"One of the darkest truths of this dark enlightenment is that all too often it is friction which ignites the spark from which the fires of  enlightenment can begin to burn." 
                                              -Orlando

 

January, 2001

This  is  a  Path  of  Dark  Enlightenment.

          And immediately, the reader has some impression that tells him/her it isn’t the path for them.  Why?  Because the mere use of the word “dark" conjures up images contrary to what we want to believe is “right” or “wrong”.  In the long run, to say this is a path of dark enlightenment is more accurately saying that it is not a path to be undertaken by those looking for fluffy, frilly, sweetness and light explanations or exercises that guarantee not to usurp more than 5 minutes of your valuable time.  A true evolution of consciousness doesn’t respond to 5 minutes a day any more than a successful career is built on 5 minutes a day.  It is not a journey for those looking only for validation of their existing beliefs and an I’m-okay-you’re-okay justification for their weaknesses.  It isn’t a path that will tell you there are guardian angels looking over your shoulder, but a path which will show you that you are ultimately your own guardian, your own angel, your own destruction, or your own evolution.

 This journey isn't just a way of looking at life, but the way in which we choose to live, and as such it requires an unbending commitment to the Self.

  For that reason alone, I have never attempted to put these ideas in the form of a book.  People want to be told that it’s okay to smoke today as long as you intend to quit tomorrow.  It’s okay to sit in front of the tv 7 nights a week as long as you go to church for an hour on Sunday morning.  It’s okay to bury oneself utterly in one’s job or hobbies, because that’s what’s expected of productive members of society, and yet still think of oneself as a deeply spiritual person by virtue of having read the first chapter of OUT ON A LIMB.

 Of course, this isn't to say we can't find pleasure in the pleasures of life.  It's the dissipation and self-indulgence that are our greatest enemies.  For example, as I said on another page of this site, I'm not living the life of a monk with some glassy-eyed stare.  On the other hand, one way I avoid the glassy-eyed stare is also by not living the traditionally "normal" life of the consensual reality.  Going to a movie - even a really bad movie - might give me some things to think about.  On the other hand, immersing myself in mindless television night after night would insure that I never think.  So it's a matter of making the impeccable choice.

Knowing that we are creatures who thrive on pleasure and shun pain, it is our nature to feed the one and avoid all avenues leading to the other.  And yet, what's important is not to confuse pain with hard work on the spiritual realm.  It's our definitions that rule us every bit as much as how we apply ourselves to our individual journeys toward evolution.  If we choose to define "pain" as anything requiring effort, we have fallen victim to the lowest common denominator of what it means to be human.  While I generally have no use for slogans, there's something to be said for the idea of "no pain, no gain."  We can no more expect our immortal "soul" to be healthy through neglect than we could expect our bodies to be healthy if neglected.

We have to do the work, and it is a moment-to-moment, day-to-day mindset that guides us to always be making the choices that will further our cohesive consciousness instead of detracting from it.

Whenever we succumb to our lowest common denominator, whenever we decide, "Well, I'm only human," we have admitted defeat before ever taking the first step on the path.  Whenever we decide to live down to that lowest common denominator instead of living up to our highest potential, we are consigning ourselves to the dust, and this is clearly not impeccable.

But impeccability requires hard work, and that's not what anybody wants to hear.  It wasn’t what I wanted to hear when I first talked to Orlando and he began by asking one simple question:  “Who are you?”

The answer I gave at the time was some pathetic recitation of what I believed to be a very impressive list.  “I’m a professional writer.  I’m in a relationship that’s lasted for 20 years.  I’m a martial artist and a horsewoman and a real estate agent.”

To which Orlando replied, “Yes, I’m sure all of those things are true, but they’re what you do. Who would you be if there were no more books to write, if your relationship were to end tomorrow, if you could no longer be involved in martial arts or horsemanship, if you did not define yourself by your job?  Who are you, Della?”

I could not answer.  And it was that single question which launched me on this dark and treacherous journey.  I call it dark because it is not a traditional path.  It cannot be called a path to enlightenment alone, for I’ve discovered that light can only be perceived from the darkness.  Without the existence of the darkness, light itself would not exist.  And, ultimately, to deny the darkness within ourselves is to deny at least half of who we are.  We are yin and we are yang, and another dark truth is that it will take both working together in balance and harmony to propel us into our evolution of consciousness.  Why?  Because it is often from the so-called dark side of the human soul that our strongest motivation comes.  If we are not hungry, we have no reason to hunt or farm and so we perish.  If we do not experience fear when presented with danger, we fail to run and so become prey for predators, whether human or otherwise.

But perhaps most importantly, if we do not feel real grief when we stare our own mortality in the face, we have absolutely no reason to want to live forever.  On other pages on this site, I discuss the fact that unconditional love is the primary motivating force behind this journey.  The love I have for life, for all its beauty, and for the ones with whom I share this journey is so profound that I am compelled to turn over every proverbial rock in search of an answer that might allow us to continue this wondrous existence into infinity.  So in that way, it is truly love which motivates the journey, yet without turning to face the opposite side of love (loss), we live in a false and an all too temporal garden.

