When we were training my dog as a puppy, several years ago, my daughter liked to do a trick where she put a treat on one of his paws, which he wasn’t allowed to eat until he was given permission to do so. Our dog became really good at this but would turn his head sharply to one side, to avoid seeing the treat, until he was told “OK” and then he would eat it, so quickly, it would just vanish in a gulp. You got the impression you could have put anything on that paw and he would have eaten it, regardless of what it was, so eager was he to grab it once “allowed”…

In effect, by turning his head, he was removing the treat from the equation, as though it simply wasn’t there…which, when you think about, is to remove the choice altogether…to say “there is no choice”, which has a very different energy to a situation where you are making a conscious decision between one thing or another. One makes for a predestined, limited scenario and the other for a masterful engagement with what it means to be consciousness in living form.

We all have choices in every moment of every day; choices that, though they seem trivial, affect trajectories far more life-altering than we often care to think about. We don’t enjoy thinking about this responsibility (a default position learned over many thousands of years, as though we made a “bad” choice once and lived to regret it)  and so, many times and in more situations than most people care to admit, we simply remove those choices from the picture, as though they aren’t really there. When we hand over the decision-making powers to others; be that regulatory bodies and governments or to other family members and people in our cultural “tribe” we are, in effect, twisting our necks around as though to not see the other options, removing them from sight. Even when we suspect we might not want to chose those other options anyway (so we think it doesn’t matter that they are removed from sight for us), as when we assume that those making decisions on our behalf have our best interests at heart, we are reducing ourselves into a limited being and forgetting our consciousness, each time we do this.

And sometimes, those things we avert our attention from are things that are being chosen for us by those that (our instincts tell us) don’t have our best interests at heart…yet, rather than tackle them, we pitch our gaze at some sort of alternate reality, which is very far from manifesting yet (whether you call that wishful thinking or practice of the law of attraction). This trend allows major, trajectory-altering, scenarios to unfold which are tantamount to our fundamental freedoms being taken away from us in plain sight, as by the roll-out of 5G (as I wrote about recently) and yet perfectly intelligent people shrug and say “what can I do, it can’t be stopped”. Most  people I have spoken to have done zero research about what this new technology will do to human beings or the ecosystem.

Even in the most “enlightened” communities, I see this behaviour in spadefuls. The cult of light worship has made so many people formulaic in their pursuit of that with which they want to engage themselves. If the choice of situation on offer involves outcomes that are dark-seeming, manipulative, nefarious, disturbing to think about or “low-vibration” as goes the phrase and, on the other hand,  alternatives that are so sparkly they might be the fairy on a Christmas tree (and equally out of reach, in practical terms, unless we get more practical in our choices…) they turn their attention to that sparkly fairy and hold it there, with all their might, Meanwhile, they ignore, as though its literally not there, all the dark underbelly of a world that persists in presenting very much evidence that we live in far from sparkly times.

Obsession with a distorted version of law of attraction (since it also advocates the need for action…) has done much to fuel this shot in the foot for what ought to be a more active version of spirituality in these precarious times. Whilst I wholeheartedly subscribe to the quantum viewpoint that we can alter outcomes by what we focus on and expect to happen, I have learned from experience one other very hard lesson to take in; being that the quantum choice only seems to hold sway and true sticking power when we make an ACTIVE choice, not a pre-designated one or those which, in many cases, are almost formulaic in the way we automatically favour the light over dark, before assessing the full situation. Its as though, in missing out the process of looking into the darker corners, our high-vibe choice loses impetus. People, as ever, become lazy, choosing light, light, more light without remembering why they are even making this very choice anymore. They become almost religious observers of a particular practice without getting down and dirty in the business of life, which is far less pristine than they would prefer and which, when we open up our entire awareness, within the human experience, involves seeing very much that is unsightly and disturbing…but to do so is a graduation of sorts.

