- Foreward
- Introduction
- My Journey
- Adversity
- Anger
- Body Wisdom
- Love Knocks
- Money Tree
- HealthLoveWealth
- Simplicity
- Generosity
- Shock! Treatment
- Responsibility
- Grateful
- Growth Notes
Fill with joy
People with a sense of the spiritual life are often joyful. They let heavy things go, such as competition, worrying about others getting ahead. I choose to give up the struggle today. I fill myself with joy.
Spiritual pathways
Spiritual strength may come from faith in religious beliefs, from kinship with the natural world or from meditation. Whatever my personal choice of spiritual path, today I will travel a little further along that path and feel the strength it gives me.
Find Light in Dark Times
Introduction: Dark Beginnings
Find Light in Dark Times gives you philosophical and spiritual tools to help you recover from losses of all kinds, then emerge into the light.
Darkness spreads gloom everywhere. Loss eclipses gain in many realms. Have you lost a job, lost your home, lost money or business? Perhaps you have lost a spouse, lover, parent or child. Could be you have lost a sibling, friend or pet. Or have you suffered injury or illness? Multiple losses may compound your pain. If you’re like most people, you struggle through dark times of your life.
The darkness is not only personal. Look around and you may see loss and dark times everywhere you look. When economic gloom descends, unemployment may affect those you love. Home values and investments may plummet. Business of every kind flounders when hard times hit. War and famine cost thousands of sons and daughters, fathers and mothers.
Sometimes darkness manifests as economic turmoil or worldwide recession. While turmoil may have an economic face in part, the root of the darkness is emotional and spiritual. People need a spiritual center to move forward in life. You can rally your heart and spirit whether you are discouraged, down-and-out, hurt, penniless or unemployed. You can transform losses into spiritual gains.
No one escapes a plague of trouble. In the midst of pervasive darkness, you feel discouraged, depressed. You cannot imagine when light will dispel the gloom. Hope flees. Your heart sinks into despair or numbness. You quit trying to work, to heal, to love, to flourish, to rekindle your spirit.
You yearn for a rejuvenated life where darkness yields to light. But worries pester you and make progress difficult.
This book aims to stir your spirit, quiet your mind and coax your heart into lightheartedness. In the darkest of times we can trust our hearts to lead us to light. The heart’s light flows into dark caverns, filling each crevice and cavity no matter how deep.
This book can help you harness emotional power to fuel your spiritual progress. This summoning of passion and courage can coax you toward the sunlight of your soul.
Make one small tangible change today, right now, the moment your eyes reach the period at the end of this sentence. This work is practical: make spiritual change now with whatever troubles life hurls your way.
Find out how adversity can prompt spiritual breakthroughs that could otherwise take years. Discover chapters about generosity, forgiveness, tolerance and non-judgmental understanding. Learn to grow spiritually even through rough spots in your romantic life. See how to flip a troubled romance into that rare hot love where passion explodes, then dive down to profound spiritual consciousness. Explore your connection with your body and money as a route to awareness. A chapter on simplicity helps you detach from material possessions and live more lightly. A section on humor helps you to become lighthearted even when facing dire situations. Read how you can learn to meditate even while a dog’s flatulence wafts under your nose. Smile often. Laugh hard. As your energy levels increase, you’ll find heightened consciousness that continues to expand.
Become a source of bliss, kindness and compassion in a world where the heart is frequently trampled under stress, conflict and violence. Use turbulence such as divorce, family strife or job loss as a springboard toward greater harmony within yourself. Embrace new life in the grief following the death of parents or others close to you. Explore how to open a portal into your innermost being. Your heart will soon shine with inner light as it leads the way home to your truest self.
This book is not about finding light somewhere else, whether in church or another religious pursuit. This writing shows you how to find light in your own life, how to find light in any situation no matter how awful or painful. You take responsibility to direct your own spiritual journey. You learn how to live in a “rich now,” where the past and present of your consciousness dovetail in harmony. You look for moments of potential transformation every day and everywhere: in food, exercise, love, anger, conflict, leisure, work, despair, grief, loneliness and depression. Most of us miss these spiritual openings most of the time. We don’t even notice them, much less grow from them. Think of this book as continuous pointing to these openings. As you get good at spotting ways to find light from these pages, you will find your own ways in your own life. You will direct yourself and become your best possible guide.
As self-transformation occurs for millions of people, the world can evolve through spiritual light. We all benefit when more of us act with greater kindness, fairness, generosity and good will. We become free and we spread freedom when we act without hint of gain. The spiritual freedom we spread is freedom of the heart.
Find Light in Dark Times began in 1985 when I wrote more than 180 Growth Notes and had them printed on tear-off pads. Many of the daily gems on each page come from these edited Growth Notes. I affectionately call these “affies,” with script headline and bold type, because they affirm you without taking the process too seriously. Try reading one of these each day as a kind of meditation focus. Have a sense of humor with yourself. Be playful with your growth and it will come more quickly.
The remainder of the book was written in 2009 after I paddled through roiling waters including the death of both parents, two divorces and the near loss of a sister, suicides of schoolmates, as well as encountering sharp financial downturns. All these challenges bore fruit: growth and compassion formed a basis for the book.
In the chapters that follow I speak about my own experiences and to you about how you might find light. I make observations about others or about all of us who share humanity. Think of this as informal conversation. Take whatever you can to illuminate your soul. If you can help others be lighter about their spiritual path, do that. Too much reverence and piety can hold you back from lightness in your perspective. Be grateful for every scintilla of light that comes your direction in the way you might marvel at a glow worm or firefly. These tiny sources of light can bring you to your knees in wonderment.
I hope that this humble writing from my heart tugs you from gloom into glowing as it refreshes your perspective. May your spirit rise and radiate. May you find light in your dark times. May you transform your losses into spiritual gains.
Let your light join with that of the rest of the folks of the world so that the planet can evolve, so that we can climb out of the dark cave we share. You are not alone in darkness. The chapter on responsibility shows you where to go with your spiritual lightness once acquired. While any lightness you acquire is yours to enjoy, you must expand beyond yourself and accelerate the spiritual evolution of people around you. First become a spiritual follower then quickly become a spiritual leader. Please ascend out of the darkness. Somehow you found your way to this page. You can also take the next step. We all need you to begin your journey toward light now.