It is, therefore, only when we realize what we stand to lose that we find reason to wholly embrace the commitment to the Self - the commitment to some form of evolution, some continuity of consciousness that will preserve and protect this love which motivated us in the first place.  Yin and yang.  The dark and the light working together to create not only harmony but forward momentum as described by Orlando's quote at the top of this page.  Without some friction, the wheel won't turn.

Sadly, most people simply will not look at the darkness at all, and it's interesting to note that one of the primary programs currently being uploaded into all of us in this Western culture teaches us to live for the right now, grab what pleasure we can, to hell with the environment, to hell with tomorrow.  The results of this are obvious.  We live in a fast food world of indescribable pollution, irreparable damage to the planet, destruction of the rainforests, the extinction of thousands of species due to Man's greed, and horrors so heinous no sane individual can look at them head on and not feel outraged, horrified and overwhelmed.  We've lost respect for ourselves as a species, and so most people don't even look at what they're doing or what they can do, turning instead to the false security of inane sitcoms or organized religions.  (Is there really any difference?)

What can we do about it?  On an individual everyday level, we have to acknowledge the problems before we can even begin to solve them, and that's a matter of each and every person making a commitment to themselves in whatever manner they feel appropriate.  On a more spiritual level, we have to turn and see the darkness before we can even begin to realize what's at stake.  We have to acknowledge that we can lose the very air we breathe before we have any real motivation to change our behavior.  But more than that, on a far, far deeper level, we have to acknowledge that we can lose the Self - the very "I Am" consciousness which looks out on the world - before we will find any reason to turn off the t.v., get up off the church pew, turn off this computer, and go take a long look in our own mirror, asking ourselves the first question:

 "Who are you, Self?"

I once said to a fellow traveler that it has taken 10 billion years of collective evolution for the molecules & cells of my being to come together in exactly this manner which I recognize as "Della".  I have no conscious awareness of having existed before, and though I realize a great many people subscribe to the ideas of "reincarnation," I see little evidence for its existence beyond a mere molecular level.  Yes, the "molecules" of Marie Antoinnette and the Marquis de Sade are still here.  They have always been here and always will be.  Perhaps there are even ingrams of sentience still attached to some of those energetic molecules, thus we might have a "feeling" that we were once part of Marie Antoinnette and mistake that "feeling" for some sort of proof that we live again, when in actuality it's only a recurrence of the molecules and not a recurrence of old Marie herself.

   Each of us has within ourselves the molecules of eternity.  We might just as well say we were once a tyrannosaurus rex as to say we were once Cleopatra or Queen Elizabeth I.  Both are equally true.  Both are equally irrelevant to the survival of our individual consciousness, the "I Am" we are right now.

I offer these ideas not to open a potential debate, for those who Truly Believe in reincarnation will not be swayed from that belief system any more than a true Christian can acknowledge that perhaps Jesus found the way, the truth & the light, but he himself was not the way, the truth & the light.  I offer these ideas, instead, in the hopes of encouraging every seeker to turn and really look into their own mirror and see what will be lost if we don't evolve.  It's you.  All that you are.  All that you love.  All that you have ever seen or experienced or known.

In the movie, BLADERUNNER, Roy Batty (the Rutger Hauer character) makes an incredible speech as he sits poised on the rooftop, on the edge of the abyss, knowing he is about to die.  Something to the effect, "I've seen attack ships on fire off the shore of Orion, seabeams glittering in the dark near the Tenhauser Gate.  And all these moments will be lost... like tears in the rain."

This is the voice of consciousness railing at its own mortality, and until each of us turns and looks in our mirror to confront what we have experienced that will be lost like tears in the rain, perhaps we are depriving ourselves of our strongest human potential - the potential to choose and embrace our own evolution of consciousness into eternity.

How is this done? you ask.  That's the question and that's the journey.  But without first asking that question, without first confronting that the thing we stand to lose is the Self, no journey is possible.  For until we grieve our own mortality and go to our own funeral, we exist in the comfortable world of illusions, safe in our individual temporal garden. So in that way, the old legends of being thrown out of Eden might have some value as allegory.  Until we stand naked before ourselves, tiny insignificant creatures looking out at a vast and infinite void, we simply have no reason to take action.

Of course, part of the journey is coming to recognize that we are really not the tiny, insignificant creatures we have been programmed to think.  For on the other side of that "dark" molecular structure is the realization that we are far more than any tyrannosaurus rex or Marie Antoinnette or QEII.  We are the entire universe, for the simple reason that we are comprised of exactly the same molecules as the universe itself, and the universe is imbued with sentience.  We can become eternally conscious if we can figure out the puzzle.  Or we can surrender our molecules - but far more horrifically, we will surrender our very consciousness - back into that void if we don't evolve.

The sentient universe is neither loving nor hateful.  It is neither god nor devil. It simply exists, containing all possibilities.  What determines which of those possibilities actually go through the formality of actually occurring is entirely up to the Creator.  There is only One Creator. 

 You are The One. 

