The Pathway To Your Results

Are You Afraid of The Dark?

• Derick Grant • Season 5 • Episode 221

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We explore why fear of darkness lingers into adulthood and how the unknown, unseen, and unhealed parts of us shape growth. We share stories from a darkness retreat, lessons on self-acceptance, and practical ways to face shadows and integrate change.

• fear of the dark as fear of the unknown
• ego’s need for control and certainty
• self-acceptance versus performance-based worth
• seeds, seasons and growth beginning in darkness
• mirrors, shadows and meeting your power
• intuition over logic in deep healing
• tomb as womb, rebirth and resilience
• practice: sit in silence and journal themes
• focus on weaknesses, Kobe-style integration
• ask for help and remember your strength
• flip your own light switch, stop outsourcing worth

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SPEAKER_02:

Once you see what you actually are, that you're an infinite, limitless being, you'll see that nothing exists outside of you. I'm your host, Derek Grant, and this is the Pathway to Your Results Podcast.

unknown:

Bro.

SPEAKER_02:

This podcast is sponsored by the DG Mindset Academy School of Growth. Look, I didn't like school growing up if I'm being honest, but I love to learn. And that's why I created this academy. Inside, you'll find a semester-style framework with recorded masterclasses, live eight-week coaching courses that I personally teach, and live QA coaching calls with me, plus a community that is built for growth. We're going to talk about entrepreneurship, money, healing, performance, mindset, growth, everything that life entails. The first semester begins November 3rd, but you can start right now. Join today at dgmindset.com. That's DGMindset.com, and I will see you inside. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Pathway to Results Podcast. It is your boy DG. This is presented by DG Mindset. Yeah, blah, blah, blah. You know we got to see all that. Anyway, we're here. This episode, this is for I mean, it's for adults. But I'm going to be speaking to the child inside of you.

unknown:

Okay?

SPEAKER_01:

Here when I say this.

SPEAKER_02:

I'm saying a child inside of you, but it may be adults too. Go ahead and raise your hand if you're afraid of the dark. Okay. Some of us were afraid of the dark. I'm not afraid of the dark. I used to be afraid of the dark. True story. I was watching. You remember that show used to come on with Hugh Downs and Barbara Walters 2020 show 2020? They did an episode. I'll never forget. We were living in Rochester, New York, and I stayed up. It was a Friday evening and watched 2020, and they were watching. The episode was on Exorcism. And I never heard of an exorcism. Man, that scared the. I was so scared to go to bed that night. Man, for the I'm talking about for the like probably for a good 30 years. I was afraid of the dark because of that episode. And Unsolved Mysteries, yes. Unsolved Mysteries, that man's voice. Man, it used to scare the crap out of me. Oh my gosh. So I was scared of the dark. Okay, some of y'all laughing because you know what I'm talking about, because you some of us are still scared of the dark, but I ain't gonna say no names. Um but when you start understanding, I asked, you know, me, I asked the question why I always gotta know why. I asked the question, why am I, why was I scared of the dark? Why was it? Why are we scared of the dark? So my kids um were scared of the dark. Now my son, my son likes it, as my dad would say, he likes it black as 40 nights in his room. He don't want to have no light. You're like, Dad, can you close those blinds? I'm like, what do you want me to get a piece of duct tape and tape the curtain up against the there is no light in here. What are you talking about? This is the way he is now. But he used to be scared of the dark. So we have to understand what the dark represents metaphorically, spiritually, energetically in our lives. Good God Almighty. We're gonna go ahead and dive right into it. Go ahead and put your oxygen mask on so we can go and get into it. You gotta realize what the dark represents in our life. The dark represents the unknown, the unseen, the unhealed. I'm gonna go ahead and say that again because I don't think you understand what I'm saying. The dark represents the unseen, the unknown, the unhealed. And every time that you are scared of the dark, what that really means is you're scared of yourself. I'm afraid of myself. I'm afraid to move into those spaces that are uncertain. I'm afraid to move into those places that I've never, I'm I'm not quite sure of the landscape. See, we got versions of ourselves in the past that we're unaware of. And this is why, this is why they don't call it shadow work for no reason. Shadow work is where there is darkness. Shadow work is where the darkness is. So the fear of dark being afraid of the dark is really the fear of the unknown. Now, I would probably go, I could probably go in and ask you the question: are you afraid of the unknown? Are you afraid of uncertainty? Yeah, of course. If you're afraid of the unknown, you're gonna be afraid of the dark. So now, once I realized, I have to tell you this, this wasn't until I was probably like 25, 26 years old. I really started to look at it logically. Why am I afraid of the dark? See, I asked the question, why are you afraid? I realized that I was afraid of the dark because of a past program. Now, that program happened to come on Friday nights on ABC with Hugh Downs and uh Barbara Walters. But I'm not talking about that kind of program. That past experience is what shaped my perspective of the dark. Because when I was in my mama's womb, I didn't have no problem with the dark. I actually cried when I came out in the light. Huh? So when we start to realize that the darkness, what it represents in our life and our fear, it's not that we're afraid of the dark, we're afraid of what we think is hiding there. But the only thing that's hiding there is you. So we have to be able to go back into those old parts of ourselves. So now here's what ends up happening: our ego loves control. Our ego loves certainty, our ego loves the known. Why? So it can develop expectations. Why? So it can develop attachment. Why? So it can continue to live in survival mode. That's all it's here to do. So now I'm afraid of the unknown. Let me reframe that. Derek is afraid of the unknown. So now Derek is afraid of everything physically that constitutes that. It could be you waiting for a gig or waiting for a job and you sit here waiting three, four, five days. When are they going to call? How come they haven't called yet? That is the fear of unknown. The fear of what if I don't get it? So now, let's look at our lives. Let's just take a step back and start to realize really what's going on. Your ability to be able to be okay with the dark is going to directly reflect your ability to heal. And your ability to heal will directly reflect your ability to transform. And your ability to transform is directly correlated to your growth, your rate of growth. So the more okay I am with going into the dark and not becoming afraid of it, the more that I will be. Sorry, I know you say this way, but the quicker I'm going to grow. So I told you many years ago, I went in on a Monday and came out on Friday and went and sat in the darkness by myself. I didn't realize what I was doing. I wasn't even afraid of the dark dead. I got in that dark. I was look, what was that, three, two years ago? I ain't slept like that ever since. That first night I slept. I don't know how long I slept for. I have never been that rested ever since then. If anybody wants to get some rest, because I know some of us got some kids, and I don't know how old your kids are, but you ain't slept since you had kids. Right? That's one thing I wish I would have known when we had kids. Why didn't somebody tell me I wasn't gonna sleep for the first uh 25 years? How come nobody told me that? Everybody's like, oh my gosh, the baby, the baby's so good. Oh my gosh, the baby. No, it ain't. The baby been ain't slept in months. What you talking about? That baby wake up at the same time every night, talking about I'm hungry. Anyway, I slept good when I was in that first night. And now I look back on it. When I was in the darkness, I found my old journal entries, my, my, my, of the, of, of the whole darkness retreat. But the first after I slept, the first night, this was the first time that I really tackled acceptance. And I wrote in my journal entry, self-acceptance kept coming up. I realized how little I accept myself. Good God Almighty. Every time that you don't accept yourself, this creates darkness. Every time that I only accept myself because of uh what I've done or what I accomplished or what I have, this creates darkness. So now, as I'm sitting in this dark, literally, I'm able to see how much this comes up. And I'm like, oh my goodness, look how little you accept yourself. Look at this. But it took me sitting in the dark. It took me not having distraction. It took me sitting in a place where there was nothing to distract me anymore. So the reason why I'm saying this. There's a reason why things are dark and things are light. There's a reason why we have both. The darkness is where the most capable versions of you hide at. But you have to become okay with uncertainty. You have to become okay with the unknown. You have to become okay with how? How am I going to do this? How is it going to happen? You have to become okay with that first. Because that lives in the darkness. Let me ask you a question. Because I know what you're gonna do. I know what you're gonna do. You're gonna take a screenshot and you're gonna tag me on your story after you hear this. You tell me why seeds grow in the dark. Seeds don't grow above ground in the light. They ain't trying to hear nothing. Let me go get off this thing. They ain't trying to hear nothing upset. You over here, you want to grow and do this and do that and do all these things. But do you not know that the seed can't sprout? Sorry, that the seed only sprouts in sunlight because it grew in darkness underground. So the reason why I'm saying this, every awakening, every ascension, every transformation, every rebirth always starts in darkness. It starts in confusion, it starts in loss, it starts in ego death, it starts in the breakup, it starts in adversity, it starts in struggle, it starts in all of these things. I've tried to tell you this before. The darkness is not punishment, it's preparation. Y'all ain't trying to hear nothing I'm saying right now. The dark has always prepared and been the hotbed, the soil, so the seed could grow. So as I sit here and run away from the darkness, we're running away from the opportunity for us to grow. I'm missing my chance, and I'm telling you this right now. You heard the last episode. For so long, I had a problem with the darkness. I was afraid of the dark. This is why I tell you that pill of accountability is gonna have to be needed, and you're gonna have to have courage. You're gonna have to have courage because it takes courage being able to walk in that closet, not knowing what's inside that closet. I used to be afraid that there was something underneath the bed, something was gonna get me, and then it was gonna look in the mirror. You remember that whole thing, Bloody Mary? Remember all that? Remember when we were kids, we used to. Oh, some girl told me one day, she said she was on the bus. Her name was Katie. I don't remember her, but I remember she had blue eyes and she looked like, she looked like she had Bloody Mary in her because her eyes used to always be red. And I'm not saying it'd be mean, but she looked like she, her eyes were, and she said, Yeah, we looked in the mirror and said Bloody Mary, and then uh it came out and it scratched me on my back, and she showed me scratches. I said, What the? She's scared delivered. I said, I put a towel over my mirror. I don't even need to look in the mirror. I'm done with mirrors. But how many times does this happen? We take somebody else's experience in their darkness and we make it our own. Good God almighty, y'all ain't trying to hear me. Somebody else went through their own hardship and they think that it can't be done because they gave up on themselves, and then we take that and we say, Yeah, we can't do it. I'm not even gonna try, it's gonna be hard. Don't you do that? That was her. She was the one who dealt with that, not me. So the reason why I'm saying this is because the more that we become okay with the dark, the more light we're gonna have. The more that you can go back into those parts of yourself, those wounds, those past situations, those past programs, and you can go back and heal those. Because every time that you heal, what do you need to do that? You need awareness, and awareness is light, unawareness is darkness. When I go back into the dark, you're gonna start to have a little different relationship with the dark. You know what my relationship with the dark is now? Shoot, I can tell you, I'll go sit in the jungle with Jesus for three days straight, and I will literally only be in the dark.

