that attention for the dark in me. Children of God, of the Light, nothing but Lightwork fits. I should occupy myself with nothing but Thoughts of Light and Feelings of Light.’
The gradual progression from dark to light of Advent wants to make it clear to us that man is a little more complex than that. For it is not our ‘own will’ or our ‘ego’ that is the child of the Light. It is precisely a completely different, inexpressible potential in us that can rejoice in that kinship.
The invitation therefore does not seem to me: learn to relate in a different way with light and dark, with acceptance or denial, but: who is it who would want to learn this? Who is the student? For where the ego is the disciple, how can it be expected that it could ever realize a result that puts an end to its own existence? Why should our own will, which is dark but appears luminous, endeavor to see itself exposed as such?
As much as Advent is a corridor to the Light, it will turn out to be an illusory light unless we keep our eyes fixed, as though from an inner place of non-denial, on the going on within us that denies being: a will-o’-the-wisp and obscure. It seems to me to be more effective than having our ‘what’ focus on us to shift this to our ‘who’.
Yes, objectively all are children of the Light, of God. But the subjective experience of being part of this Light, always, everywhere, despite what, wherever and whoever, demands a form of ‘shut up and hands at home’. Of patience, emptiness, silence, of, call it ‘unfilled presence’ for the bundler in us of everything that manifests itself as the opposite of that.
Not denying the denier, that’s the exercise. For to give home to the denier is to be at home in the Recognizer. Present unconditionally for the obscuring in us, we know ourselves to be part of the Unconditionally Present and Ever Luminous.
Blessed Advent!
