Encountering Darkness
(The following is the transcript of a channeled lecture delivered by Paul Selig at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur on August 9th, 2015.)
Now we will ask you this: When you decide what you want, are you willing to change your life to receive it? Underline the word receive. Not get it, but receive it. You are busy getting things. You don’t know how to receive.
Now we said, “what you want,” yes, not “what you need.” But in the alignment you may claim now—“I am here, I am here, I am here”—it is the Divine Self that makes the claims for you. The small self may be heard, but in some ways she has abdicated the throne.
Now we will say this: There is a throne and it may be governed by one source—not the two sources, but the one source. The egoic self may sit in the throne—“Off with their heads,” if you like. Or the Divine Self may sit in the throne—“I know who I am. I know what I am. I know how I serve.” And the Divine as you, in her wont, may receive well.
How does one receive except by allowance, by acceptance, by reception? One does not receive by ambling forward with both arms outstretched saying, “Give it to me now.” One receives in some ways by accepting that where she is, he is, is where he must be to be in reception. Do you understand this? Where you must be to be in reception is where you are.
Now the self that you know who goes to class, who falls in love, who fears this or that, is not gone away. In some ways, what happens is that the Divine Self goes into an alignment that re-conceives the small self—understand that word, please—reconceives the small self to be the operative being that he or she can be through. The Divine Self has to be, and the small self has preferences, “I like tea or my coffee in the morning.” “I like bread with lunch.” “Don’t give me that or this. I have no taste for that or this.” These are the personality constructs.
As the Divine Self acquires the small self, she reconceives it—or realigns, if you wish, the aspects of the self that are not in alignment, out of sorts, if you prefer, with the Divine Truth of who you are.
“What is out of Divine Truth?” Paul asks. Absolutely nothing. And here is the conundrum that he faces now and you will all encounter eventually: The Divine as you is present in all things and can only be present in the world as it is agreed to. The Divine is not absent in any situation, but in the recognition of the Divine in any situation, which is what calls it forth as being so.
Now as you are in this very moment, there are aspects of the self that you have put outside the light: “My fear of being loved,” “My fear of being alone,” “Why I always do this or that?” “Why I can’t have this or that?” “That secret in the closet that I buried so long ago,” and the shame of the body, or the shame of the body’s desire. These are the things that now need love. And you cannot love what you hide in darkness. Do you understand? You cannot love what you hide from the light.
The light is still there. We do not shine the beam upon a dark room. We illumine the dark room by defying the darkness. The darkness cannot be seen within the light. It does not hold power within the light. It cannot be contained. It cannot be reasoned with. But it will be seen.
You do not reason with darkness. Do you understand this? You call it to the light, and then it is no longer. How does one call the darkness to the light? By knowing who one is. “I am here, I am here, I am here” is the Christed self, the resurrected truth of who you are, bearing witness to all she sees in light. And what the Divine Self sees is healed in the light, in her purview, in her agreement not to reason with the darkness.
You cannot reason with the darkness. All you do then is enter into it, and what is the purpose there? How does one encounter darkness? By knowing who you are. And as you know who you are, you are unafraid because the truth of who you are is never afraid. Do you understand this?
“Well that sounds all well and good,” he* says, “but not in principle or in practice. I cannot see how I can encounter the darkness and be unafraid.”
Here is how it is done: The knowing of who you are, as what you are in this incarnation claims you as a free man, woman, if you wish. And a claim of freedom—“I am here, I am here, I am here”—claims you as choosing to be as, with, and of the Christed Truth of who you are, which will face all darkness with light. And because it is the light, it dispels the dark.
You don’t run into the dark room with your pickaxe, trying to pick out the darkness, or the source of it. You shine the light in the room, and in the illumination, the source of the darkness, which is the ignorance of light, will be seen as it is. And the Christed truth that you are will know—underline the word know—how to reason as yourself to encounter this thing that you see.
He wants an example. We will attempt to give you one. If you have a menace in your room, something that slides above the walls and keeps you afraid, in the darkest room you never know where you stand in relation to it. When you turn the light on, you may see it for what it is. And once it is seen for what it is, you may reason with the self.
Well how do you get rid of a bat in the house is rather different, perhaps, than how you get rid of a mite or an infestation of vermin. As you understand what you are encountering, the Divine as you will always—underline the word always—offer you the reason, methodology, or action that may be required of you on a practical level to encounter what you see, by being the light you are.
