What the Heart Illumines, the Darkness Has Nurtured

By Wayne Saalman

[Photo by Rohan Makhecha]

BEAUTY IS IN THE EYE of the beholder, happiness in the mind and heart of the individual. Each of us has our own perspective, our own highly personal and unique perception of this life and most of us are free to believe as we will.

Wonderful as that is, however, this uniqueness of perception is also what divides humanity. It divides us in a different way than skin color, nationality and religion, but it still divides us, for no two people ever view life in exactly the same way.

What that means in real terms is that when it comes to facts, the interpretation of those facts is as diverse as humanity itself.

This, in essence, is why the world is riddled with chaos and conflict, and why there is a lack of consensus as to what should be done about the problems we have in this world.

The upside of such diversity is that it has always expanded humanity’s spectrum of possibilities and often resulted in a vast range of actualities that have proven beneficial and enriching to humanity.

The downside of this same truth is that dark minds can and do perpetrate all manner of disturbing acts based on belief systems that can cause detriment to others and to the environment we all share. It means that terrible things can and do occur.

It is a complete mystery why any of us are naturally predisposed to pursuing a certain lifestyle or interest and will likely always be, but we do know this: in the normal course of things, some of us are naturally more optimistic than others and some more pessimistic. Some are given to kindness and a desire for peaceful coexistence with others in the world, while there are those who are given to acts that foment division and cause damage to people and to property.

The question that naturally arises alongside this tumultuous state of affairs concerns whether justice can ever truly prevail.

Basically, there are two major paradigms that attempt to answer that question: scientific materialism and spiritualism.

Scientific materialism boils down to the notion that physical reality is the only true reality, while spiritualism insists that there is a transcendent metaphysical dimension to life, one that constitutes the primary reality.

For scientific materialists justice is worldly. It requires laws that mitigate against activities based on belief systems that can cause detriment to people and property. It requires a policing body, a court system and facilities for administering recompense, such as the enforcement of monetary “damages” and detention centers where people can “do time” for a crime.

For the spiritualist, that recompense expands into an additional dimension beyond the worldly justice system.

Whether there is an afterlife or absolute oblivion upon death, of course, no one knows for certain, but one thing seems sure: one or other of these two possibilities must prove true in time.

If there is an afterlife, as the sages and spiritual masters of history have contended, then there is the possibility of Divine justice and / or karmic recompense. No crime would not go unpunished as a result, nor would any grave error in judgment that caused harm to others be of no consequence.

Perhaps karmic recompense is Divine justice.

Those who have had Near-Death Experiences say that at death a person not only lives on in some other dimension, but goes through what is called a “life review”. Such a life review is said to be a microscopic, forensic look back at the days and years of one’s time on Earth while in the company of a “Being of Light” — a highly advanced spiritual being of some nature — who helps the person to deeply reflect on how he or she acted while living here. Rather than railing, lecturing or otherwise condemning those actions that are found to be of an unkind, unloving, hurtful or downright lethal nature to others, the person is impelled by the Being of Light to weigh up his or her own actions and — above all — made to feel the mental, emotional and physical hurt they once caused.

The purpose of the life review is not to punish, but to help the person to grow in spiritual terms and to learn to act with greater insight, understanding and compassion in the future. In short, the life review’s primary purpose is to shed light on the darkness out of which we all arise.

If such a scenario is true, those who are wise will realize that stepping into action, here and now, is the way to get ahead of this process for one’s own present and future well-being. The most effective way of doing that is to constantly monitor one’s own behavior in a similarly forensic manner in order to enact course corrections on a regular basis for that same vital end: spiritual growth.

In this manner, the wise come to understand that all souls have had their conscious beginning in a state of darkness and learn that what the heart illumines, the darkness has nurtured. The wise, therefore, forgive and move on, but never forget life’s greatest teachings.