The Forgotten Act of Compassion

(The following is an excerpt from Walking Between the Worlds: the Science of Compassion by Gregg Braden.)

“Darkness and Light

are both of one nature,

different only in seeming,

for each arose

from the source of all.”

EXCERPT FROM

THE EMERALD TABLETS OF THOTH

For years as a child I had questioned my conditioning in the concepts of dark and light, and what each of the forces meant in my life.  I knew what I had been taught through school, church and family of the polarities between the two forces.  I was taught to recognize the forces of light and dark in the outcome of an event and the effects of that event up on the lives of myself and those around me.  Things that hurt were of the darkness and the joy of feeling good was born of the light.  I felt that what I had been taught make little sense, as it did not apply to life as I had witnessed life.  The teachings did not match my experience.

Inherent in the conditioning of darkness, for example, had always been the implied fear that something is out there, something horrible representing an extreme example of our most polarized memory.  That “something” was so powerful that its very nature rivaled that of the opposite extreme, the light.  If that were true, it meant that something out there, some force, had power over us, power over me.

Consistent in the teachings was the idea that this force was lurking, waiting for just the right time, just the right moment when m, in a moment of weakness, all of the good that I had ever achieved could be taken away, negated from my life.  I knew that I would have to reconcile myself within the context of that force at some point in my life.

JOURNEY TO LOST LAKE

My life had reached a point of convergence.  It was one of those magical times where it appears as if all that you have ever known or held as true comes crashing down at once.  I often refer to these times of focused shift as the Bulldozer of Change.  The Bulldozer clears a path through life, flattening anything in its way, then backs up and comes through again, just to make sure that nothing is left standing.  With little grace or friendship, collapsing them within just a few weeks of one another into what appeared as the darkest moments that I had known at that time in my life.  Within me was a suspicion that all of the events unfolding within my life were inseparably related to my choice to know, to feel, the relationship between good and evil.  All that was occurring in my life was seen through my interpretation of these forces.  And so it began. . .

I was attending college and working in Ft. Collins, Colorado at the time, struggling with a delicate balance between an overload of nineteen core level classes and three jobs to cover the expense of out-of-state tuition.  Grades were plummeting, the jobs were exhausting, friendships became transparent and the most stable romantic relationship I had known until that time in my life ended.  I explained to all of my college professors and each of my employers that I needed some down time to collect my life.  Not to my surprise, neither the professors, nor employers shared my sense of urgency.  I gave notice to the university and each of my employers, with an agreement to transition out of the positions over the next few weeks.

Packing what I felt I needed for fall in the Rocky Mountains, I began driving West through one of the best kept secrets in Northern Colorado, the Cache la Poudre Canyon.  Named after an outpost from the French explorers, the mouth of Poudre Canyon had served as a supply depot, complete with gunpowder (poudre) for those venturing West over the Rockies two hundred years earlier.  Driving higher and higher, I eventually found myself in a small town ninety miles from Ft. Collins, Walden, Colorado.  After taking with locals at the neighborhood market and service station, I was directed to a dirt and gravel turnoff leading into a wilderness area of glacial lakes and pine forests.  This was a perfect place of exclusion for whatever was to happen over the next few days.

I found myself at one particularly beautiful lake, Lost Lake, as the sun had already begun to drop behind the snow-capped peaks to the West.  I set up my tent in the shadows on the soft pine needle forest, just a few feet from the banks of the lake.  This was one of my favorite times of year, with the skies deep and intensely blue.  Occasionally, massive and well-defined clouds slid between me and the sun, throwing the entire lake into shadows for much of the time.  I had chosen this particular area for the isolation and the privacy that it offered.  At ten thousand feet in elevation, I packed in a tent, minimal food supplies, and water to last for one seek.  I had planned to supplement my supplies with wild food available in the area I soon discovered that it was not the best plan.

I knew that to reconcile the forces of light, fear and darkness, I would first have to know each force for myself as my own experience, rather than those reported to me by someone else.  As night fell on the first day, I built a fire for warmth and cooking.  It was fall the evening temperatures dipped well into the teens.   Little did I know that the same fire I had built for heat would become the window for the experiences to follow.  The first two days were spent settling in.  I prayed, meditated, thought and prepared.  I did not know what the outcome of the experience was to be.  At the same time I was certain that something had to change.  I could not continue my life with the prospect of a dark force of “undoing” lingering over each choice and every experience.