Now some of you believe that being the light is a passive thing. “I will go to the store and be the light. I have done my job as the light. I have gotten my chips as the light. And I will take them home and eat them as the light.” And you may enjoy your life that way as much as you wish. But here is the truth of your being: As you are the light, you will align yourself to all the opportunities you can find to serve as the being you are—underline as—and not as you think you should be, or perhaps have been, but as you are.
The Divine as you, you see, has a mission here, and the mission finally is to be as she is, not just for your benefit—what a ridiculous idea that would be—but for all mankind. As you witness the ones before you—“I know who you are, I know what you are, I know how you serve”—you claim freedom for the ones before you. On an energetic level, yes, but what you witness as them is their inherent truth that will not be denied, because you cannot deny truth. Do you understand this? A lie fades away in an encounter with truth, and the investment in the lie will also be attended to so that the lie may not resume.
When you witness the True Self in any man or woman, you witness the idealized self, the Christed Truth of them, in the face of what they present, or have encountered, or agreed to. The challenge you face now, as you leave this room, is the defiance of the norms you have known. And what you may claim now, if you choose it, is to decide that you have the right to be as you are in the face of change.
Now when you go home, you put your soup on, you put the soup on you’ve had for years. You say hello to the kitty, perhaps, in the way you always have. But the being you are has been transformed. And transformed, we say, to a higher octave.
The conditioning you’ve used to be as yourself is used to being what it knows and will do everything it can to perpetuate habit. The Christed Self exists outside of time. Hear these words: The Divine as you exists outside of time and is not conditioned to anything at all. So what you know in history will be encountering you, and you must begin to source the Divine Self in each instance, so you do not perpetuate the life you’ve had that has been encountering itself for a very long time through a safety generated by the small self to maintain her rule in the throne of being.
“Now is this possible?” Paul asks. “Do we have to ask every moment where we come from?” Not at all. You do have to choose—and choice is yours, you see—to maintain your vibration. “I am here, I am here, I am here” is the announcement of the Christed Self as you. Do you understand this, yes?
You may say it softly to yourself now:
“I know who I am. I know what I am. I know how I serve.”
Feel this, yes? Can you feel the energy in your being as you say this? Say “yes,” if you can.
Now say this: “I am here. I am here. I am here.”
Allow this to be, and let the energy do as it wishes. You are announcing yourself to your True Self, as your True Self, as the world you live in, to the world you live in, as the Divine Presence you truly are. And she will teach you, he will heal you, he will love you and admire you and support you in your journey as you agree to be as him, as her if you prefer.
Now when you encounter darkness as the Divine Self, you are agreeing not to perpetuate it. How do you perpetuate darkness, but by agreeing to it? “That is a dark thing” perpetuates the darkness. Stop agreeing to the darkness, and bring the light there instead.
Well he has a conundrum now. “But we have to anoint it as dark in order to bring the light.” You don’t have to agree to it, and agreement is a very different thing. I see this thing before me that some would claim an atrocity. By agreeing to the atrocity, I empower the atrocity. By calling the light to the thing I see before me, I claim the presence of God in this very thing. And in its illumination, it may be changed, it may be healed, it may be seen in a new way.
The smaller self, you see, has been instructed to fear. And in her frightened state, she has agreed to many things. She keeps bars on the windows of her home. She has four latches on the door. The only ones who may enter are the ones she knows that will not harm her. The world has become her enemy because she does not know who they are. And because she does not know who she is any longer, she has made a self in agreement to fear. This is a prison, you see, and the menace of you to your fellow man. What you put in darkness calls you to it. Do you understand this teaching? What you put in the darkness tethers you to it. You cannot be the light and be in agreement to darkness, because the moment you do, you are in the dark yourself.
Now here we go. You may say this to yourselves in a whisper.
“On this day I choose to realign myself as my True Self in all ways. And as I agree to this, I transform. As I agree to this, I choose. As I agree to this, I say “yes” to the Source of who I am. I am free. I am free. I am free. I bear witness to beauty, I bear witness to truth, and I untether myself to all my ties to the dark.
I know who I am. I know what I am. I know how I serve. I am here. I am here. I am here. I am Word through this intention. Word I am Word.”
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* The Guides are referring to Paul here.