SPEAKER_01:

Now my relationship with the dark. I was born in it, molded by it, adopted by it.

SPEAKER_02:

No, I'm just kidding. That was my best bane, that was my bane uh impression. I never even seen the movie. I just seen that on YouTube. See, it ain't bad. Anyway, I became okay with the dark because I realized that's what this is where the light came from. See, the darkness is not the absence of light, it's the space where light learns who it is. Good God almighty, y'all ain't trying to hear nothing I'm saying right now. The dark is not the absence of light. This is where the space is where light learns to become what it actually is. So as you sit here and avoid the light, sorry, avoid the darkness meaning you really don't want to degree the way you need to. You don't really want to sit with yourself and process the emotions, and we'd rather sweep it under the rug and work really hard, and that way we don't have to deal with it. Take your into the dark and sit with it. And don't you come out until there's light. Because here's the deal: the more that you avoid the dark, all it's gonna do is create suffering. So you can avoid all the pain through distraction through business and achievement, but all you gonna do is keep the story going, keep the darkness going, because we know whatever we resist will persist. The pain ain't gonna go nowhere. It's just hiding until you're ready to face it. Matter of fact, it's hiding until it's time to face it because you're gonna have to face it most of the time when we're not ready. And here's the beauty of it. You ready? Are you ready? Are you ready? Are you ready? You ready? Okay, you're ready now.

unknown:

Okay.

SPEAKER_02:

