The Return of the Light
and the darkness that precedes it.
The part you play on the world’s stage is determined by your conception of yourself.
Neville Goddard
Nothing splendid has ever been achieved except by those who dared believe that something inside them was superior to circumstance.
Bruce Barton
***Trigger Warning: Brief discussion of narcissism, narcissistic relationships, and brief, passing mention of abuse (in the section on narcissism)***
What an absolutely ridiculous time to be alive, no?
I haven’t written this and don’t ever write to scare or stress you further, but rather to situate in an additional, potentially broader, context the things we’re all experiencing.
I aim to provide another way to consider some of the things happening. I hope that this post is both provoking and encouraging.
This post is also relatively long, but I hope you work through it. I feel it sets a tone for us that will last a while. So take your time, take breaks if you need to, but if you start I encourage you to finish. Capisce?
But before we go annnyy further. I invite you to take as deeeep a breath as you can muster. Add a slight hum to your exhale if you’re really tense.
Winter Weather Advisory
None of us have lived through a time like this. So I believe most of our previously planned (and prescribed) approaches to a year, our projects, and our lives, may realistically fall short as the game has most certainly changed.
Even the timelines we plan for might need to change drastically given the dizzying pace of things now.
So during this time, this WINTER season, I invite you to slow down, to feel and tune into what is here and now. What is happening, NOW.
Not so much out in the world. There are way too many channels for you to tune into. No, I want you to tune into how you’re feeling. Where *your* focus seems to be and where you feel drawn.
As much as life is happening “out there,” it is also happening within you.
Slow down, examine, and be with your goals and plans this season before you launch blindly and forcefully forward with them. The direction you go in is equally, if not more important than how fast you go.
At the risk of sounding dramatic, this moment in time in our collective stories feels demanding. Intense. Pivotal. In ways none of us can avoid or ignore.
With that, let’s begin.
The Darkest Night
If you were to tell me it’s hard to be hopeful these days, I would completely understand. If we’re not careful, we can feel awash in devastation and hopelessness.
As if all the events of 2024 (hurricanes, Gaza, Rafah, Ukraine, inflation and price gouging, the election) weren’t shocking and disheartening enough, this year started with one of the most destructive fires in our history, displacing thousands of families and burning as many acres.
We hear almost weekly about large-scale violence and mass casualty events and schools have yet to become safe.
In the wake of the tragic killing of the United Healthcare CEO, more stories are coming out of insurance companies denying critical coverage when people have needed it most. A nightmare many families in California have and are experiencing now (and may continue to given the nature of insurance in the U.S.).
Even when coverage was not outright denied, many people have been charged over 1000% more for cancer medication by United Healthcare, representing blatant exploitation of the most vulnerable.
There are all the wars we have been funding abroad ahead of a wannabe dictator taking office. A man who talks of taking control of sovereign nations while isolating us from other nations on the world stage. There was also his Tiktok ban-and-save marketing campaign and his pre-inaugural crypto pump-and-dump.
Then there are all the new viruses we are being primed to contend with.
On top of all this, or rather underneath it, our structures and systems are collapsing. Or we’re just now seeing the design flaws inherent in these systems.
All of the destruction, corruption, and rollbacks of rights are pushing people to desperation and hopelessness. We are fear-mongered to see our neighbors, our class companions, as the enemy while deluding ourselves into thinking our elected officials and celebrities understand and can advocate for us.
How do we live and relate to one another when we could so easily and quickly be displaced due to climate change? Become refugees due to disaster? Become chronically ill due to sickness?
It is abundantly clear that fear and sickness are the play. And believe me for decades the ruling class, people whose names we mostly don’t know, have been setting up this play that spans decades.
It’s as if they’ve said:
“If we can keep people afraid they won’t trust anyone, they’ll isolate themselves from the scary others who might be allies, and then when they’re sick and depressed we’ll sell them the cure. Everything’s going according to plan and business is good.”
Then there is the development of AI which is happening at a pace that we all kind of anticipated but also never imagined and it’s being aimed squarely at the workforce; despite its enormous negative impact on our environment.
There is a LOT happening…
But take it from the man who wrote the On Souls Collection.
As much as we the people would like to keep the Earth beautiful, peaceful, and alive and steward it well, I believe our CHIEF priority should be the work of our souls. In that work is the work of the world we are best equipped to perform now.
Our focus on our unique, individual mission is paramount because it represents our highest and most appropriate contribution to this dark, Dark time.