THE DREAM FIRE

On the third evening, the sun had set and the evening temperatures had begun to drop.  The wind had stilled and there was an unusual calm that fell over my portion of the lake and the camp.  Sitting on the upended stump of a log that I had placed next to the fire, I began my prayers.  For each of the previous evening, I had closed my eyes, meditating and praying as my training in my family and the martial arts had taught me.  On this third evening, for some reason, I did something different.  With my eyes wide open, I stared directly into the fire in front of me.  The tip of each flame tapered to a point from yellows and oranges into blues and violets, each flame eventually faded into the air above, the colors lost in the night's darkness as they moved away from the fire.  The coals themselves throbbed in the heat with patterns of glowing blotches moving across the dark mass beneath them. Unknown to me at the time, I later learned the indigenous peoples of the world often use fire to induce an altered state of awareness, and open eyed dream, with the coals providing a point of focus.

As I stared into the flames, something began to happen to my body.  Waves of emotion began to ripple through me, from within me.  The waves pulsed outward toward my extremities as I quickly recognized what was happening.  Each wave carried with it a feeling, a familiar feeling that I had known many times throughout my life.  These were the feelings that came from “letting go,” the same feeling that had been demonstrated to me earlier in my life as a near death experience.  In their familiarity, I was able to follow the feelings, without question, into a state of deep trust and surrender.  I knew moments had come to me as an opportunity.  In that knowing, I posed the question best encapsulating the purpose of my quest to Lost Lake.  In the traditions of the ancient and forgotten ones, those who have come before us, I had often asked for a sign or guidance from the forces of the earthly mother and the heavenly father.  On this night I simply began with a question.

Father, I ask for the wisdom to understand the relationship between light and dark and the role that each plays in my life.  I stared into the flames, waiting.  Nothing appeared to be happening.  Again I asked the question.  Suddenly, quite unexpectedly, a voice that came to me, from within me, a familiar voice asking me a question.

“How are you to understand the relationship between these two forces without knowing the nature of the forces themselves?”

In asking a question of this nature, I had expected an answer, not another question.  As the words reverberated throughout my body, it dawned on me, possibly for the first time, that I really had no first hand knowledge of the force I had been conditioned to call “darkness.”  My concepts of this elusive power were the composite images of all that I had been taught, told, shown and conditioned to have.

Staring into the flames of the fire I drew upon that conditioning, calling to me in that moment every form that I could imagine representing the power of darkness.  In the eye of my mind I could see the forms of hideous, grotesque and disfigured bodies.  I saw my childhood Bible depicting layers of reality, defining the boundary line between the domain of darkness below and the world of above and all that is held as light in our world.  I could see the images from churches, museum and galleries of cracked and faded paintings showing evil consuming all within its grasp and looking for more.  I continued until I had conjured up, what for me in that moment represented the epitome of darkness embodied as the single form of one individual.  I had been taught the form I was seeing, the embodiment of all of those concepts, could only exist as the image of one who was called Lucifer, as well as a myriad of other names, each representing the polarity of darkness.

To be clear at this point, I am not suggesting to you that this image was a true reality to be reconciled in your life.  I am simply describing to you one reality of my experience, a lens that was meaningful to me at one point in my life.  My choice to look through the lens led me to a point of remembering a great truth I believe lives within us all.

Though the memories were forming within the eye of my mind, something began to happen in the fire as well.  As I stared without focus in my open eyed dream a form began to appear, suspended, floating in the tips of the flames themselves.  Nebulous at first, the form began to solidify, to crystallize, in front of me.  I turned my face away in disbelief.  Blinking my eyes, I looked back into the fire.  The image remained and grew clearer.  There, floating in the tips of the flames, was the physical manifestation of the figure that had coalesced in my mind, a result of my request to know the nature of darkness!  The face hovered and, fortunately, did not look directly at me.  Rather, it stared into the sky to my right, as if either unaware of me or not acknowledging my presence.  Even so, I could not look directly at the image and considered leaving the fire, quickly.  I did not leave, however, and as I became accustomed to the figure, I did look at it directly.  There the head and chest of a being lingered in the flames of the fire, allowing me to study the creases and the texture of the loose flesh that covered the face.  I was fascinated by the opaque quality of the image, while at the same time, in awe of the experience.  Throughout the entire time, my feelings were more akin to curiosity rather than a sense of fear.  I felt no threat.