When we go into the darkness willingly, trusting and knowing that things are going to work itself out, you'll start to see that the dark was really just a mirror of yourself. It was a mirror. See, the dark was a mirror, and uh the shadows were just trying to scare you, but uh on a deeper level, they weren't really just trying to scare you, they were really just trying to introduce you to your power who you had not met yet. Y'all ain't trying to hear nothing. So people tell me, like, I say, you know what, uh, you know, I'm scared to do ayahuasca. I'm scared to I just listen to them. Because I hear what they're actually saying. I'm scared to go into the parts of myself. I'm scared to touch the parts of me that I have been so conveniently pushing and putting away. I told you when I had my ceremonies, and the Black Panther showed up. The Black Panther, I didn't realize what it was. I didn't know nothing about it. Black Panther showed up, and then these last batch of ceremonies that I had with Jesus. The Black Panther was dead. It was laid to rest, and I was at its funeral. And I was like, I cried and I cried and I cried. I ain't cried that hard. I don't know how long I cried so hard in this ceremony. I cried. And here I am just petting this Black Panther in this ceremony, and he was dead. And Mother Aya said, You've graduated. He came here to help you to be able to walk into the darkness because the Black Panther could see in the dark. But now you've learned how to navigate through your darkness, and he's done. He's done, he's gone. You now can walk into the darkness. You don't need help. Now, this is all this has been right now. This this podcast, these resources, DG Mindset Academy, the community, uh, retreats, all these things have been resources and vehicles, containers that I've provided to help you to be able to walk into the darkness. But guess what? You're gonna have to be the one who looks underneath your bed. You're gonna have to be the one who goes into your shadows. You're gonna have to be the one who goes back and deals with those wounds. I can show you where they are. I can tell you how to find them, but you're gonna have to do it. Now there's something that we refer to as the hero's journey. The hero's journey, right? This is I mean, it's it's obviously a microcosm. Every every superhero has the hero's journey, every movie is the hero's journey. Your life is the hero's journey, but hear me when I say this. The hero's journey always begins in darkness. See, every transformation story starts with separation. The call to adventure, as we would say, right? To go and find who I am, right? Sounds familiar. And the beauty of the darkness is you can't use your outer eyes anymore. Good God Almighty. Y'all ain't trying to hear nothing. See, when you walk in the dark, you can't see nothing. I was in that cave in Oregon, I couldn't see nothing. I had my hand in front of my face, I couldn't see nothing. I'd have to anybody, anybody here ever had to brush their teeth? Anybody ever had to eat? Has anybody ever had to wash their butt and you can't see what you're doing? Try doing that for five days. Try eating chia seed pudding and you don't know what it is. Now, I'm a I'm not a big texture guy when it comes to food, but go ahead and put some pudding in your mouth and you don't know what it is. And you over here smelling it, and now your mind's playing tricks on you. I don't know if this is vanilla, if this is coconut, but why does it feel curdled in my mind? What is this? What in the world? You think peanut butter and jelly sandwich tastes good until you don't know that it's a peanut butter jelly sandwich, and you over here like, what is all of this stuff on here? Huh? I don't even know what my point was. Oh, I know what it was. You can't, when you when you go into the darkness, you can't use your eyes. I'm not only talking about literally, I'm talking about metaphorically. When you go into the darkness, when you go into the darkness of your soul, when you go into those places that you have been putting away, when you go and deal with those wounds, when you go back to that abuse, when you go back to that trauma, when you go back to the neglect, you can't use logic. You can't use reason. That ain't gonna be the way it is. You're gonna have to use your spiritual eyes, you're gonna have to use your inner light, you're gonna have to use what we have already been gifted with. In the Bible, Jesus said, I'm leaving, I'm gonna leave something with you. I'm gonna call that monk the advocate. I'm gonna leave with you the Holy Spirit, aka intuition. I'm gonna go ahead and leave that with you because there's gonna be times when you don't know what's going on. You know what he said to his disciples? I said, I'm he said, I'm leaving, I'm out of here. I'm gonna leave the advocate with you, and it will come to you in times of falsehood. It will come to you in times of falsehood. Meaning when you were going through this transition and you were walking through the darkness, don't you start thinking that you ain't capable of it? I'm gonna leave somebody with you who's gonna speak on my behalf. And please know when it comes to you, trust and know that it was for you. Trust and know that you have already everything inside of you. What did he even tell the disciples said, greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world? He was trying to tell you you already had everything that was needed for you to walk into this dark space. Why do you think when he was crucified, they put him in a cave? They put him in the darkness. They put that big old heavy rock. He said, Nope, I'm out of this mode. I am out. Holla at your boy. I'm out of here. You know he was saying, I'm not worried about no darkness. This darkness ain't gonna keep me down. Are you kidding me? I willingly got myself up on this cross. I willingly went into the shadows, I willingly killed my ego. And I suggest you do the same if you wanna have everlasting life. If you want to be with me, I suggest you become okay with going into those places. Why you told all those disciples, if you're gonna be with me, if you're gonna roll with me, if you're gonna be part of this gang gang, if you're gonna do that, then I need to make sure that you're gonna pick up your cross. Meaning you are going to have to willingly go into the places that every human runs away from. You're gonna have to be able to go into those places that everybody's gonna say, Yeah, but that's really hard. That's really uncomfortable. Are you kidding me? I'm gonna have to kill my ego. I'm gonna have to leave my family. I'm gonna have to leave my old life. I'm a fisherman. Yeah, you're gonna be a