Physical Light

Have you ever been in a dark room when you saw something in the corner that frightened you? Regardless of what it actually was, you probably imagined the worst.

In the absence of certainty, our brains will find a way to explain things unknown to us. We are powerful and our imaginations are powerful. Therefore, when we let our imaginations go, we can conjure up some pretty amazing stories to fill in the many blanks.

Is there an intruder? A monster? Is somebody hiding in the corner?

The only way to know for sure is to turn on the light. Light eliminates the need for continued speculation. Light illuminates what actually is.

Maybe you’ll find that the figure you were seeing was actually only a shadow that vanished when the light came on. Maybe you’ll find that the “intruder” is that old coat you tossed on the chair before bed. Or maybe, just maybe, you’ll find that it is actually an intruder.

But you won’t know until you turn the light on. Because light reveals what is, we will not always be relieved by what the light illuminates – in other words, turning on the light doesn’t always offer relief. Sometimes we will find something actually scary. We still need to see clearly, we still need to know. You must illuminate everything (the good and the bad) before you will be able to address whatever it is. Only then will you be in a position to address what you find.

One thing is certain – turning on the light does not create a problem, it only clarifies what already exists. And clarity is essential for beginning to address what needs to be addressed.

“Turning on the light does not create problems – turning on the light only clarifies what already is.”

And turning on the light brings comes clarity, and with clarity comes peace.

Personal Example

Over the course of raising my kids, we have inevitably experienced the horror of a lice outbreak. Getting rid of lice is difficult and time-consuming.

After the first round of lice, my kids would periodically ask me to check their heads when they felt an itch. I admit that often I would resist. Why? I did not want to discover more lice. I knew that if I looked and found them, I would then have to begin the tedious work of ridding our home of them. Once I knew they were there, I would be unable to ignore them

Sometimes I would successfully dodge the request to look, if only until the next morning. But it struck me that my not looking did not mean that they weren’t there, if they were. Looking would not create that problem. Looking would only expose the problem’s existence.

Once I had that realization, when somebody asked me to check their itchy head, I grabbed a headlamp, and began searching.

Mercifully, most of the time I have found nothing, but when and if there is ever something else to find, I will know what I’m dealing with. Only then can the problem be solved.

Turning on the Internal Light

Just like we sometimes need to turn on the actual light in the dark room to be able to see more clearly, we sometimes also need to turn on our own internal lights to be able to see our selves more clearly.

We may really not want to do this – it can be incredibly scary to see the truth of who we are, even if we are the only ones seeing it. But it also takes a LOT of energy to keep parts of our selves hidden.

Maybe we are hiding a part of our self because we fear rejection.

• Maybe we are hiding a part of our self because we are ashamed.

• Maybe we are hiding a part of our self because we are afraid of what we might find.

• However, true transformation can only happen in the light.

It is very possible that when you turn on your internal light you will find that what you have been hiding isn’t so bad after all.

And it’s also possible that you will find that there was a lot more hidden than you even realized.

And that is ok.

You must always illuminate the bad before you can either eliminate it or transform it into something good. Turning on the light is the first necessary step toward accepting and maybe even embracing what actually is versus what your thoughts tell you is real.

Clarity is essential for transformation.

Just like with turning on the light in the darkened room, turning on the light to peer inside your self will not create any problems. All it can do is clarify what already is so that you can move forward.

Turning on the light is the first step toward creating clarity, clarity is essential for transformation to begin. With clarity comes peace.

Personal Example

When I was a young adult, I had developed a strong sense of defending myself in many situations. One day, I went to get some gas on my way home. Mind you, this was back in the day when it was pretty standard practice to pump your gas and then head inside to pay for it.

Only this time, I realized after pumping the gas that I had forgotten my credit card at home and I had no cash. I explained to the cashier that I needed to run home, retrieve my credit card and return to pay for the gas. That’s ok, he told me, just leave me your driver’s license while you run home.

And I lost it on the poor man. How dare he imply that I wouldn’t come back! I was angry and I let him know it.

As I drove home (without my license), though, you might say that I turned on the light. I was able to see the situation more objectively. Of course he wanted me to leave something so that I was motivated to come back and pay for the gas that I was already using!

It was suddenly and completely clear to me that I had behaved poorly. I was embarrassed and ashamed, but I needed to face that. Only when I was willing to take that honest look at myself could I summon up the courage to change. When I returned to the gas station, I apologized for my reaction. Apologizing was difficult and my whole body burned with shame.

But that was the day I realized that not everything was about somebody outside of me – sometimes I had to turn on the light and look inside.

Prior to this experience, I would interpret many things that others said as insults that needed to be defended. If somebody said I was late showing up for a gathering, I would defend to them that I was NOT a bad person. Now I remembered to turn on my internal light first. After this when people would call me out for being late, I looked inside myself to understand why I was late. Sometimes I would find that my lateness was disrespect, a fundamental disregard for their time. Ouch. That hurt to recognize. But only then could I start to change that.