My experience in Venice, which I wrote about recently, reminded me that we live on a thin line of potential between dark and light all the time, even if this is more manifestly tangible in some places, as an energy seemingly pouring out of a crack in the ground (for those of us who are acutely sensitive to the energy of place), than in others. Walking streets that hailed me with evidence of what was both exquisite and revolting in equal proportions was a powerful reminder of this in the lead up to a period of time when this would be taken to whole new levels of experience in the choices of my daily life. Life itself is a labyrinth and we hit constant dead ends when we don’t work with the light and dark equally, wherever they flow together. “Dark” is not inherently bad…but it can go that way when we leave it to its own devices for far too long, as we have in the last era; turning us into dreaders of dark, worshippers of light yet somehow caught in the middle.

“So which is it? Are we hopelessly fragile victims of events that are beyond our control, or are we powerful creators harbouring dormant abilities that we are only beginning to understand?…Which of these truths we experience is determined by the choices that we make in our lives, choices base on our belief.” (Greg Braden – “The Spontaneous Healing of Belief”.

So what if we will only transform the whole when we look both potentials equally in the eye and then stand up for own, no-longer conditioned, belief systems, knowing what we now do (which is to be aware in a uniquely human format)?

Our present reality is made up of some significant amounts of evidence of dark and nefarious “happenings” seeking to manipulate our choices and, indeed, our entire future reality…and yet. It seems we are made up of a vast population who are still fast asleep to such things, another layer that are lethargic and demoralised, having not yet discovered the power of remembering that we can alter realities using a consciousness they have forgotten they have and then…amongst those other people, the very people in whom I would hope to see signs of ACTIVE choice of one thing over another, I see only signs of so many heads turned acutely in one direction, refusing to see the other hand on offer and thus a failure to follow through with actions. They have pre-made their choice based on assumptions, scrubbed all thought of what they don’t want to admit is there like a bogey man under the bed and, as such, they remove all power from the choices that they make…

And to pre-empt anyone with the thought that, surely, by avoiding looking at what he didn’t want to see, my dog became very good at not having to deal with it, what I actually observed was the following. That, in not being “allowed” to look at that thing, he only wanted it more…like some sort of unreasonable craving, keeping him attached to it, and that’s how we are with all those things we want to be gone from our world so much that we’re pretenting they’re not there. The more we make them into the forbidden territory of our attention, the more they seem to hang around, like so-much unfinished business…because we’re not dealing with them fully!

Trying to open conversation about these darknesses, the very things we need to be aware are there in order to push off against them into another reality, I feel as though I am being stepped around, as though contagious. Its a conversation killer amongst friends that I would normally turn to for the kind of conversations that move mountains. I’ve received reactions varying from the downright scathing (as though I have achieved a poor mark in my spiritual homework this week for focusing on anything other than light…) to the “run to the hills” approach of those who say they just can’t bear to think about “all that stuff” going on and so, like my dog, they just pretend its not there, head turned sharply the other way. So all-pervasive has the idea of “light worker” become that many people reject dark themes with the idea that “its just not my area of expertise” or “my skillset”; as though they are a plumber and this is for an electrician to deal with…when really, to become whole, we all have to become all-rounders. These are powerful individuals who could make some serious inroads towards manifesting our new earth and yet they are rendered ineffectual through an old set of beliefs and so much fear around looking darkness in the eye, as well as seeing all the light potential.

One other meme I want to address on this topic is that to bring dark into focus is not to go against enchantment. Disenchantment is a very-major ailment of our times; something I can feel happening to whole swathes of people (especially noticable as I returned to the UK recently…Brexit and other disullusionment sources, that have seemingly robbed people of their freedoms and future aspirations, have played a big part, especially amongst young people) and its a topic I plan to write about soon. As I mentioned before, I am reading Sharon Blackie’s book “The Enchanted Life” and she is one of several advcates for a, very-crucial and timely return to encantment if we are to rebalance enough to move forwards with project earth and yet darkness is not the thing to remove or threaten it, per se. The truth of the awful state of our ecosystem is not the reason for our young people being so disenchanted with life, for instance; they are disenchanted with the lack of serious, practical responses being made by those who could pull-together and turn this around. So, rather than going against enchantment, when we allow ourselves to see both dark and light and remember how to work with both, we become re-enchanted as we relearn the magic of our own powers, like the magician achieving some new “trick” that eluded them before they mixed up different ingredients. We feel imediately uplifted…don’t we?…and like some sort of invisible weight has dropped from our shoulders when we tackle something head on and realise that we’re not the only one working for a different outcome. Imagine if we all set about transforming our physical world tomorrow; everything else, all self-interested commercialism, halted for a mass effort to confront what feels “off” about our current priorities and the mess we’ve made in our world. Just imagine all those feelings of pure enchantment that would flood in if this mircacle-in-action were to occur before our very eyes, even as we took an inventory of all the “dark stuff” to be owned up to.