you're a fisherman, you're catching them rusty fish. Come over here and be a fisher of men. Come over here and be a because when you pick up your cross, you know what's gonna happen. You're gonna have a hook that ain't never gonna run out of bait, and everybody's gonna wanna gravitate towards you. They're gonna say something's different about her. How come her light shines so bright? What is it about her? I don't know. Your energy is just so infectious. You're gonna go to a party and everybody's gonna be gravitating around you. And you're gonna say, Well, all these people around me, I'm an introvert. I don't even feel like talking because your light is so bright, but you only got your light because you was willing to sit in that motherfucking darkness. I don't think you understand. I don't think you understand. Your darkness is your initiation into self-mastery. This is why it comes in certain seasons. This is why, if you look at good God Almighty, if you look at, if you look at, look at the season, look what Mother Earth did. Look what Mother Earth did. When we get in the winter, what happens? When we get in the winter, there's less daylight. There's less daylight in the winter. Why? Why? You tell me why. Somebody please tell me why there's less, there is less daylight in the winter. Because the winter is when everything dies off. And there's more darkness. And when everything dies off in the darkness, what happens next? What comes next? Springtime. Springtime is when everything comes to life. So the reason why I'm saying this, when you go into the dark, please know and please believe that the light shall cometh. And if you go back and read the Bible, if you read the Bible, right? If you read this book, this is what my mama used to say. When you read the good book, son, when you read the good book, what did it say? God said, Let there be light. God didn't say let there be darkness. God said, Let there be light. Let there be light. That means darkness would have had to exist at first. Y'all ain't trying to hear nothing I'm saying. Now, if God had said, let there be light, sorry, let there be darkness, I probably would have made a podcast about light because light was actually where the growth took place. But now in this case, darkness is where the growth takes place. Darkness is where the mastery, shadow work is where the real work is. I tell people all the time, I work with a lot of different people, all different walks of life, all different uh uh levels of stature. I tell you the ones who make the most growth is the ones who became okay with sitting in the dark. So I don't know what you're gonna be for Halloween this year, but you might as well go and get something that symbolizes being in the dark. You can be a Batman or Black Panther. That's probably about it. I don't know. One of them, go be a witch. Do something, something that's okay with being in the dark. So energetically, you should tell yourself, I'm I'm I ain't afraid of the dark. So now when you understand this, what I'm trying to get at, my whole point of this, because everybody wants light. I want to help the world. I want to be a light in this world. I'm gonna go ahead and just say this to all my spiritual teachers out there and coaches. Okay. Let me tell you this. You can't become the light if you're still running away from the dark. Now, if you could see me right now, I would have the Kermit face. Remember that meme was going around Kermit had that tea and he was sipping on it? That's the face that I have right now. If you can visualize that and imaginize that. Okay, yes, I made up another Word of us podcast. You know we do that. But until you become okay sitting in that dark, it's gonna be hard to bring light to this world. So sometimes that looks like you sitting in silence. I had a guy tell me the other day he said, I don't like to be by myself. I said, Oh, that's darkness. You need to learn how to be by yourself. Well, I don't like to journal. Oh, that's darkness. You need to start learning how to journal. You see, anything that I don't like to do and I'm running away from it, that's because there's darkness there. I'm afraid of it. So here's the question that you ask: What is this discomfort trying to show me right now? What is it trying to show me? So when you start looking at darkness as the sacred womb, that that womb, everybody here came from somebody's womb. That womb didn't have no night light in it. That that womb didn't have a clap on, clap on. It didn't have that light. For all my 80s babies and some of us don't know what clap-on is, right? It didn't have a light in there. It didn't have it. We were we were we were molded in darkness. We were literally created in darkness. All of us. And then we gravitate towards the light. But remember, I want you to remember this. Your darkness is your sacred womb. Good God Almighty. Oh my goodness, it just came into me. Y'all gotta y'all got a y'all got a download that just came in hot off the press, straight from the divine. I'm not even off of that divine dust right now, but it just came in. Why is it, why is it, why is it that if you look at the story of Jesus, Jesus was taken to a tomb. He was taken to a tomb in the darkness. That tomb was darkness, so really it was the sacred wound. Him performing miracles and doing all these things wasn't really a big deal. It was the fact that he was resurrected. That was the big deal. But where did the resurrection take place? It didn't take place until after he was placed in the tomb. But the tomb wasn't a tomb, it was really just a womb. Y'all ain't trying to hear nothing I'm saying. It wasn't a tomb, it was a womb for the rebirth. It was a womb for the resurrection. So as I'm sitting here, I told you all uh last podcast, I was going through this everything about the move and everything. And I had this old playlist that I would listen to back when I was going through this all bunch of gospel songs. There was a song by Elevation Worship called uh uh Resurrecting, and it was, I mean, it was it was like a rock and roll song. It was like, man, it was, it was, I used to listen to it when I would work out and everything. And it was saying that the tomb was where the resurrection took place every time that you go through a tough time, every time that you feel like you are in the dark, I want you to stop looking at it as a negative and let it be a precursor to the resurrection that's going to take place once you get through it. It may take three days, three hours, three years, three months, I don't know how long it's gonna take. It's really irrelevant, but just know, just know. That which is going to come out of this tomb will be far much