Don't wait to see light within yourself. Light is a reflection of the darkness within, and I'm not talking about a black, painful darkness, with sorrow or whatever we've learned to associate with the void.
Very often, the collective memory of the human species pushes us to unconsciously perceive something as good, bad, or harmful. The best example of this is our instincts. Before we have much life experience, we are born with the survival instinct.
But how many of our fears are truly ours, and how many are memories, beliefs, and perceptions we've inherited?
Is a monster frightening because of its nature, or because of the memory of fear we've created around it? And if it isn't frightening, is it only our perception that makes it so?
For some time now, I've been studying myself through perceptions and trying to reprogram the abstract.
What happens if darkness is not perceived as something bad or frightening?
What happens if collectively we don't believe that something or a monster is evil?
What happens when your perspective shifts toward evil, toward survival, and toward the unexpected things that awaken the fear of the unknown?
What if the unknown isn't frightening at all?
I've always been an abstract person, drawn to antonyms. Up and down. Good and bad. Light and dark. Big and small. Long and short.
I was thinking a lot about this topic.
When I wanted to sleep, I'd think of light, beauty, little fairies. And I thought: what happens if a monster comes in my dream and only waking up saves me?
That night, a very large fairy came to me in a dream, in a completely dark place. Only she emitted light. Not because she was entirely luminous, but because she had glowing forms on her body, like body painting with light.
She held me with her hands. I was as small as her toe.
It's very strange that I wasn't afraid.
It was the first time I thought about a large fairy, because for me, fairies had always been small, cute, beautiful.
But this was a gigantic fairy.
She held me with both hands, as if to give me water to drink, and I wasn't afraid.
Then she kissed me and placed me back on the ground.
When I woke up, it felt like it had truly happened. Everything was so vivid that I started reading about giant fairies. I had never known how many archetypes of them existed.
This was my first experience where I felt my brain had begun to reprogram the abstract.
I started practicing the abstract more often.
I had always been afraid of the dark.
I would go into a room for an hour in the evening and challenge the fear. Complete darkness. Just me and my fear, locked between four walls.
This was my daily practice.
Much later I realized that, without knowing it, this resembles what psychology calls gradual exposure therapy. When the brain is continuously confronted with something without the expected danger occurring, it begins to interpret that experience differently.
Gradually, I began to integrate the concept of "oneness" more deeply.
We are all one.
To me, this doesn't mean that individuality doesn't exist, but that everything connects to everything else in ways we often don't understand.
This is one of the fundamental concepts I believe a person should develop and deepen. To understand as much as possible the idea that everything is one.
I'll explore this further in another article.
Another practice I did was to look, for about ten minutes, at characters or figures perceived as despicable.
Not to justify them.
But to embody more deeply the idea that you could be considered evil, yet still be part of the same whole.
People forget that everything that frightens them was once part of the same universe that created us. The matter that makes us up has passed through countless forms, and the atoms that are now part of our bodies were once part of stars, earth, plants, and other beings.
With this practice, when you can feel compassion or understanding for something you perceive as evil, you begin to deepen the meaning of oneness and teach the brain to create a new path beyond memories and rigid labels of "good" and "evil."
Perhaps reprogramming the abstract doesn't begin when you find answers.
Perhaps it begins when you start questioning the assumptions you've accepted your entire life.
Perhaps darkness is not our enemy.
Perhaps only the perception we've built around it.