There was a time when I saw all the prevalent light-obsession hanging around in spiritual people’s viewpoints and yet trusted that their stance, in its way, was enough…that these people tipped the balance, anyway, and that it wasn’t in their remit to get down and dirty on the frontline of heavy choices, as I seem to have picked for my own “entertainment”. Yet, as the matter of tipping our human scales becomes every more pressing, an existential decision that could make or break us very soon, I find myself increasing in frustration and despair to be surrounded by yet another version of  decision-avoidance. It has become apparent to me, in so many ways, across all the levels of life, that if we seek to make our spiritual selves into embodied spiritual selves, with an actual 3D planet on which to live, along with all our other dimensions fully intact, we have to prove ourselves with ACTION as well as focus. We need to DO and BE in equal proportion in order to effect the clicking-together of our yin-and-yang division point, to become the living, breathing whole that we aspire to be. We already know we can be (already are…) whole “out there”, somewhere off planet; the whole point of this earth exercise is to replicate this wholeness in a physical, earth-based reality, where we are prepared to stand up…in some very physical, manifest and practical ways…for our choices and the earth we want to live on, even if that involves looking at things we really don’t like to see. Compared to the transcendent life we have been leading until now (which has involved being out of our bodies more than in them, for a lot of us) comes very hard and yet, when we do it, we make magic happen. But…it requires more than just one of us doing it; and I am finding it so hard to rally people to that perspective that I am almost at the point of despair. I said almost…speaking my truth on these topics is one of my ways of taking the action of choice based on seeing as much of the whole picture as my awareness is capable of; we can ask no more of ourselves than that.

Yes, the world is full of activists right now, each with their particular cause bundle and yet, I know, to do only this is not quite enough. We also have those who, in their new-age (and more traditional) way, are all about praying for a better outcome. Then there’s those who (I truly hope) are coming to know that to bring in the power of conscious focus, the ability to make quantum choices for the light, whilst also seeing what we don’t choose as clear as anything in all its heinous “glory”, accepting this as a reality that is deserving of their acknowledgement (like a wounded child that is tugging at their leg…), is the most powerful combination of those two skillsets that we all possess.

To operate from both of these parts of ourselves (the human-immersive and the spiritual-overview), in equal balance, is the most powerful thing we can do right now. It will afford us astonishing results but it requires of us that we dare to look at all the dark in our periphery…see it, know its there, acknowledge it and then choose different because we dare to know what we are not choosing. By the way, to make a choice in the physically manifest dimensions requires action of a very particular kind and, though not an easy transition for those that prefer to direct their visualisations of a better world rather than get vocal, active and controversial, you know its what I’m talking about here. Like I said in my last post, we get all the plates spinning together in a powerful new way when we split our time between Doing, Being and Transcending; a trinity (or triskele) of priorities that is as ancient as it has largely been forgotten or misconstrued. Only the transcendent part is strictly “off planet” in the sense of not having an opinion about outcomes; the rest is fully engaged with the earth’s stories, albeit in different (linear and non-linear) ways of working through us.

There’s something about mixing up these two sides of our physical awareness in one soul that is quite alchemical, like making gold out of two substances that “should”, according to certain laws, never mix…and yet we can do this miraculous thing when we remember our full (physical and nonphysical, combined) potential. Yes, its not easy, can be dangerous, takes us very close to our edge (where I seem to be right now…) and we need to keep ourselves physically as well as mentally strong. Yet, when we master it, we ascend to the true mastery of another era that awaits us, just over the other side of the choice to be as we were always meant to be; in balance and whole. If many of us could bring ourselves to do it…to turn our heads to centre and see what lies on both sides of our binary earth-based reality (without the fear-based preconditioning of the previous era) and then still make the choice of will, we could turn this whole world around on a dime.