A Light in the Darkness

I had a powerful dream.

I was standing inside a house with no light.

Not even moon beams infiltrated the dull glass of the dusty window panes. No street lamps were lit. No candles burning. Just a house existing in the pitch black of nothingness.

This was the Abyss. I didn’t belong here.

I stood in the darkness as I held Arya, my puppy, in my arms. She was quiet, somber, offering the respect this house demanded. To navigate the rotted, spider web infested staircase up to my father’s room, I had to kiss Arya on her silky white head. Each time I kissed her, her heart glowed bright like a firefly, allowing me to climb the stairs without falling within the jagged, broken boards. A few steps climbed and the dark would cloak us in suffocating emptiness again, extinguishing her spark. So I’d hold her up and rest my lips against her sweet temple, inhaling her puppy scent, the love between us illuminating her shine once more.

Closed off to love. 

My father lived here, in a closed-off room at the top of the staircase, behind a dilapidated door, off a long endless hallway. In actual life he had died recently, and I don’t know why I knew he was living behind this closed dream door but I did. How was he doing here? I had no clear vision of him at all. Was he content? Was he suffering? I looked around imagining the things that hid in the shadows of this house. This was not a place of peace or comfort.

I only knew that Arya and I were here to bring him light. He needed this. (Was it forgiveness? I’m not sure I was ready for that.) I’d made it this far. I closed my eyes and cradled Arya in my hands, gently resting her against my cheek. The hallway glowed.

I put my hand on the grimy door handle. I turned the knob…

And then I woke up.

Love is all there is.

I lay there in the moon-powered darkness, my clock read midnight on the dot. My heart pounded as I contemplated the meaning of this dream. Due to my father’s decades-long losing battle with addiction, the dream seemed a fairly spot-on metaphor for how he lived his life. I felt a little sick with despair.

But then the meaning of the dream dawned on me. I sensed the only thing that mattered, the only force that could protect me from the depth of darkness–in my own life and throughout the wider world–was the capacity for love in my heart. When I exist within the boundaries of that knowing, I glow with a light capable of piercing the darkest void. 

The more light I can generate, that we all can generate, the more the darkness fades.

A light in the darkness.

Years back, I listened to Tony Hsieh speak in Santa Fe (before he tragically succumbed to his own darkness of addiction). At the end of his brilliant talk about revitalizing urban decline with compassion and innovation, a young teen-aged boy stood up to ask a question. With a little bit of a shaky voice, he asked, “How can we remain committed to focusing on the good of metropolitan areas when everything feels so bleak in the world right now?”

The auditorium of hundreds went pin-drop silent as we all felt the weight of this beautiful and heartbreaking question. 

Tony earnestly replied, “You enhance the good, and you seek to understand the bad with the purpose of making it better. That’s all we can do.” 

By seeking to understand the bad, we shine our light on it. We honor its healing by seeking creative solutions, by considering new ways of thinking and being with it, and we power it all with the love in our hearts. That’s how we transform ourselves and that’s how we transform the world.

We’ve got to let love light our way. 

Much Love,

Kristy 

P.S. ~ If you’re curious to read more about my complex relationship with my father, and my own personal journey out of the darkness, read Stark Raving Zen: A Memoir of Coming Alive.