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A note about living in the light and freedom from fear of ourselves.
We see so many people for whom life has become a chore. Vitality is not an accident, it is a cultivated disposition. It is possible to manage our affairs in such a way as to regain lost vitality and energy, it is a matter of priorities and conscious choice.
Of course boring people do not choose to be that way, they become boring because they are lazy or at best lack energy. To become vital one must be challenged and adventurous. The essential elements of this are complex and are proposed to be the subject of a paper as yet only partly written and thus not on this site. The critical component is personal growth – we must be challenged in a way which requires that we continue to grow, and our relationships continue to grow.
The comfortable assumption that at some time in our lives we ‘arrive’ at some divine condition of financial security, sexual fulfilment and emotional stability is a fiction. It never happens. The best we can hope for is to keep growing in a direction which will enable us to maintain a satisfactory balance. Stop growing and our environment simply moves away and leaves us, irrelevant, an echo of forgotten yesterdays. Our lives metamorphose from security to dependence, from fulfilment to neglect for lack of arousal, and from stability to inflexibility.
What I pray for you, dear reader, is to learn to live not too far from the edge of your own experience, to visit it frequently, to be disturbed and sometimes even frightened by it – and to keep coming back for the excitement. We cannot remain young in our bodies, and so the details change with the years, only the need for regular growth remains.
Regrettably we are raised by our parents with many inhibitions about what is proper and acceptable behaviour. These inhibitions are probably a necessary part of socialisation. Discriminating differences of intent (as distinct from action) requires understanding which may not be reasonably expected of a child.
When we become adult many of us retain those childish barriers, and there are many aspects of ourselves which we are simply unwilling to have challenged or discuss. Bodily functions, sexuality, religious disbelief and expressed passions remain no-go areas for many people.
These no-go areas become barriers to our understanding of ourselves and our partners – we deflect conversations which may venture into these areas because we are unfamiliar and uncomfortable with it and so the subject remains threatening. We deny the importance of the matters and we deny the benefit of better understanding ourselves. For most people those denials become simply another issue to deny and so the snowball rolls.
Confronting this denial and dealing with the issues is an uncomfortable business: It is called growing. Many choose not to do it, but those who struggle with continued growth find there is light in the darkest places, assurance where there was only threat, and comfort where there was only fear. This is ‘the peace that passes understanding'.
Tradition has these precincts to be the lair of the Devil, and indeed, if he is merely darkness personified, they are. Life is a dangerous business and when we find ourselves in these places, as most surely we sometimes will, it is certainly better to be walking in the light of experience than to succumb to ignorance and fear and thus concede him the power.
Peace be with you, Peter.
Original: September ‘99
This page is part of “Living in the Light”
found at: http://www.geocities.com/phoban2000/
| Finding focus | Understanding motivation | Religion & faith | Sexuality | Families | Front page |