Sitting in the dark?

Imagine you and your best friend live on opposite sides of the country.  Your friend calls you on the phone to tell you about how dark it is inside of her house at night.  So, as a good friend, you begin to brainstorm with her about what she can do to bring more light into her house.  You talk about adding some candles, and how nice that might smell.  You talk about opening curtains to let more natural light into the house.  You talk about changing the lightbulbs.  The whole time you are offering solutions, your friend is just arguing about all of the reasons why that won't work.  Your friend is blaming the power company for not providing electricity.  

After a time, you just run out of suggestions.  You have done what you can, now it is up to your friend.  Sometime you just can't help someone who does not want to be helped.  You can love them, but you can't do the work for them.  Your work here is to be okay with letting go of the attachment to whether or not your friend ever gets their lights on, and your friend's work is just that, your friend's work.

Eventually, your friend calls you back up and says "Guess what!  Today I finally got fed up with sitting in the dark, so I got up and tried the light switch.  And the lights came on as soon as I flipped the switch!  Who knew I had power to the house all along?  To think, it was all within my reach all along, I just had to flip the switch."

While this little story may seem silly, and you may be thinking why would it have taken the friend so long to try the most obvious solution, the truth is we do this to ourselves all of the time!  Each time we find ourselves in "darkness" within our thoughts or emotions, the solution is usually right in front of us every step of the way.  But, for some reason, we just don't see it...until we do.

What if instead of "darkness" you use the word "fear", and instead of "flipping the switch" you "let in LOVE"?  How might that light up your world right now?

Peace,

Kathy McGinn, The Soul Whisperer