I want to start by putting a scene into your mind. The setting is this. There is a wide plain that is brown and desolate at the front of the picture, and then gradually shows signs of life, then becomes greener and more populated with life as it moves off into the distance. What was flat becomes gentle hills, and glimpses of meandering streams and rivers can be seen throughout the vegetation. Plants become dotted with trees, and the trees become denser until the rolling hills are now a lush forest. All of this leads to steeper terrain that blankets the base of a great mountain that stretches up and kisses the sky. At the top of the mountain is a light, shining brightly with rays darting off in every direction. The brilliance of the light illuminates everything below.
In this picture, surrounding you the viewer, are various human figures. Each is struggling and scratching for distance. Many are looking up at the light in the distance, a hand raised as if they could touch it from where they strain to reach it. Some sit in silent rejection, folded over and looking back and away from the light. Each of them has multiple tethers hooked into some part of their back, pulled tight and holding them in place as each battle against the strain but fail to make up any ground. Some that have given up hope are slowly dragged even farther back away from the light.
Some of these souls have fought hard enough and long enough to move forward a small distance. Some have so many tethers that they can only struggle hard enough to stay in place. Others have legs that trudge forward while their body moves backward.
One has to scan off into the distance, towards the beginnings of green and life before they view some human forms that have found freedom from their tethers. A closer inspection reveals that some have stopped, looked back and identified their tether as the reason for their frustration and stagnation. Some have found that detachment from their tether required their own desire to do it.
Even farther, almost out of view from sight as they disappear into the greater forest, are those that no longer look back. These souls move freely and sometimes independently, sometimes in concert within community.
With great effort, small dots of movement can be seen ascending the mountainside, disappearing as the height and distance become too great for the eye to see. One can only imagine that each finds a way, aiding one another, to reach the brilliance and warmth of the light and find the incredible discovery and experience it contains.
There are tethers holding people in place. There are tethers dragging them back. Each tether represents a place in the past where an event created an emotional attachment that shackles the mind to remarkable constructs.
The scene described at the opening of this piece represents this idea in the physical realm. Yet this idea truly exists in what is not the physical realm. It exists in the mental and spiritual realms that each human operates under. The physical is the machine. It can mobilize a person into greener pastures, towards the forest and then navigate to the mountain top. But the light that exists is the light of God. It is only by travelling towards it that the truth of God can be realized. That travel is not in the physical realm. That travel is on a mental and spiritual pathway of growth and recovery. The existence of the light, and the desire to stand within its power requires hope, faith and belief in not only the light, but also in the value of the journey.
The tethers that hold people back can be from any number of sources. For some, it is series of poor parenting decisions, or perhaps no parent at all. It could be from betrayal on any number of levels. It could be a catastrophic natural event or near-death experience. It could be witnessing the harm and destruction of others. It could be due to one’s own actions in the harming of others. It could be the words of others that created an unholy view of self. It could also be from the deliberate and seemingly unescapable acts towards one’s own self-destruction, culminating in a death by a slow removal of life, AKA addiction.
Each of these tethers is anchored in the past. Each has an anchor point with a significant emotional chain welded to it that a person will drag their existence against in an attempt to escape it. Each emotional chain can be triggered to yank a person back into the emotional turmoil of the past. Each trigger reaffirms the emotional power that attaches to the anchor. Because these things are behind us, outside of view and understanding, they maintain their hold on a person indefinitely. Until there is discovery.
The light that draws the free towards it as a means of higher levels of being and discovery has great power. The darkness that anchors to the past can have equal, and even greater power. Just as we seek out the light to reach a greater version of ourselves, we must also turn and seek out the dark to discover its origins and ultimately its power. This can be scary and painful. It’s a journey over rough and perilous terrain. It also requires a gathering of others to have a communal effect against its power. Each tether must be approached, discovered and dissected before it can be disconnected. The people we gather to help us with that discovery have their own spiritual and mental strength that we can draw from. We travel back to the dark so we can discover its true nature, release the emotions that are attached to it, and then release its tie to our existence in the present.
The mind is a programmable computer. The mind seeks the highest level of programming it can attain. The mind seeks the light. Along that journey the mind comes into contact with elements of experience that are the antithesis of the light. The experiences are traumatic in nature, and each carry with them the emotions that occurred when the event happened. As time moves forward, and these experiences are replayed in the imagination, the emotional chain becomes reinforced and sometimes increases in its strength. Left unchecked, these experiences can leave a person mentally and spiritually debilitated to the point of stasis. The emotions of these events can overcome and override the healthy and beneficial emotions that would be developed on one’s journey toward the light. The longer one is held back from their journey forward and upward, the more the dark will continue to define them.
The dark doesn’t want the light. When a person can objectively observe and dissect the dark, the light will penetrate it and it’s energetic power will dissolve. When the power of the emotions that are the result of the dark are disempowered then the episode that was the dark becomes a learning event on the journey. When the tethers of a dark past are disconnected from, the memory doesn’t go away, but the power of the past can no longer have a hold. We can make a conscious choice to face what exists in our imagination and memory and redefine it into what it really is. That redefinition is akin to shining the light onto the darkness.
Recovery is all about taking what we have been and what we are and then redefining it into something that aids us instead of harming us. If we turn and try to run from our past, it will create ever stronger connections that define our present. We will be held back. We will lose control of our present. It will become impossible to define our future. A nightmare will exist where a dream should germinate and grow.
If you’re struggling, and it seems like all your efforts carry the same results, perhaps it’s time to stop and turn around so you can see what’s holding you back. Maybe it’s time to disengage from the tethers that bind you in place. Maybe it’s time to be free and journey towards the light. Don’t do it alone. If you could do it yourself, you would have done it already. The journey away from the dark and toward the light is communal.
Recovery exists in community. Community guides us to the light.
Leave a Reply