Being Here and Now
As much as many of us might want to escape this moment or all these challenges and obstacles, we are here and now. And WE are the ones who must meet this moment.
I know it sucks and it’s awful it has to be this way, but it’s important we accept, that YOU accept, however painfully, the reality that we are here and facing all this. And more importantly, that we CAN.
After accepting our necessary presence on Earth here in these 2020s, we must accept that we might potentially, and realistically, be an answer or carry a solution to some of the challenges we face.
I speak quite a bit about how masterfully orchestrated the universe is. Take Jupiter, for instance. Did you know that Jupiter’s gravitational pull prevents a large number of asteroids and space debris from impacting Earth? There is much more order and balance than we realize.
Thus, It is my firm, unmoving belief that the manufacturer of this cosmos is always ensuring our Earth has both the planetary and human resources to solve its problems, which means you and me.
You may not be the epidemiologist we need or the disruptive economist we require, but you may have an insight we need, a business idea that helps, or, as is always my recommendation, something creative to share.
Make no mistake, though, there is something unique, singular, and impactful you’re designed to contribute because no one sees what and how you see.
It also might not even be a thing! Maybe you’ve got a mean walk in you that inspires other people to stand boldly in their personhood. Whatever it is, it’s yours to discover and share. If you so choose.
I say it a bunch: “You’re a MUCH bigger deal than you think.” However, I understand firsthand how frightening that can be and how daunting it can feel.
“What if I do something wrong?”
“What will my friends think?”
“How can I support myself?”
“My work doesn’t look as good as everyone else’s”
“I’m already soooo tired. I have to do more?”
Take it from me, though, you don’t have to have it all figured out, also Copernicus didn’t. Neither is it your place to judge your output per the Alien Superstar Producer, Honey Dijon.
Your primary focus should be on “effortless being.” That thing, that state of being that is as easy to you as breathing. THAT is and holds your greatest contribution.
I heard author Caroline Myss say, “We are all Earth Molecules.” Therefore whatever you do has an impact. The degree to which you enjoy it and it is authentic to who you specifically are, will determine the size and direction of that impact.
So, as all of the systems around us are failing or rather showing us they were never designed with us in mind, we must each, individually take on a larger role and learn ways to be in better community with people, even if only the people we know.
I heard this same Caroline Myss also suggest that in this era of “the whole,” we will all have to work together in community if we are to “solve” these pandemics.
If we can (and should) expect a profit-driven government to fall so disastrously short, what will we the people do? How will we as individuals act? Prepare?
Now, I know. All of this can be terrifying. The potential of another 2020 with these stakes feels absolutely shuddering and I know every day there is news of a more stressful kind than the day before. But I need you to accept the fact that you are alive now and you are nowhere near as powerless as you’ve been led to believe.
Divide, Disempower, Destroy
Our system of overlords and oligarchs is BANKING (literally) on us feeling powerless, hopeless, fear-stricken, and sick. And, apparently, starting over with zero possessions in a seller’s market with hyper-artificially inflated rent and home prices. On an Earth we can’t leave.
The inaugurating administration (and to a degree the one we’re leaving), its funders, backers, and constituents hope to make this country unrecognizable and unlivable.
They hope to destroy education, expel “unwanteds,” and roll back our hard-won rights. They have declared their mission to usher in a time where conservatism Christianity is the rule of law, which is designed above all else to satisfy the married, heterosexual white man (with money) and his interests.
Instead of aiming to build and create, they are preparing to personally enrich and destroy. And believe me, it will not be pretty. It is a truly dark and poisonous energy that seeks to destroy what others have joyfully created at the expense of itself.
The world these people want to “create” is one not even they will want to live in when it’s all said and done (and not only those in this administration and who voted for it). In all their talk of traditional values and nationalism, their real aim is to restrict the expansion of consciousness. To hamper the evolution of humanity, which can and has been slowed, but will not be stopped.
During the pandemic, I saw so many people for the first time question if the lives they were living were the ones they wanted to continue living. People questioned if their values were actually their values. They wondered, “What if work and my capitalistic pursuit aren’t the most important things?”
This pause gave some their first opportunity to consider that maybe the mark of a good life wasn’t a peaceful (potential) retirement, but rather a joyful existence. And the main office of America, Inc. LOST it. In all the ways we saw and have been paying for since.
And to some degree, we have allowed it.