Before I learned how to turn my light on, if somebody said I had hurt their feelings, I would defend that I was NOT a bad person. Now when somebody told me I had hurt their feelings, I looked more closely at the words I had used, and if I recognized them to be unnecessarily hurtful, I would apologize.

Turning on my internal light changed everything. Sometimes my internal lightbulb still grows dim and even goes out, but all I need to do is remind myself to replace the bulb, turn it back on, and see what I find.

Turning on the Situational Light

We also need light in situations having to do with other people. When we have incomplete information, our brains will come up with some crazy explanations for what they do not understand, what is unclear, what is “in the dark”. But these crazy explanations are only the imaginings of a brain that has no better answer.

For instance, there have been times when I have misunderstood the people around me. I have overheard fragments of conversations or seen interactions without full context, and my mind has jumped to make sense of them. This is when my thoughts have spun some crazy webs. Soon the thoughts took on a life of their own and, before I knew it, I had built a whole reality out only the of the pieces and parts of data that I knew.

When this happens, what might seem like obvious conclusions have become so far removed from the facts that those conclusions inevitably end up more representative of my own brain’s imaginings than of reality. In actuality, those conclusions end up being based on a conglomeration of my hopes and longings and wishes and fears and insecurities. But regardless, I find myself believing them.

Combatting this starts with turning turn on the virtual light – recognizing that I only know what I know. Only then can I be open to learning more. In order to know the truth, we need light and clarity, we need more information and an open mind.

Turning on the light can illuminate our thoughts for what they are – imaginings, fears, hopes, anything but the objective truth. Then we can stop reacting to those thoughts.

Turning on the light might look like asking a simple question to get some clarification. Turning on the light might look like being open to seeing things in a completely different way than we have ever seen them before. Turning on the light always looks like keeping an open mind.

Again, turning on the light is the first step toward clarity, and with clarity can come deep understanding and peace.

Personal Example

Because we often don’t know where we have failed to turn the light on in situations with others, I will give an example of having experienced this from the other side.

I was visiting my parents who lived in another state with my husband and children. One day, a few of us decided to go geocaching around lunchtime. (If you don’t know what geocaching is, look it up – it’s quite fun!) My mother volunteered to watch the kids and encouraged us to go and have fun.

We did this, and had a great time. A few hours after we arrived home, later that day, I received an email from one of my sisters expressing extreme anger towards me. She stated that I was inconsiderate and rude, and that she would have no further interactions with me or my children.

WHAT?! I had been looking forward to seeing my sister, but we had not yet set up a time to do so. Or so I thought.

Upon further investigation, I discovered that she and my mother had made a plan for her to come over for lunch that very day.

However, not only had nobody informed us of this, but even as we headed out the door immediately prior to lunch, we were encouraged to go have fun. Nobody had mentioned my sister’s impending visit, so we had unknowingly left to do another activity.

My sister then had a few options when she arrived for lunch and we weren’t there.

Option 1: She could have called me on my cell phone, and expressed sadness that we weren’t there, asking if we could come home. (We absolutely would have.) She would have then discovered that we were unaware of the plan for to come over for lunch.

Option 2: She could have enjoyed lunch with the kids, and then later that afternoon, she could have called or sent an inquisitive email to get more information. Perhaps something along the lines of “Why weren’t you there when I came by for lunch today?” Again, if this had happened, she would have learned that we were unaware of these lunch plans.

Option 3: She could become angry and enraged, and she could choose to send an email severing our relationship.
She chose option 3, seeking no clarity. She even remained closed to my desperate attempts to explain. She had made up her mind that our relationship was over, and we lost touch for several years.

My mother’s role in this was something that I would never fully understand, even though I did seek clarity from her. She remained tight-lipped and silent, refusing to answer my questions. Again, had I been able to turn the light on, perhaps I would have understood.

While I never did get to the bottom of this tragic situation, it was clear from my side that turning on the light and being willing to look at the truth would have exposed a simple miscommunication and misunderstanding. Had my sister been curious, she might have learned that I wasn’t inconsiderate or rude, I was uninformed. As it was, our relationship destroyed for quite some time. Even when we did try to engage again, the relationship had suffered enough damage from this and other similar situations that it would never fully recover.

Turning the light on could have prevented many years, even decades, of pain.

Conclusion

Whether you are turning on an actual lamp in a room or taking a closer look at your own motivations and intentions or seeking clarity about someone else’s unwanted behavior, keep in mind that turning on the light is always a good idea.

Turning on the light will never create a problem.

Turning on the light illuminates what is.

And only when you know what is can you begin to deal with it. For with light comes clarity, and only with clarity can true transformation happen.