New age enthusiasts like to refer to humans as “beings of light” or “beings of goodness” or “beings moving toward becoming wholly light.”  And yet, these are only hollow words, for as much as we are moved by beauty or art, we are equally as affected, perhaps even thrilled in a negative sense by extreme ugliness or the human capacity for destruction.  In fact, we are far more likely as a species to watch the latest video of the bombing of Baghdad than we would be to tune in to PBS to see the collected works of the great masters simulcast with Mozart or even Pink Floyd.  In short, we are creatures of darkness every bit as much as we long to be “beings of light”, and it is the two halves of our souls working in creative balance that will eventually enable us to answer that question:  Who are you?

That isn’t to say this is a path that promotes negativity or dark thoughts.  But neither does it attempt to downplay those parts of ourselves by pretending they don’t exist, or by trying to disguise them as flaws to be overcome.  We are human, and as such we are as much enthralled by an airplane crash as by the flight of the eagle, and there is a very good reason for this.  We perceive in opposites - light/dark, good/evil, black/white, on/off, true/false, life/death, pain/pleasure.  Without juxtaposition of perception, we cannot begin any real exploration.  So to those so-called "wisdom methods" coming into current popularity which teach "only the light" or encourage participants to "banish the darkness" within themselves... I would advise you to run like hell, for the bottom line is that any teaching which encourages us to ignore literally half of our perceptions is not a teaching we can afford, for it is a method that is attempting to re-program us into acknowledging half of what we truly are.  Without friction, the wheel still won't turn.

To deny that this is part of our intrinsic our nature is to ensure we will never evolve.  To see these darknesses as flaws in our character instead of simply part of our character is to try to put a different definition on what it means to be a human being. It's what we do with the darkness and what we do with the light that matters, not trying to pretend one or the other doesn't exist.

Though I once thought myself rather odd and even completely out of step with my fellow humans, I have come to realize that many, many people in this world are simply “plugged in” to a leaning toward autumn over spring, a love of night over day, a preference for the minor-keyed melodies over Sousa marches, a case of  feeling more alive on a rainy night than a sunny afternoon. And since researching shamanism, I have come to understand that some of these tendencies are simply part of what is referred to by Arnold Mindell, Michael Harner and others as a “shamanic personality” or “shamanic initiate."

It is a case of hearing a different drummer, and many of us who choose to dance to his rhythm often find ourselves in the position of being seen as witches, heathen, devil-worshippers, or simply “weirdoes” in the eyes of our consensual society peers.  In reality, of course, it’s all a matter of perception.  A witch is nothing more than a healer or someone who seeks to use all the tools of perception with which the human organism has been gifted – call it magick or sorcery or simply self-empowerment.  A heathen is only someone with whom we ourselves do not agree as to ideology.  And in order to worship the “devil” I would have to believe in the traditional version of “god”, so to my perceptions, assigning such labels to someone drawn to the shamanic path is ludicrous.

 Reality is perception.  The world will see us how it will.  We will see the world through the eyes of our own perception.  They will seldom if ever be in agreement.

I walk this darker path because it is the only road to enlightenment I have ever seen.  I was raised in a strict Southern Baptist environment, and as a result was exposed to Christian philosophy and theology all my life.  Two of my uncles were ministers.  And despite all of this, despite my (somewhat unwilling) baptism at age 7 and my wholehearted attempts to believe in God as a means to salvation, I suspect that the brains this so-called “god” gave me prevented such a system of blind faith from ever taking hold because it is counter-productive to self-survival.

I’ve often said to my Christian friends that if god exists, surely he gave us this grand computer on our shoulders to use in order to better ourselves, in order to evolve to be more than we were when we came into this world, to become more than the sum of our chemical and mental processes.  In short, if god exists at all, he gave us the ability to evolve – not by waiting for him to save us, but so that we could save ourselves.

One of my most profound shamanic visions came one night in meditation.  It revealed to me that the Universe (what some would call "god" or "nature" or "the all") gave all she had when she sprang into being in the first place.  Nothing was withheld.  The Universe gave us the blueprint for eternity, for the Universe herself is struggling to evolve in all possible ways - to become greater than the sum of her parts, greater than the combined consciousness of all her individual lifeforms stretching backward and forward into infinity.  The Universe is struggling for eternal cohesion of consciousness, just as those of us on this journey are.

And in her bid to evolve, she gave each of us our highest potential, building it into us through the molecular structure of "reality" itself.  It was crystal clear to me - the Universe withheld nothing.  What this means, quite simply, is that we are on our own, but with all the power of the Universe imprinted onto us down to a sub-atomic level.  In other words, in that grand burst of energy that cause the very Universe to spring into existence out of whatever nothingness had existed before, everything was used.  No sentience was withheld to function as "god". 

 As parents, we teach our children survival skills.  We don’t tell them to jump in the river without knowing how to swim, and rely on mommie and daddy to save them, or to carry them to heaven after they are dead.  If we are truly loving parents, we teach the children to swim so that they can save themselves.  Surely the Universe would do no less for her children.

Evolution through intent and will is the swimming lesson.

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