more than that what went in it. And when you remind yourself of this, you'll start to see that the darkness was really just fuel for your light. I go through tough times. I'm not gonna sit here and I tell you I don't. I say tough, it's all in air quotes because all that's relative. I go through it. But I also remind myself, oh, I'm just going through this transformation right now. I don't know what's gonna come out on the other end. I don't know what it's gonna look like, but I do know one thing. It's gonna become more okay with the dark the next version that comes out. So this is why we're afraid of the dark. Cause we all pray. We all of us pray and set our intentions for the light, but you might as well go ahead and stop if you're unwilling to walk in the dark. Because you ain't gonna have one without the other. So I'm gonna say some things. The paradox is the more okay I become in the dark, the more light I'll have. Let this marinate. The more okay you become with not having money, you are now moving in the energy of having money. The more okay you become with them leaving you, they won't leave you now. You're not coming from a desperation and lack. You see. See, when you start realizing that darkness was the classroom that you learned in. Darkness was where all the transformation took place. Light was nothing more than a light switch. But we needed a classroom to learn in. So you ain't gonna find peace. You're not gonna find sovereignty, you're not gonna find any of these things by escaping and running away from the dark. You're finding it, you find it by remembering you are the light while you are in the darkness. This is why I'm not afraid of the dark, because I know I can bring light to a good God Almighty. Y'all ain't trying to hear nothing I'm saying. How are you gonna be afraid of the dark when you are the light? Huh? Somebody tell me, please. How are you afraid of the dark when you were the source of light? And I know that this darkness has no power over me. I just have to become okay, and at that moment, when I become okay, that switch is gonna turn on. I just brought more light to the world. So I've told you this before. You can't you can't heal it if you won't feel it. If I'm not willing to deal with it, I'm not gonna be able to, I'm not gonna be able to transmute it. So I know everybody here we're in this age of. I want to be a light worker. I want to be a light worker. You know what a light worker is? A light worker is forged in the darkness. Hmm. A light worker is forged in the darkness. How am I gonna bring you more light if I haven't gone into the places where the darkness exists? See, you were already, you already were light. But we had dark pockets of ourselves that we had to go back and get. We had dark pockets of us that we had to go through and transmute. I've told you this many a times. The darkness isn't trying to hurt you, it never was. It's just trying to help you to develop. But your responsibility is to go into it. And obviously, I'm speaking from a metaphor. But I don't know what you got going on this weekend, but go ahead and turn out all the lights. Go ahead and walk in that closet. Don't bring a phone with you. Put a towel over the closet door so that way there's no light coming in. Just go sit in there for a little bit. Watch after about 15 20. Minutes, how you start to get a little antsy. You start to get a little scurry. Now, granted, now I know those kids might be scratching on the door saying, Where's mom? Mom, what are you doing? Dad, where are you at? Go in that closet for a little bit and sit with yourself and see what ends up happening. You do this long enough, you're gonna start to find there's recurring patterns that keep coming out, recurring stories. And those stories were what keep were keeping you from your light. So I'll leave you with this. I started to play the game differently now. Started to play the game differently. I became okay with the dark more than the light. I don't even really care about the light because I came here to grow anyway. I came here to transform. And I know the light is just a reflection. When I see the light, when I bring more light, all that is is just means I had I had dealt with the dark, right? So now I switched, I made a switch probably back in 2022. I'm like, I'm only gonna focus on the dark. I'm gonna acknowledge the light, but I'm gonna focus on the dark. I'm gonna become okay with the dark. We could use this as a metaphor in basketball, right? If you if you not being a very good ball handler, not being able to hand the ball comfortably, or not being able to shoot is the darkness. That's the that's the thing that you run away from. I have to spend only my time on that. And that's gonna be uncomfortable. You know how it is, human beings don't like to work on something that they're not good at. Let me go ahead and say that again for all my athletes out there. We don't like to work on things that we ain't good at because they don't feel good. It makes us feel like we're not good enough. It makes us, but I'm telling you, if you can focus on that, you're gonna be great. We look at Kobe Bryant. This is what he did. He obsessed on working on the parts of him that weren't any good. He broke his wrist one one year in offseason. Guy said, Man, I came in there. This man was drenched in sweat with a cast on his right hand. He said, I sat and watched him. He said he was working out with his left hand. And I asked him after, he goes, What are you doing? Why like why don't you just wait till you heal? I said, Oh man, I gotta get better with my left hand. You see what I'm saying? He had to get better at the thing that he was weak at. The only way for us to bring light is for us to go to those parts of us that we were we felt we were weak at. So for everybody here, I want you to know something. Stop waiting for somebody else to turn the light on. Stop waiting for somebody else to turn the light on. You turn the light on. You do. You gotta turn it on. And this is where integration comes in. I gotta be able to go into the dark, that's one. But then two, I gotta be able to take the information and apply it to the game. I gotta be able to apply it to the game. What good is it if I can shoot with my left hand? I ain't never gonna use it when I'm in the game. I don't think y'all hear what I'm saying. I don't think they hear what I'm saying. So we all wanna be like, I want to be a coach, I want to be a teacher, I wanna be this. It's not about the ones who bring light, it's the ones who've become okay with the dark, who have peace in the darkness. Those are the ones who are gonna lead people, those are gonna be the ones who guide people. I