Suddenly, the head began to move, turning until the face stared directly at me.  For the first time our eyes met.  Hovering in the flames before me was a very real, conscious and intentional presence.  The presence was definitely there and it was definitely focused on me.  As I stared into the eyes of this being, the epitome of all of the evil I could conjure up for myself in the moment, something even more unexpected began to happen.  The expression of the face began to shift.  The change was subtle at first softening before my eyes.  The face grew rounder and younger as the creases fell away.  The entire image began to change from the discolored, creased and loose flesh of, what for me, was the image of Lucifer, into something very different.  Within the space of a few seconds, hovering in front of me within the flames was another face, the face of a very young child.  Neither male nor female, the innocence of the face was betrayed by a power of wisdom, a power that can only come from “knowing.”  I sensed a longing, almost a plea, for me to understand.

The child looked at me, directly into my eyes.  I stared, motionless watching in disbelief as something magical began to happen, something that I feel to this day each time I share this story.  The child in the flames began to cry. 

Huge tears rolled from its eyes, down the curve of the cheeks and I found myself in tears also.  An unexplained sadness swept over me and I felt a strange sense of kinship with the child in the flames.  Without the words to justify my emotions, I know this experience, and this being, had touched an ancient memory from somewhere deep inside of me.  I also felt, that somehow this experience would be key in my choice to heal the separation I had known, that we have felt for so long.  The image began to fade from view and I knew I was waking up from the open-eyed dream.  I glanced around my camp across the darkness of the lake in front of me and at the cloudless sky above.  According to my watch, nearly thirty minutes had passed.  Everything around me looked the same.  I knew from that night on, however, my life would never be the same.  I remember that night often, and refer to it as the night I saw Lucifer cry.

REVELATION IN PERU

It was not until eighteen years later that the final portion of this experience would occur and I would fully understand the gift of that night on Lost Lake.  At last, nearly thirty-five years after my near death experience, the message would be complete.  Apparently, for myself and the way my life has unfolded, the years and experiences between 1959 and 1994 were necessary to position the building blocks I was shown into a meaningful framework.  Following the completion of each life initiation, the very act of resolution signaled to creation that I was available for the next experience.  Deep in the experience, trapped within the emotion, it is not always easy to see how each relationship, every feeling and thought has led to a particular situation.  I believe our lives work in that way if we have the wisdom to see the continuity of experience over long periods of time.  For me, it took thirty-five years of experience before I was able to recognize, and yet another year before I could even begin to express what follows.

It was the Spring of 1994 that my experience of Lost Lake found completion.  The month of June signaled the beginning of what the locals call the “dry season” in the high Andes Mountains of Peru.  During the third day of a four day trek, my group of twenty-two hikers, five Peruvian guides doubling as cooks and twenty two porters, would cover approximately seven and one half Peruvian mountain miles.  Crossing over mountain peaks above twelve thousand feet, we would descend from each pass into the lush, green cloud forests three thousand nine hundred feet below in preparation for the ascent on the pass.  The evenings had been well below freezing and my goal was to get each of the trekkers into camp and warm, dry clothes before the temperatures dropped dangerously low.  We had just become aware that during the same time one year previously, two of the porters supporting a similar trek had died after the second day, having frozen to death sometime during the night.  Wet clothes and sub-freezing temperatures are ideal components for hypothermia.

Though we had acclimated for five days, illness and latitude had weakened some of the hikers.  Our group had essentially split into two groups, separated by several miles, each being led by expertly prepared Peruvian guides and porters into a camp with warm tents, hot meals and tea awaiting them.  Hiking through the morning hours with the lead group, we arrived at a temporary lunch camp with freshly prepared meals of fresh bread, avocados and tomatoes.  Following a light meal, I chose to double back, checking on the distance and conditions of the second group.  They had been joined by a Peruvian holy man who, along with our guides, would accompany the group into camp.  Satisfied they were together and good hands, I headed back toward the first group, already well on their way into the evening camp.

