(If you prefer to listen to this post narrated in my voice, simply click above.)

Dear Reader,

I’m called to share with you a series of personal stories and reflections from my life that speak to the theme of embracing the experience of light & dark within us.

I promise you this won’t be a philosophical post. My intention is to write to the heart of what I consider to be a most essential “lens” you can employ to make your day-to-day life much more stable and fulfilling. With both Part 1 & Part 2, I’ll be providing you with an imminently practical skill that can lead to profound levels of grounded maturity and contentment.

Ready? Here we go …

Chapter 1: DISCOVERING THE INNER LIGHT

Throughout my childhood, whenever I was in the company of adults, I felt compelled to look into their eyes to see if they were shining. Although I rarely encountered adults whose eyes were vibrantly alive, whenever I did, the radiance they were transmitting took my breath away.

For as long as I can remember, I’d had a burning curiosity about how these unique individuals kept their light shining when most other adults’ eyes were dull and lifeless. In my early teens, I began mustering the courage to ask them. I, an innocent 10-year old, would peer as deeply into their eyes as politeness would allow and say, “Excuse me, I can’t help but notice how bright your eyes are. Can you tell me how you keep your light shining?”

They would almost always smile at me. They were never bewildered by my question and knew exactly what I was talking about. They would begin sharing with me the deeper qualities of life they had discovered that were important to them. They often talked about love, about kindness and giving, about family and relationships. I heard stories of forgiveness, summoning the courage to be true to themselves, and their lifelong passion for learning. During these conversations, I had the distinct impression that something essential was being gifted to me. Thus was born my life’s dedication: to live as one of those people whose inner light continued to shine.

Although our family was not religious or spiritual in any manner, the first 10 years of my life were very rich. I felt naturally connected to myself and the upward flow of life.

Chapter 2: ENCOUNTERING THE DARK

When I was 12, my 17-year-old brother, Michael, kidnapped a couple at gunpoint and was sent to prison. While he was incarcerated, my parents received a report from the prison graphically describing a stabbing he had committed against an African-American fellow prisoner. Within a few years, Michael became one of the leaders of the Aryan Brotherhood, a militant white supremacist gang that extended into the prison system.

When I was 14, shortly after he was released from prison, Michael swept into the house one afternoon with three of his tattooed, skinhead friends. I was sitting at our dining room table doing my homework, and was the only one home. They hurriedly began pulling rifles down out of the attic. I had no idea there were guns hidden in the house, and found out later that my parents hadn’t either. I was shocked and terrified. One by one, my brother and his friends laid the rifles down on the dining room table right in front of me. They discussed plans for an ambush with the intent to kill. The targets were, once again, African Americans. Michael glanced over at me with an eerie look and smile on his face as he and his friends loaded shiny new bullets into the rifles. I was horrified as this scene unfolded, but also felt paralyzed about what to do—because this was my brother, and I was afraid of him.

At the same time that Michael kept barreling down his path of hatred and violence, my older sister, Cathy, chose into a 15-year pattern of heroin addiction.

With the sustained levels of trauma my parents and I found ourselves walking through, I steadily became very fearful, anxious and estranged from myself. My teen years were the the most painful season of my life—such a long, seemingly forever dark tunnel.

As I was to learn later in my life, the trauma I was engulfed in throughout my teen years—and more importantly, the false interpretations I made about myself and the world in the face of our family’s season of darkness—closed me to the energies of my heart. Thankfully, in my desire to meet my pain and heal these profound wounds, I was catapulted towards the study of psychology.

Chapter 3: THE LIGHT COMES SHINING THROUGH

There are moments in every life when something profound within us breaks open.

For me, that moment arrived when I was 25 years old. I had just completed both a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in counseling psychology. Six years of higher education, and yet not once did anyone mention spirituality … nor about religion, consciousness, or the soul. I didn’t grow up with any of these essential dimensions of life, so I didn’t even know they were missing. Looking back, its clear I had no framework for the presence of the divine—and I didn’t know what I didn’t know. After many years struggling to find genuine meaning from an academic orientation to psychology, I mistakenly concluded that something was wrong with me.

And then, one night a friend took me to a party where I didn’t know anyone attending. As soon as I entered the house, I was struck by the fact that everyone there was looking into each other’s eyes. It rekindled powerful memories of my childhood—of being mesmerized as I looked into the spark of light in adults’ eyes.