got my shadows, I got my stuff. I'm okay. I'm okay with dealing with myself. I just got back from Tulume two weeks ago. Let me tell you something. It was the hardest thing I ever done in my life. I'm not even gonna sit here and tell you it wasn't. It was the hardest thing I have ever done in my life. I was so doggone sick. I couldn't purge, I couldn't get it out. Oh my goodness, I was it was I was going through it, but I said, you know what? I'm built for this. I'm built for this. And the day before, Mother Aya gave me the answer before the question came up because I know the ceremony was gonna be that hard, but the day before she told me, she goes, remind yourself of how strong you are. See, you see what she said. She didn't tell me to go and ask my spouse, she didn't tell me to go on social media, she didn't tell me to go and get information from somebody else to tell me how strong I am. She said, remind yourself of how strong you are. Now, the overarching theme of that ceremony was that I was afraid of being a burden. I was afraid of being a burden. I was afraid guilt, guilt, guilt. I was afraid of being a burden, and I couldn't purge this out. I couldn't get it out of me, I couldn't get it out. It was like a cinder block in my psyche. I couldn't get it out, and I was so sick. And she said, You ain't gonna purge none of this up. None of it until you go and ask for help. I gotta ask Jesus, I gotta go ask Jesus for help. I don't want to be a burden, though. I want to be a burden. So I had to go and ask Jesus for help. And I told her, I said, I'm so weak, I'm so tired, I can't get up. Because he was probably about 20, 30 yards away. I said, I can't get up. And then she said, You need to remind yourself of how strong you are. See, some of us think that we ain't strong enough to make the next step. Some of us don't think that we're capable of making it to the next year. Some of us don't think that we can get through this marriage, some of us think that we can't get to the next hurdle. This is life is just too much, but sometimes you have to remind yourself of how strong you are. Every sacred teacher was telling us this. That's why Jesus told you greater is he that is inside of you than he that is in the world. Greater is the divine intelligence, the divine creative force that emanates to all living beings, the light that lights up all of mankind. Greater is that that is inside of you than any obstacle, any trauma, any neglect, any abandonment, any rejection, any wound that you have ever encountered, greater is that that is inside of you than anything that you may ever see in this life. But you're gonna have to remind yourself of this. Nobody's gonna do it for you. So this journey, this journey of going into the darkness is about us going and getting parts of ourselves and integrating into our present-day life. And here's the beauty: every time that you go back and get a part of yourself in the dark, you create a new version of you in the light. But hear me when I say this, please hear me when I say this, because this is a disclaimer. I have to go and tell you this right now, okay? I'll go into the past and get versions of myself from the darkness and bring them up to now, and that's gonna bring more light. But I also realize the version of me who I am today is darkness in relation to who I'm gonna be tomorrow. So you all think your job is gonna be done. You might as well go ahead and turn the podcast off and go listen to something else. I'm telling you, you ain't never gonna be done. It ain't never gonna be over. You ain't never gonna get to a point where you're like, oh, I got it. I did it. Now you may get to a point where you feel like, well, I don't need to listen to this or I don't need to do that. And it's not because you have it all figured out, it's because you reached a level of awareness that borrowed knowledge ain't gonna work for you no more. Good God, Almighty, you ain't trying to hear nothing I'm saying right now. I ask myself, why have I not read a book? I stopped reading, I haven't read it like two months. Why? And Mother Aya came to me and she said, for you to borrow knowledge and information from somebody else is obsolete. You got your own experiences now. You got your own wisdom that you have access to. And everybody else does, but maybe they're just not at that level. That doesn't mean that you're any better than anybody. But for you to sit here and read somebody else's information, because every time I kept reading the book, I'm like, I know what this is, I know this, I know this, I know this. I'm sitting here, I want to run up my Amazon bill. Why do I keep running up all this stuff? And I said, oh my goodness. Instead of reading the books that you already have information on, why don't you start studying the book that you over here writing? Good God almighty, they ain't trying to hear nothing I'm saying. They not trying to hear nothing I'm saying. You was over here writing the one book, the good book. You was writing the book right now. Start studying that motherfucker. Start studying, start going back to them chapters that got written and you didn't even know that they got written, but they still sit inside that book. Go back and read them. Go back and read them, motherfuck. Go back and read them. And I don't care how old you are, we all got some chapters that we didn't write. So I have to go ahead and leave you with this. When I told you we wait for somebody else to turn the light on. See, when we were a kid, we needed somebody else to turn the light on. My son, I remember he was little. He he wasn't getting up out of that bed. He would not get it. We me and Carly laugh about it. He was like three or four years old. He would not get up out of that bed. He'd talk on the, uh, what they call that, the walkie-talkie, what's that thing called? The monitor. The monitor, the baby monitor. He'd talking to me, saying, Mommy and daddy, I'm ready to get up. Like, get up. If you over here telling us you're ready to get up, go ahead and get up. Wouldn't do it. He was scared of the dark, would not do it. See, as kids, we wait for somebody to turn the light on, but as an adult, as an accountable adult, you realize that you are the light. You are the light. The dark wasn't here to scare us. It was just reminding that illumination wasn't an inside job. The light switch was inside of you. And that's something. Universe funny, boy. Universe have you. Let's have a funny universe, okay? Let's have okay. It will have you living in a three-dimensional reality. With a three-dimensional consciousness, as when you start, and you think that everything is outside of you, but it hid it all inside.