As I climbed the steep, rocky trail I looked toward the summit of the pass above and glanced down the talus slope behind me.  Suddenly I realized for the first time since we had left Miami six days earlier, I was alone; absolutely and completely alone.  As I neared the pass, I paused briefly to immerse myself in the sheer beauty of the land.  Although there were still several hours before dusk, the sun was already dipping behind the peaks towering over the valley below.  We would all be hiking in shadows soon.  Directly below me was a glacial lake that I had not noticed before, like a perfect crystalline mirror, reflecting the high peaks that surrounded me.  The rich and intense colors surrounded me in all directions.

Silently, I gave thanks for the opportunity to experience such raw beauty as I completed the short distance to the saddle of the pass.  With the top just a few feet away, I paused sitting on a smooth rock that looked like it was made for just that moment.  I had carried a wooden Native American flute from New Mexico to accompany our group prayers and meditations.  This pass felt like a perfect opportunity to offer a melody of thanks.  I pulled the flute from its protective cover and offered long, slow notes.  Quickly, each flowed into the deep, resonant tone of a melody coming from somewhere within me.  It was a melody I had never heard before.  The notes echoed from the rocks in front of me.  It was a melody I had never heard before.  The notes echoed from the rocks in front of me as the wind carried them away.  I remember wondering if the others could hear my song.  They later said they did not.  I began to breathe deeply, inhaling the sensation s of one of the purest places on earth.

Suddenly, quite unexpectedly, I felt tremendous waves of emotion surging through my body, pulsing from my chest outward.  The pulses grew stronger and the waves more intense.  Tears welled up in my eyes and I found myself crying uncontrollably in long, deep sobs of appreciation for this moment of sheer beauty.  As I wept I noticed a shift in my body.  Once again, it was the feeling, surrounding me, engulfing me in the warmth of surrender and allowing.  This was the feeling, the familiar feeling from Lost Lake seventeen years earlier.  Though I had often created the feeling willingly, this feeling was simply happening, quite spontaneously.

One of the reasons for offering this four day trek as part of the Sacred Journey to Peru, is for the pure physicality of the experience.  The effort exerted to complete this journey takes to much energy, there is nothing left to stand between each participant and his or her emotions.  There is nothing left to hold the “walls” of distance, distraction and indifference in place.  The trekkers are supposed to get in touch with themselves through a direct and intimate experience with creation.  Now, the very experience I had intended for the other hikers was happening to me, there on a thirteen thousand foot pass, unplanned and un-orchestrated.

As the familiar feeling surged through my body I closed my eyes and experienced the connection, the absolute and complete resonance with the creative forces that have always been there for me.  In the days prior to leaving for Peru, and throughout the journey, there had been a question I had chosen to resolve.  The question embodied the core understanding vital to the very process of my life.  In the space of this acceptance and loving resonance, once again I asked the question.

Father, I ask for the wisdom to know of the relationship between the forces of light and dark.  Please guide me to understand the role of these forces within my life so I may know of their resolution.

The wind picked up and began to dry the tears that had fallen into my beard.  As I wiped the salt from my eyes, I perceived a voice, a familiar voice that I had heard many times before.  Again, the voice was neither male nor female, was from nowhere specifically and everywhere at once, and began with a single question to me.

“Do you believe in me?”

Without thinking, my body responded with a mental yes. The voice asked again.

“Do you believe I am the source of all that you know and all that is your experience?”

There was no need to think or   ponder the answer.  I had affirmed many times before in prayer my belief in the single source of creation, the fundamental vibration, the seed tone of the standing wave that allows the hologram of life's patterns.  Without thinking, once again my body responded with a mental yes.  The voice echoed its reply.

“If you believe in me, and you believe I an the source of all that is, then how can you believe, at the same time, that anything of your experience is other than me?”

Upon hearing the words, a tremendous sense of resolution filled my body.  Though a part of me had always known what the words had just offered, for the first time, I felt the wisdom of that truth.  My body actually felt the knowing.  Of course there were still the words of light and dark in my vocabulary.  Those words would never mean the same thing to me again.  Specifically, the conditioned belief that darkness is a force, unto itself, a fundamental power, in opposition to and separate from all that is good, no longer held any truth.

