Today’s trick question is this: Is it best to focus on the bright or light side? Or best to focus on our dark or shadow side? Do we focus on problems or solutions? The bad or the good?
This is a harder question than it appears. For the most part, we want to focus on that which gives us life. What we focus on grows. So it is wise to see life with a positive attitude.
But there are times when we want to bring awareness to the problem, or to our dark or shadow side. But here is the paradox; if it is true that what we focus on grows, why not just see our shadow as an illusion? Why give energy to our fear, our pain, our grief?
It depends on who we are talking about. In other words, who is looking? If our little egoic mind focuses on something, it will feed the imbalance for sure. But if we bring presence, the light of our compassionate awareness to the dark areas, the shadows disappear. Light is stronger than dark any time. Light dissipates dark, while dark is passive; it cannot darken light.
So, there are times when it is best to take off the rose colored glasses, to really recognize and bring a witness consciousness to our pain, our sadness, our anger. This does not feed it, but actually begins to transform it.
If we are currently lost in our pain, or unable to bring a compassionate and loving presence to our pain, then it may be best to focus on what is good, what makes us happy, or find a friend or support group or therapist that can walk with us as we enter the cave, so to speak, the scary journey into our shadow side. Sometimes the pain is so great that we will not be able to bring our powerful presence to it. In these cases we can keep our energy up, do some yoga or meditation, get out in nature, first get our energy up high enough so that we can be strong enough to face our problems and shadows.
Presence knows that to do. Our ego does not. Be a lighthouse. Bring a compassionate light and love to every thing you can. Bring light to the dark.