SPEAKER_00:

And we over here, which way did it go? Where is it? Oh, there's my self-worth. My self-worth is over there in that house. Oh, there it is. It's in that relationship. Oh, wait, nope, that's not where it is.

SPEAKER_02:

Finally, you get a little older, like, wait a minute. You mean tell me all of this was hidden inside of me? What the f What? You mean to tell me I've over here been doing this and this has been inside. Man, if you don't stop, this is a universe over here playing. That's why I tell you, it's playing hide and go seek. It's playing hide and go seek. Oh. Oh, is that why they is that the whole metaphor behind uh The Alchemist, the book The Alchemist? He went on that big old journey. Huh? Santiago went on that long journey. If you haven't read it, I suggest you read it. He went on that journey looking for that treasure, right? And he didn't get the treasure until he went back to the place that he started. That treasure was there the whole time. But look at who he became along the way. I'm saying this to you. Look at who you are becoming as you are going through this transformation and you were stepping into these places, and then you find out you're like, wait a minute. The answers were always inside of me. My self-worth was never on the outside. My self-acceptance was never on the outside. Yeah, but look who you became along that journey while you went looking for it. So I'll leave you with this. You're gonna stop being afraid of the dark. Whoever raised their hand at the beginning and said they were afraid of the dark. You're gonna be a you'll stop being afraid of the dark when you finally realize the darkness was never outside of you. It was the dark parts of yourself that you had not faced yet. So go and get your headlamp. This is so funny. I'm telling you the truth. I'm looking at my headlamp right now. I used that headlamp one time when I went to climb that mountain. They told us you need to have a headlamp because it's gonna be dark. It's gonna be nighttime. I have not seen that headlamp since. And I'm looking at the headlamp now since we're cleaning up and moving. I'm looking at it right now. I said, Oh my goodness, that headlamp was the little teeny light that was needed as I ascended up that mountain. That's just a metaphor. Go and get your headlamp. Go ahead and get your hiking shoes on and prepare for this journey into the darkness. Some seasons are gonna be more dark than others. But know that the light's always gonna come from it. So keep going. And as always, I wish you nothing but the best in the pathway to your business.