Each of us is asked to reconcile the force of darkness each day of our lives through the direct experience of one of darkness” many derivatives.  Fear, anger, rage, hate jealousy, depression, control issues, violation are each expressions of darkness playing out in our modern lives.  In that moment, through the tool of my own logic, I was offered the opportunity to recognize darkness for what it is rather than what my conditioning had taught me.  I was able to see darkness as a portion of the whole, a part of the source of all that is, rather than a fundamental force to contend with.

“If you believe in me, and you believe I am the source of all that is, then how can you believe, at the same tie, that anything of your experience (including darkness) is other than me?'

Through our perceived polarity of darkness and light, we have the opportunity to view ourselves from a different perspective, a necessary perspective, if we are to know and master ourselves in all ways.

The entire event had occurred in less than fifteen minutes.  In less time than it would normally take to eat a meal, at an elevation of thirteen thousand feet in the Peruvian Andes, I had felt an experience that would forever change the way in which I approached the collective perceptions of light and darkness.  This mountain top experience demonstrated to me, through my own logic, that darkness and light are not two distinct and separate forces at odds with one another.  Rather, each represents a portion of precisely the same whole, the same source of all that is.  Darkness as well as light, must be embraced without judgment as a part of creation, rather than a rival and renegade power outside of the One of all that is.

The subtle yet powerful realization propelled me into a dizzying chain of “if-thens.”  I recalled all of the times I was taught, asked to hate the darkness.  I remember just months earlier listening intently as a minister in Southern California asked his congregation to hate the powers of darkness and Lucifer.  I will ask you the same question I then asked myself.

IF

darkness, and the family of darkness are a part of the One,

THEN

How can a being of compassion hate a part of the One?

As I stood up on the rock, there was still no one behind me as yet.  Moving up over the pass I began the long trek down into the valley below.  I could see no one in front of me.  I was still alone.  Though I was in the shadows, the temperatures were unusually warm.  They had not yet begun to drop.  I immersed myself in the solitude and followed the loose rocks on the trail that would lead me into camp.  We would all be hiking in the dark that night.

THE FORGOTTEN ACT OF COMPASSION

What follows, previously has been offered in the privacy of a workshop or seminar, in an environment where I am able to look into the eyes of each participant and find the words that are meaningful in that road, in that moment.  I can feel their feelings to know if they have heard what I offered, rather than the words that their past may have conditioned them to hear.  Through these pages, I cannot look into your eyes.  I cannot feel you as you read the word patterns I am about to offer.  For what follows I trust in the process of group memory, our memory, as it unfolds between us.  From you, I ask for patience if my words are not your words.  By their very nature, the words of our language are limiting, serving as approximations of the message behind the words.  Please search within yourself for the message and intent underlying the words that follow.

You may find what I offer next to be in direct opposition to all you have been conditioned to understand about light and dark in Western traditions.  You may also discover the words stir something deep inside of you, an ancient knowing that feels right, safe and good to remember.  It may well be that each experience, of every lifetime, the lessons of all of your spiritual forbearers has paved the way to the moment of this understanding.  This may be your opportunity to heal your sense of separation!

I will begin with a question to you.  In your many years and many modes of education, who have you been told Lucifer, the holder of all evil was and is?

When I ask this question in the seminars, though the answers vary in wording, each usually expresses a common theme.  We are taught, primarily through the Biblical texts, that Lucifer was originally an angel.  The answers then become even more specific.  He was not just an angel.  He was an Archangel, the Brightest of the Bright and the Highest of the High.  A being of such brilliance, wisdom, love and power that he sat at the “hand of god,” unequaled and without peer.  My next question demonstrates where the confusion begins.

What happened to Lucifer?  What caused this most powerful and brilliant of beings, the Brightest of the Bright, to change his position from the highest of high and end up as the lowest of low?

To answer this question is to understand the power and the role fear has played within each of our lives throughout this evolutionary cycle of experience.  Within many western traditions today, the name of Lucifer is synonymous with that of the Devil and Satan.  The modern Biblical texts uses these names nearly interchangeably in the discussions of the beings of power that become “lost,” falling from the graces of heaven in the eyes of our creator.  Prior to this time, however, the name of Lucifer, from the Hebrew name of “light giver,” is not associated with the concept of “fallen angels” or Satan at all!