We have (for the most part) stood by, bellies full and entertained, while they have chopped up, divided, and sold off our utilities, systems, care, communities, and even our entertainment, and then sold them back to us as commodities. Commodities that we can only access under a paid subscription model. And dared us to do anything about it.
Tiktok had become a virtual space with a fresh algorithm where you could hear what was happening from real people around the world. The people in large part decided what was interesting, funny, and worth engaging with. And the government killed it. For lack of control. The Tiktok that has come back will not be the one that left only a short while ago.
They have masterfully employed a campaign of fear (of job loss, healthcare, sickness) to rob us of our agency and our controlling share of where our society and world would go while pumping us full of all manner of toxins.
For one key reason.
Because you are the lifeblood of this entire system. This whole thing.
Your work, your taxes, your attention, your imagination, and your participation are all valuable and being hijacked. This is also why they are rushing so quickly to “generative” (currently replicative) AI. To replace and further disempower you, US, so we have no choices. To trick us out of our rightful place on this planet.
There are so many tricks and schemes that require our attention. Just imagine how many impressions and how much energy that little Tiktok ban gained…
The Raw Material of a New World
Can you, devoid of evidence and permission, believe that you are powerful?
Can you believe that the world isn’t ending (DESPITE EVERYTHING THAT SAYS IT IS), but that a new world is being formed right now with your participation (whether you are aware of it or not)?
Can you believe DESPITE a lack of evidence?
We must bear constantly in mind that old ways do not create new worlds. The voting hasn’t worked. The policy changes haven’t worked. The DEI push hasn’t worked. The thoughts and prayers HAVEN’T. WORKED.
We have steadily marched toward fascism and neither of the last three most important elections of my lifetime have prevented it.
I don’t mean to say that our efforts in fighting for rights and civil liberties haven’t been effective, because I can write and speak as freely as I can because of the Civil Rights Movement. However, I think these new evils have seduced us into the fight while gleefully feasting off our energy.
As this massive system quickly collapses, the energy we have been using to fight it must be directed within and toward what is ready to be created.
Our energy (our attention, imagination, and emotional state) is the raw material of the world being built. Money has about served its purpose, hence all the cryptocurrency talk. It’s all about energy now.
We’ve never lived in times like these. However, I draw your attention to archery. The further you pull an arrow back, the further it is prepared to fly.
It is on us to ensure that we each have our eyes on our individual and collective targets while we are seemingly being pulled back in time.
The Winter Solstice
Every year the beginning of the seasons is marked by either an equinox or a solstice, which are astronomical events that indicate the changing lengths of the day and night.
The Vernal and Autumnal Equinoxes mark the beginning of Spring and Autumn, respectively, and are days where the amount of day and night are nearly equal.
The Summer and Winter Solstices on the other hand mark the beginning of Summer and Winter and are days when either the day (Summer) or night (Winter) is longer.
The Solstice is said to mean the “sun is standing still” and on the Winter Solstice, the still position of the sun creates the shortest day and… The darkest night.
Celebrations around the world on the Winter Solstice are an acknowledgment of this dark night and the return of the light, as the days begin progressively getting longer.
The Winter Solstice and the subsequent Winter season offer us an invitation to stillness and to observe the shifting from one cycle to the next. The sun and the light are increasing, but it is still cold, dark, and bleak. There is still the inclement weather, the death of plant life, and the long evenings to slowly wade through.
However beneath the surface, underground, there are billions of microorganisms tending to the soil, performing vital functions, and even in death leaving reproductive material in the soil that will regenerate new organisms in the next cycle. Cool, right?
As I see it, in our human story we have reached, or are reaching, our collective Winter Solstice. A magnification of the darkness we are exposed to and an inescapable amount of death; but a turning point. A turning inside.
This is the time for us to pause, reflect, and assimilate lessons from the life we lived last year and all the years before. It is a time for us to receive wisdom that will be instrumental in where we go next, individually and collectively. It is (still) time for us to slow down before we, appropriately, speed up.
There are still things you need to see and hear and tune into that you might miss if you prematurely rush off into your Spring goals in the second coldest month of the year (February being the coldest).
So rest, observe, and prepare as we celebrate and prepare for the return of the light.
“Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.
Matthew 18:3
The Return of the Light
If you are to participate fully in the construction of a more humane, generative world, then you must tap into your potential and your innate ability to create.
You’ll have to learn how to draw from the bottomless well of who you truly are. You’ll have to learn to play.
You have to become a kid again.