I so remember the palpable experience of love that everyone was openly exchanging with each other—at such a deep level that I had never encountered in life. I was so moved that my knees buckled, and I began to cry (which was very rare for me at the time). As I met more people and asked questions, someone told me that everyone at the party were graduates of a 5-day transformational training called, “The Awakening Heart,” and that the next training being offered was starting the following weekend. I was compelled to attend.

What happened inside that training room changed the trajectory of my life.

On the second day of the training, in a group of about 75 complete strangers, I felt emotionally safe enough that the stored up pain of my teenage years—years of fear, loneliness, and unresolved trauma—began to finally break open. I honored an inner calling to raise my hand to share—with a microphone and in front of the group—and then proceeded to cry uncontrollably for twenty minutes. As bottled-up emotions barreled out of me, I was embarrassed but couldn’t stop them. During the break following my sharing, I was astonished when a crowd of fellow participants surrounded me, and one-by-one they let me know how moved they were by me and my vulnerability. As I allowed myself to be seen and loved by one person after another, I realized I was actually beginning to take full breaths—I was coming back home to myself.

Then, on the fourth day, for the first time in my life I had a direct, undeniable experience of the divine—a loving presence larger than me, powerfully flowing through me … as me. Although it was an astonishing and brand new experience, it also felt disarmingly familiar and profoundly comforting.

Within a matter of days, seemingly out of nowhere, I had crossed two profound life thresholds—with streams of life-altering energies and awareness washing over me:

• a HUMAN UNRAVELING where buried trauma finally had permission to rise up and out of me—leaving in its place a genuine reverence for my deeply sensitive nature.

• a SPIRITUAL AWAKENING to the presence of light, compassion and love that was readily available and flowing through my heart.

Looking back now, it is clear that the arrival of these two initiations birthed in me a lifelong fascination with one central question:

“How can our human and divine selves coexist and dance with each other inside our consciousness?”

This compelling curiosity has served as the fuel of my lifelong devotion—personally and professionally—to discover the nature of the soul and learn to facilitate its conscious evolution in myself and others. It has been the guiding north star for my maturation as a spiritual therapist and leadership mentor.

Chapter 4: SO HOW DOES THIS WORK?

For years following my spiritual awakening—easily 10 years—I held the mistaken assumption that the goal of spirituality was to stay “high” all the time. And, better yet, to keep pushing into new levels of being “high.”

If I was feeling blissful, illuminated in an experience of peace and oneness, I concluded I was succeeding. But whenever fear, anger, sadness, or insecurity appeared in my inner landscape—I felt like I had failed.

I had never learned how to actually feel my emotions, to allow vulnerability, to build my ability to meet my pain and human sensitivity. I only knew how to avoid them, override them, or pretend everything was fine. Most often, when I found myself “out of balance” emotionally, I just held on for dear life until the feelings passed and eventually came back to my center (which sometimes took a few days or more).

Thankfully, I had a seminal life dream that forever shifted how I related to my emotions:

I was walking through a dark and narrow hallway. It was nearly impossible to see. There were many closed doors on both sides of the hallway. A strip of light appeared underneath one of them, and I asked myself a sincere question, “If I open this door, will the light from the room shine into the dark hallway, or will the darkness from the hallway flow into the lighted room?” As the dream closed, I turned the handle and opened the door ... and my answer was revealed.

This experience symbolized to me the reality that light is always more powerful than the dark. I began to understand that all of us walk through dark hallways of experience at times, yet underneath it all, it is light that resides in and emanates from our core. This love and truth inside each of us, our soul or authentic self, is always available to shine into the darkness and guide our way.

This light is our ultimate authority, as well as our sacred ally in bringing much-needed loving presence to our wounds and traumas. The more we bring healing compassion to our human depths, the more we can:

• allow ourselves the gift of deeply experiencing our emotions

• let go of our past conditioning and dissolve shadow patterns

• learn to rely upon our soul, a radiant divine presence, for its sovereignty in our consciousness and in our life

I began to recognize that the most useful purpose of the light I carried within was actually in service to my human tenderness and healing journey. I moved beyond using my spirituality as an escape mechanism, often referred to as spiritual bypass.

I also began to learn that embracing my vulnerability required that I cultivate a relationship with the silence and spaciousness of my spiritual center, which involves dropping down into my body and the presence of my stillness. There I can access my loving compassion and deeper levels of my truth. The key for me is to get more comfortable with not feeling comfortable.

“One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.” ~ Carl Jung

In next week’s Part 2 of this two-part post, I’ll be sharing grounded principles and steps for how to operationalize the insights and wisdom I’ve addressed above. They can make all the difference as you walk through the beauty and challenges woven into your day-to-day life.

All my best, Gavin