Interestingly, this connection was not made until the twelfth century A.D.  It was at this time, through what I see as a well-intentioned error in translation that Lucifer and Satan were treated as one in the same.  Detailed by Andrew Collins in the book, Templar Legacy & Masonic Inheritance within Rosslyn Chapel, the error may have come from an interpretation of the Biblical book of Isaiah.

            “How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning?”

According to Collins, Biblical scholars are in agreement this is a reference to the king of Babylon at the time, Nebuchadnzzar, known as “The Morning Star.”  Collins goes on to say the term “Lucifer” is believed to have been a name given both to the king as well as the Morning Star, Venus.  Prior to this time there was a powerful distinction between the two in origin, purpose and mode of earthly expression.  According to the pre-twelfth century texts, Satan also had been an angel, although not an archangel of the highest order.  Through an obscure series of events, Satan and a band of followers, became lost in the experience of physicality, carnal knowledge and density, straying from the position of “ light holder” to something of an anomalous renegade.  He was banished from the “highest places” and would spend the remainder of his days in the experiences he tampered with through his misguided deeds.

This is not the case with Lucifer.  Herein lives a powerful distinction.

Within the context of a world in polarity, the ancient texts tell us the stage for our cycle of existence was set as the anchoring of two extremes, two polarized extremes of precisely the same whole.  Those extremes are represented as the lightest of the light and the darkest of the dark, both as aspects of the same One.  Historically, there is agreement as to who the force is that anchored the light.  The texts say a powerful representative of the light, also sitting at “the hand of the One,” Archangel Michael offered to hold the patterns of light for the duration of this cycle of human experience.  He chose this task as a visible demonstration of his love for the earth, and remains with us today as a force anchoring the lightest of the light, serving as a mirror reflecting to us whatever light we choose to offer this world through our lives.  He anchors the greatest possibilities of light so we may know ourselves in light and in that knowing, see ourselves in all ways.

The “light” is one polar extreme, on of the two binary possibilities of this earthly experience.  Who anchors the opposite extreme?  Perhaps even a better question is “Who would want to?”  What being could be so powerful as to anchor the darkest of the dark as the other end of the polar spectrum?  What being has the power, of others, tempered with wisdom, love and compassion to hold that anchor without the legions of others, offering himself to this task of “love made visible,” for nearly 200,000 years?  What being of strength could possibly hope to survive in the polarity of darkness for the duration of this earthly cycle?  Cut off from all those that he had known, loved and cherished, what being would have a prayer of surviving without becoming lost in the experience?

With these question in mind, let's return to my experience of Lost Lake, and the mountain pass in Peru.  What happened in those experiences?  Why are they so important  today?  Following is what I believe I was offered as a single experience drawn out over a period of seventeen years.  I believe in my asking, I was shown an ancient truth regarding the worlds of light, dark, good, evil and life.

·        I saw the force of darkness, Lucifer, is here as the result of an intentional choice, rather than the result of an accidental ”fall” from a previous state of grace.

·        That the Archangel Lucifer has lived among us for nearly 200,000 years, for the sole purpose of “anchoring” the extreme polarity of darkness, because you and I have asked for that polarity the find our strength.

·        Using the power attained by becoming the highest of the high and the Brightest of the Bright, Lucifer holds our mirror of dark experiences so you and I may know ourselves in darkness, as well as in light.  In the knowing, we find the power within ourselves as our truest nature of compassion.  Where is the challenge of living compassionately in the light, when all that exists is light?  It is light referenced to dark that draws from us our truest nature for our very survival.

Is it possible the Archangel Lucifer, in perhaps one of the greatest acts of compassion ever witnessed in our ancient memory, willingly gave and continues to give of himself as our personal mirror of darkness because he loves us that much?  To find our balance we must know our extremes.  Who holds those extremes?  Is it possible that, in his unconditional love for us, Lucifer has immersed himself into the very opposite of all the light he had attained, to hold that possibility for us so that we may know ourselves in all ways?  Could Archangel Lucifer love us that much?

This is precisely the scenario I believe we are living.  Somewhere in the murky depths of our ancient group memory, we remember a being of such compassion that he willingly and intentionally left us and the form we had always known him in.  In his choice to serve us, through a love never before demonstrated, he immersed himself among us as that part of our consciousness we would shun, site of all that we would ever know as light so that you and I could find our power in a world where we choose our course of action in each moment.  Those choices are where we find our greatest strength.  In those moments of choice you and I remember our truest nature.

