Why True Enlightenment Comes Through “Endarkenment”

Q: You said something like “light is born out of darkness”. In me, there’s what’s like a birth from darkness to light. Can you talk about the relationship between darkness and light, when light comes out of darkness?

John: It’s when you are still, in that darkness, that light comes out of you. It’s when you are at home in that darkness, without any need of light, that you produce light.

Q: How is that going on? How is that produced?

John: Your beingness that matches the level of truth within, the level of darkness within. As soon as there is a match, there’s light. The match of beingness to that level of truth within that seems all dark is you being a level of stillness that is a match to that depth. That depth of truth, to be realized, requires that depth of stillness – stillness as in you have need of nothing – the fundamental okayness at that depth of being nobody and nothing. With that level of freedom from what you’re used to, the beingness of that stillness is light. Without the match of stillness to that level of darkness, in knowing that darkness you are subject to that darkness. It has effect on you. It has effect, because you’re not the same as that. The effect enables you to register the difference. Registering that difference and knowing that difference invites you to be the difference.

Q: And there seems to be a movement in it that is not in the dark, the silent dark.

John: That’s your movement in the light that is born by your stillness in the dark.
In this way, light is not of the light. Light is beingness that is of the darkness. Light is really of the darkness. Light isn’t first.

Q: So when my sister and I, when she passed away and we travelled to light, and further, I skipped seeing where we came from, into the light?

John: You went into the beingness of what you come from. That’s the light. And then there is what you come from. The light is not what you come from. The light is the beingness of what you come from.

Q: So the ‘I’ can dissolve in the darkness and arise again.

John: Yes.

Q: Is that the natural evolution, learning process, moving? (John nods) Yeah. As I can experience the dissolving in the darkness I also, at some point, when I went with my sister, experienced the dissolving of what I could call ‘I’, in the light. There was only light: no shadows, nothing.

John: Only beingness. Light everywhere, without a source of light, such as the sun. Light everywhere, without light coming from an object; the return of all mind, all familiarity to beingness. Light everywhere, and nothing else is there. All of that light is your beingness. There’s nothing there because you’re not being ‘something’ there.

Q: Beingness – there’s not a ‘you’, there’s not a ‘we’, there’s not an ‘us’. Is that everything?

John: All of the light is intimacy, intimacy of being: all light, all intimacy, no object to be found.

Q: Maybe it’s because I’m used to intimacy being between one and another.

John: Between one and another, from within your self, moves feeling, willingness, thought and emotion, making even more of the object – a magnification of the object. Instead of intimacy between two people, there can be the return of both to beingness, and then there is all light and all intimacy.

The real individuality is your capacity, as awareness, to be nothing instead of something. So real individuality is almost nothing, whereas individuality, as we relate to it in our selves and as a person, is so much something. The experience of it, the sense of it, all reflected in our forms, seems as so much something. We can magnify that sense of something through the use of ourselves, by moving thought and feeling, will and emotion, moving it to add to the something instead of moving it to simply do something, without being that something. That’s like innocence doing, innocence at play. innocence at play isn’t really innocence at play with something, innocence at play with objects. It’s awareness at play with light.

So, you can be really something in this world, and a heavy somebody, or you can be nobody and nothing that freely plays with light. The more something and somebody you are, the more dim you are. The dimness registers as lack, so then you need to move your self to keep something up, to keep an experience of yourself up, moving emotion and thought, will and feeling. But as soon as you’re still, you’re dim.

When you are being nobody and nothing, the beingness of your stillness moves so much light. When you are being something and somebody, you’ll hold yourself together to compensate for the dimness that’s there. That holding together is a negative or a positive posturing: how you posture yourself, how you present yourself. The posturing is compensation for the lack, the dimness. When you are deeply at home in not needing to compensate for any dimness, any lack, of that stillness, of that quietude, light comes. Meaning moves from you, without you doing anything. The radiance of meaning is light. When you are deeply at home in nothing, when you are that at home in nothing, in your day, you are light in this world. Despite anything you do, you radiate meaning.

The way to enlightenment is endarkenment: awareness being nothing, awareness nothing, nothing aware. Home.