You have to access and create from (or at least in partnership with) the version of you who existed before you learned all the socially acceptable and profitable ways of being.
You have to make contact with the part of you that existed before you learned all the ways of the establishment and all the rules of the empire.
This moment is challenging you to be the only version of yourself who can successfully navigate this moment: your most essential self. Your soul embodied.
I don’t know how true it is, but I read somewhere that newborns are mostly spirit. They are pure energy in a teeny body. It’s why when a baby is born (maybe ahead of the sleepless nights) they so easily inspire awe and reverence in a room.
Regardless of whether this is true, we come here as gifts equipped for the time we’re to live in. It’s our work to discover what our gift is and get to that effortless state of being.
Take me as a living example.
Before all this, I never considered myself a writer or appreciated my appreciation of words. All the events narrated in The Journey Home pointed me to this unrealized aspect of myself. Now, these posts do take work to put together, but the writing and creating come relatively easy to me. It feels natural. And it was buried under trauma, misconceptions about myself, and a fear of visibility. But here we are.
I wrote in the Myth of Evolution that we have been operating under the false notion that we are the best of our species (homo sapiens sapiens) instead of the beginning of it. What I meant is that we have capacities we have yet to fully employ as humans such as imagination, creativity, and empathy.
Capacities that are native to most children.
From very early on kids build. They stack things on each other, knock them down, and build again. They joyfully bring their ability to envision and create to the world of form; creative ease we would do well to reclaim.
But trust me, I understand so, so fully how you lost contact with that creativity, that youthful light.
I know people you love and who love you have said some soul-crushing things and caused you to shrink. I know that you’ve shared your art to disappointed, uninterested faces and doubted yourself as a result. I know that your little heart was broken and you determined to be practical instead of curious and open. And I’m so proud of what you’ve built and become.
But you left a lot more on the table than your affinity for watercolors. You left your ingenuity, your inventiveness, and the light that is to illuminate YOUR distinct path. You left behind the ability to trust yourself and you have to get this back if you are to survive. If we are to survive.
Your parents, your family, and your communities need the very light they may have snuffed out of you. However, they weren’t designed to navigate your time as you. You were. So you have to go your own way and we have to become something we have no example for, no template for. And without delay.
Not all is lost, though.
If, as Rumi says, the wound is where the light enters you, then our collective wounds and traumas may be the entryways to previously unimagined solutions and worlds.
But we cannot enter into these worlds before calling our energy back from where it’s been siphoned first.
***Narcissistic Systems and Light Bearers***
I shared in Winter Reflections about my experience with apparent Narcissism for an important reason. Upon examination of the energy dynamics of my relationship, I saw how most of our systems (work, financial, healthcare) reflect a narcissist and narcissistic supply relationship.
First, brief definitions.
A narcissist is a person who exhibits a self-centered personality style characterized by an inflated sense of self-importance, an excessive need for admiration, and a lack of empathy for others.
A narcissistic supply is someone who provides validation, admiration, or attention to a person with narcissistic personality disorder often due to manipulation, emotional or physical abuse.
After examining my personal experience, I realized our collective experience mirrors many of these dynamics as all these companies and men are deeply self-interested, exploitative, and parasitic.
Narcissism is all about constructing and feeding a false self, in this case, a false system, and hijacking people’s attention, resources, and destinies to feed it. The narcissist, and their attendant systems, won’t let you have light they don’t have access to. They work really hard to (unsuccessfully) rob you of it or extinguish it.
At the expense of everything if need be as we’re seeing.
These sick people who refuse (or are unable) to go within to access their own internal power (or self-regard) resort to acquiring it, or some substitute, outside of themselves.
Billionaires who refuse to mine their own depths, so they end up mining some unsuspecting African country to nothing, leaving war, destruction, and famine in their wake. So we can have iPhones.
Parents who can’t address why they feel small at work, so they make their child feel insignificant and burdensome while sapping that child’s life force.
Lovers who can’t access love within who destroy your confidence so they have a permanent punching bag they can feed off of.
These people and systems that are so disconnected from real power and light have convinced you that you’re not creative, that you’re powerless and small, and that the world is ending and there is nothing you can do about it.
Uninspired kids and peers raised by these wounded people have convinced you you’re cringe so you never express what feels youthful, playful, and vulnerable. In other words relatable, inspiring, and marketable (since we don’t live in a utopia and money matters).
But all of this occurs while draining you of that creativity in dreadful work and outdated relationship agreements.