What I will say next I feel with equal portions of certainty and clarity.  In my vision beside Lost Lake in 1977, I saw the face of Lucifer transform into the face of a very young child.  As I looked into the eyes of that child, I saw the child cry and felt a tremendous sadness fill my body.  I believe the sadness was the remnant of a memory from Lucifer as well as myself.  I believe my memory is a portion of a greater group memory.  Lucifer showed me his truest nature, the purity and innocence in which he, as well as you and I, began our earthly experience over 200,000 years ago.  In the very nature of the experience itself, each of us has innocently given huge portions of ourselves away, loosing ourselves to the callousness and hardness that has resulted from our “hurts” upon the earth.  Now, our lives are asking that we call those fragments to us so we may once again know ourselves in wholeness.

Lucifer showed me himself, trusting me to see and remember his innocence.  As I saw him cry, I felt his loneliness.  I sensed his loss and the separateness he has endured for over 200,000 years.  I believe he is pleased to see our cycle nearly complete.  I believe he is tired and wants to come home.  I sense we all feel his longing for home to some degree.  Lucifer's home and our home are one and the same!  It is our quest to find our home that asks us to fill the perceived void of separation.  Filling that void drives us to seek wholeness in one another as we recognize reflections of ourselves through our relationships.  Each time we are “left” or abandoned in a relationship, loss of a job or someone we hold dear, our ancient sadness of separation is mirrored once again.

Lucifer and darkness are not out to “ get” you lurking at every turn of life choice.  Rather Lucifer is committed in service to you, through your growth, so you experience the consequence of choices that take you from life giving and light giving experience.

Darkness is just as much a part of us as light.  Lucifer is just as much a part of us as Michael, and we are all part of the same creator that brought us here eons ago so that we may know our strength as compassionate beings of non-judgment.  Archangel Lucifer, Archangel Michael, our creator, you and I are all part of One.  Nothing is separate.  They trusted that we would remember.

From this perspective, Lucifer as the Archangel is a benevolent power in service to you as the great mirror of your own darkness, just as Michael mirrors your personal quest into your own light.  It may very well be that Lucifer, as well as Michael, in the very act of offering themselves to us for 200,000 years, demonstrated the primal acts of compassion that would become the living bridge for each being that would ever choose to follow.

How does this feel to you?

How does it feel when you read the words suggesting the Master of Darkness, Archangel Lucifer, loves you?

Will you allow yourself to believe darkness is an aspect of love?  An ally of your growth?  For some, the words are so foreign to their frame of reference they immediately dispute the offering, citing all of the ills, war, disease and horrors of the world and Lucifer's darkness as the cause.  Certainly these things exist.  To ignore them is to shun a reality that faces each of us in each moment.  This is precisely the point.  Darkness, and each of its derivatives, is a part of our experience.  Rear, anger, hate, incest, jealousy, depression, control, judgment, suspicion, denial, pain, death, illness, disease and the myriad descriptors or the very things most would least choose to experience in life are rooted in our perception of darkness.  Is it possible our perception of darkness, and its many and varied expressions, are rooted in obsolete assumptions based in poor translations of an ancient text seven hundred years ago?

This is the scenario I believe we are experiencing now, in these days, in this lifetime.  There certainly may have been a time in our history when it served us to view evil as a grotesque devil with saggy skin, scaly arms and legs and an appetite for the human flesh of those who have strayed from the path.  This viewpoint, in its simplicity, may have served us for those hundreds of years, providing a yardstick by which to measure the qualities, deeds and actions of others.  In the measuring we would know how best to relate to them.

It may have served us so well we are now at the point where we are asking ourselves to move beyond the very conditioning that has carried us here.

I believe we have moved beyond our conditioning.  We have created a society of externally based technology; machines that mimic the very processes of life. Through this external mirroring, we are reminded of our physical nature.  Society asks that we reconcile this tremendously sophisticated life view with a “light” and “dark” scenario that originated hundreds of years ago from what quite possibly was an inaccurate assumption to begin with.  Is it any wonder the worlds of external and internal technology appear mutually exclusive?  Now we seek to develop an internal, spiritually based technology mirroring the reality of light and dark.  We are asked, by virtue of our lives, to redefine what “dark” and “light” mean to us and live that new truth.