When we seek to live the path of Love our light draws others toward us like a moth is drawn to the flame. Some are attracted to us because they recognize in us something of their own truth. Perhaps we carry within us something that will help them to harness and live their own light. Maybe we have experience and knowledge that will help them with their own healing, growth, and empowerment. In these situations, the relationship that unfolds is reciprocal. We have an opportunity to share our gifts and the other has an opportunity to be empowered in their own. In this sharing we find fulfillment and so do they. Light begets light.
Not only does our light attract light, but it also attracts darkness. Some of this darkness may simply be woundedness in others that has a potential to find healing through the sharing of our gifts. When the drawing of this darkness empowers the other to seek and receive healing and do the work of further supporting that healing on their own, the experience, as explored above, is reciprocal. We have an opportunity to share our gifts and the other is healed and empowered through that sharing. Here, light transforms the darkness, thereby unleashing the light.
Not all darkness drawn to us seeks this kind of healing and empowerment, however. Instead, it is the kind of darkness that seeks to feed off our light. Parasitical in nature, this is the darkness that takes and gives nothing back. This is the darkness that seeks to be enabled and refuses to do its own inner work. This is the darkness that doesn’t want to be healed because they are content in their misery, blind to their own darkness, or gaining advantage over others through their darkness. Perhaps they enjoy being cruel to others or thrive off the pain they cause others through their non-loving actions.
These are examples of darkness that seeks the light off of which it can feed. In some cases, this darkness is jealous of the light, so it feigns friendship, pretending to be a source of support when instead it means to destroy. In other cases, the darkness seeks to take advantage of those of a kind and generous nature. Sometimes the darkness senses our own vulnerability and seeks their own ends by using these vulnerabilities against us. In some cases, this darkness has no substance of its own and hopes that by simple association they too will be cast in a better light. This is the kind of darkness that takes our light and uses it for its own end. Instead of experiencing fulfillment in engaging with this darkness, we are depleted. We may find ourselves feeling despairing or depressed, exhausted or fatigued, even physically and emotionally ill.
We cannot help that our light draws others toward us. What we can help (to some degree) is what we let in. We will never be perfect in our ability to discern between those drawn to us who will find empowerment with us, and those who seek only to take. But for the sake of our own wellbeing, we must seek to know and understand the signs and symptoms of parasites so that we might refuse them. We must also learn and cultivate practices for freeing and healing ourselves from the presence of parasites when we discover we have unwittingly let them in.
Darkness will always find a way to our light. We decide whether to let it in or how long to allow it to remain.
Lauri Ann Lumby 
How apt that you have chosen “death” to represent darkness. Two days after an old friend went into hospice, he died peacefully in his sleep. And a couple of months ago, another friend’s father died suddenly. And now her mother’s in the hospital after suffering a stroke. My friend had been dealing with both bone and lung cancer for years. It was by faith (and sheer stubbornness) that he lasted as long as he did. I am seeing a pattern here: death of someone with whom a friend has a deep emotional connection. Death never takes a holiday…it is the one thing we are certain to meet, sooner or later. I have been having to face my own mortality: Hekate & Baba Yaga energy at work here.
LikeLike
I’m sorry about your losses. I didn’t intend to make the dark figure appear like Death, but I see it. And I agree, we have to come to terms with death if we ever want to live.
LikeLike