It’s like we have our own Wizard of Oz.
The illusion of your powerlessness and his dominance has to be strong lest you actually focus on yourself and your path and experience true freedom.
This system literally says: We’ll tell you how, when, and what to create (with your energy of course), but we won’t dare stand by and let you create a reality you would enjoy and thrive in.
Hear me: The world where everyone has enough and you have time to enjoy your life is a NIGHTMARE to them. It is your light that keeps the power on in the Emerald City, not your satisfaction. You are the lifeblood of this system.
You necessarily have power.
Narcissists and their perverted systems do not select people with nothing to offer. They are always looking for and recruiting their next supply of attention, praise, creativity, and energy. And try swiftly to convince that supply of their worthlessness.
Call your power (your attention, your emotions, and your energy) back and place it where you want. Create something with it. Play with it. But don’t keep being hijacked.
The best way to deal with a narcissist is to have firm boundaries, to respond neutrally (if you even have to), and to not engage.
DO NOT BE SWINDLED OUT OF WHO YOU ARE.
Refracting the Light of Who You Are
In Small Steps, I said that humans are the only species with the mental faculties to ponder the question of life's purpose and arrive at the conclusion that there is none.
Please wake up.
Even nihilism and hopelessness are by design. These dark twins severely lower your ability to access the awe and wonder that made your childhood so memorable.
It may not be lofty or philanthropic (and it needn’t be), but your reason for being here is not insignificant and it’s not unknowable.
Who you are and what you’re best “equipped” to do is wrapped in what you most enjoy doing. It’s that simple.
You are a multidimensional, bioluminescent being of untapped potential. Every one of your interests can lead you into worlds never before traveled.
Up until now, you’ve just been a little distracted is all.
In the days, months, and years ahead you’ll need to be connected to something deep within you that spurs you to create, helps you communicate who you are, and gives voice to the kid in you.
You will have to be connected to your light.
The very powerful few are fighting, strategizing, and working as hard and intelligently as possible to keep these parasitic systems in place. Systems that hijack our minds, attention, and energy.
You will have to learn to decipher what is true for you and what path you are designed to tread relatively quickly. As I said before, the things you most enjoy doing and those which come easily to you.
All these things you will discover and remember about yourself, all these various ways of being you will explore will refract the light of who you are in ways that fulfill you and inspire countless others. And you will wonder how you ever missed it before.
We must turn and become as little children if we are to inherit the Kingdom of God. We must cultivate our own joy and stay our own course, and only we can tune into what that is. But it doesn’t leave you stressed and powerless, I can tell you that. And it won’t be televised.
We must also have courage. As much as we can muster. Fear is strategy #1 because it arrests us and prevents us from moving forward, thinking clearly, or using our best judgment. (Confusion is probably a close second.)
This courage needn’t be inborn or even feel familiar. It might just look like a willingness to do “it” despite everything you feel.
I say this because I don’t want you to be surprised if and when you see:
News about another pandemic
Another war
Civil unrest (and resulting martial law announcements)
More disasters and insufficient responses to them
More violence
Power outages and failures
Internet outages
Financial collapse
More exposure of corruption, etc.
Through all this, hold fast to YOUR light and redirect your attention to what you can create. What you can touch and feel. Everything else is noise.
I asked somewhere, “What if God was all of us?” I inquire further here:
What if all of us shining our individual light make up the color spectrum of what the creator could do on Earth?
What if it was us?
I think it’s us.
Before we see the light out there, we must traverse through this dark, cold, frigid winter of humanity with the glowing light in our hearts.
In this Age of Aquarius, this era when power will move back into the hands of the people, I think it is our seemingly small, collective, illuminated actions that will signify the return of the light.
Closing
So I pray you delay those delayable action plans, get inside, and be a little more contemplative. Watch for a bit. Feel for a bit. Recharge and shed for a bit.
On this cusp of a time and in this season of seeming death and decay, who knows what will be fertilized in you now and ready to be born come Spring?
Enjoy this cold, liminal space and receive its wisdom before we take off again. It may likely be a new world we blast off into. But do remember:
Old ways do not create new worlds and new ways, almost without fail, start within.
May you be illuminated.
Melvyn 🔆
P.S. Next time I’ll share this activity I’ve been working on that’s enlightened me and made me more excited for my life (in these times) to make all of this more practical. I feel more connected to how I most want to exist in the world and I would love to share.
Talk soon.
