AMP: Artists' Meeting Place and Resource Collective

I've been questioning the DIVINE IS LIGHT--EVIL IS DARK concept lately. It keeps coming up, and has always felt untrue, because humans born blind don't know what light is.

I love the metaphor of "leaving the darkness and moving into the light," because it's so easy to SEE...but come on, kids...it IS simply a metaphor for AWARENESS.

I found myself at a Ra meeting (somewhat against my will/thought it was a yoga fest:) recently, where they described "God" as a speck of light in the darkness, and everyone seemed really happy and enthusiastic about that. Yet if "God" is "all that is," "the Universe," "Tao" and the Universe is mostly darkness, then "God" is mainly darkness, no? The LITERAL translation does not hold up.

If Hell is searing molten fire, and the Sun and all other stars are searing molten fire, why are they so like Hell? And if they are the source of all natural light, as we know it in this dimension, then would not our light come from a Hellacious source…even if it's from a camp fire or light-bulb, for that matter?

So LIGHT has an evil shadow side (metaphorically speaking) and darkness can be quite good if it saves us from burning flame!

Seeing in metaphor is an art form that more of us could enjoy! Light means "aware" and dark means "unaware." God = Pure Awareness, and Satan = "that which we are not aware of."

This is a very important distinction, because we are emerging out of 4,000 years (give or take a few) of a babyish literal translation of light and dark, which ironically has ignited much evil and suffering on this planet. Fundamentalist religions of all sorts, pretending to bring us toward the "light" actually have a quite "DARK" and evil shadow side, as they prevent the expansion of awareness, forbid us from opening our minds to other ideologies and forbid questioning and evolving their ideas. The book of Genesis is basically all about forbidding awareness and it seems patriarchal religions are generally founded on this principal; Do not question, do not evolve. --anti-evolutionary to the core.

They say we are made in the image of "God," which we can now see as perhaps, PURE AWARENESS (does awareness have a gender?). Maybe we're just fragments of the GREAT AWARENESS, seeking more awareness as we find our way back home, toward "the light," as it were.

And so the "Prince of Darkness" is the energy that keeps us in the dark and unaware (metaphorically speaking); we see right where he is on earth!

I LOVE things like psychotherapy, Socratic questioning and dream analysis as they take skeletons out of dark closets and shine light on them; even though these things are considered scandalous or absurd to so many in this anti-aware, anti-change society of ours. Society wants me to whisper about my few bouts of psychotherapy; "shhhhhhhhhhhhh… Imagine her needing to become more aware?" We all have a shadow side we want to disown, keep it hidden from everyone, even ourselves; pretend it doesn't exist.

But what if we, globally decided to shine some light into the shadows. What then?

What if you and I and the rest of the world became aware of it all…the shadows and the light, shined light on everything hidden and disowned?

A world of AWARE beings. What does that look like?

--imagine day without night, white without black...

--imagine awareness without ignorance...

How am I going to paint this???

xxo,

Nance