There is No Dark, Only Less Light By Pat Heavren
D
arkness grows as it heads toward the threshold of winter and 2020 continues to give us cause to wistfully look back to a time when life was a whole lot “lighter.” I’m reminded of a half-dozen autumns ago when I met Don Mariano Quispe Flores, a Peruvian healer and elder wisdom teacher. Our paths crossed during a rare visit to the U.S. from his village home high in the Andes. Through an interpreter who translated his native Q’echua to English, Don Mariano shared a single statement that forever changed my understanding of the definitions of dark and light. While I’d been in intensive study and practice of energy (light) medicine and related nature teachings for well over a decade, I’d missed a similar kind of memo issued by a former teacher, maybe because it was presented in less succinct terms. Or perhaps I’d simply not been paying close enough attention then or as far back as physics class in school. If I had I might have received the message decades sooner:
There is no dark, only less light. The impact Don Mariano’s statement had on me was dramatic. I remember my awareness going from a two-position on/ off perspective to an inclusive circular point of view. It happened in the flick of a switch, pun intended. It was like the symbolic difference between a common light switch and a dimmer. The dimmer can be pushed on and off to produce bright light or remove it altogether. But if you turn a dimmer to the left or right, a fuller spectrum of possibilities becomes present. To others listening that day, it may have seemed a benign detail unworthy of attention. To me, it explained much about approaches to healing and living a vital life. Over time, it inspired me to take apart and reconstruct a more inclusive foundation underlying my world and changed the way I offered work to others who were seeking freedom from circumstances they experienced as dark and oppressive.
I remember Sandy, a gifted coach working with corporate executives, who came to see me shortly after my illuminating event with Don Mariano. She was in the midst of grieving the loss of her mentor to breast cancer. While Sandy’s heart ached and her teacher’s light literally faded in death, she also felt more inspired and driven than ever to shine brightly, wanting so much to carry forward the valuable legacy of her mentor whom Sandy considered to be an illuminated soul. She wanted to explore ways to up-level her impact on others and become a worldclass coach. Sandy went on to tell me that she often found herself the brightest bulb in the room when she trained groups or teams. Her words didn’t ring of pompousness. Sandy carried a palpably positive disposition and full tool belt from years of experience and hard work that produced results. She was simply noticing a difference that made her a kind of elder in her own right.
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