I wrote this piece on redemption and light in October and it keeps coming back to me.  I heard on the radio that January 21 is the day of the year that the most people complain of depression.  I’m sure it’s due in large part to the lack of light that occurs in winter and some sort of post-holiday let-down.  Also the ebullience of making those new year’s resolutions has morphed into the self-flagellation of not being able to lose fifty pounds in the first two weeks of January, read War and Peace, and become president of your company.  If you are one of these depressed people maybe this will cheer you up.

We don’t need redemption.  Our souls are perfect.  What we need is an awakening to that perfection.  To own the space we take up in the world.  To own our thoughts, our feelings; to own our immense power.  The acknowledgement of these eternal truths is the trailhead to awakening.

Instead of awakening, though, we accept darkness.  We welcome it.  ”Thank God, now I can do nothing and blame the darkness.”  We exclaim, “I can’t see – it’s dark,”  forgetting that there are matches all around us waiting to be struck.  Forgetting that if we will just move outside our dark selves that light is waiting for us.

I takes courage to strike the match.  It takes a sense of worthiness.  Yet we are quick to judge ourselves unworthy of brilliance.  Reaching for the match also takes faith that it will light.  We have to believe that our natural perfection is really in there, even when we can’t see it.  Reaching for the match takes faith that the light created can overcome the darkness that we are so sure exists.

But darkness does not exist as it’s own entity.  It’s merely the absence of light.  Light manifests as the sun, candles, a campfire, a light bulb.  How reassuring and petrifying that WE are in charge of whether we want to strike the match.

We do not need redemption, no.  We need to reach our trembling hands to heaven and light ourselves up.

“Everybody is a candle, true.  But everybody is not lit.”  Yogi Bhajan