Diamonds in the Dark: Mining Divine Joy In the Depths of the Shadow

I want to invite you on what I consider to be one of the most thrilling mystical adventures—the journey into the depths of the shadow to discover the diamonds that are hidden in its darkness. As anyone who is half awake knows, the shadow is having a Babylonian orgy in every realm all over the world, and as I have pointed out many times, this is causing a massive evolutionary crisis which is showing up as a global dark night.

This is of course in one sense terrifying and there are two approaches to shadow work which I find dangerous and unhelpful.

The first is the New Age approach which is hippy dippy about the light and idiotically in denial of the shadow; this approach only makes the shadow darker and more lethal. Another slightly wiser but still dangerous approach is to become obsessed with the shadow and hunt it down to its minutest particulars in such a way that the person who pursues this path becomes paralyzed, depressive, pseudo-brilliant in their pessimistic vision of any human future and always ready to offer up appalling perspectives that shrivel hope and passion.

We are not limited, thank God, to these two approaches. The great evolutionary mystics who have been my inspiration offer us a third way. In this third way what is opened up first is divine awareness, divine joy and peace and spacious alertness, so that you can know that your fundamental roots are in super consciousness, not in the swampy lowlands of the subconscious.

This approach does not in any way deny the darkness that has to be uncovered but it gives you the courage, through elating you with your true divine nature, to plunge into your own darkness without fear, protected by the beginnings of higher knowledge.

You can see that in a situation as devastating as ours, when we need to be as conscious as possible of the full extent of the shadow to have a chance of survival, it is this mystical approach that has by far the richest possibilities.

Something else that is truly marvelous is opened up by this evolutionary understanding of the shadow. My great teacher, Father Bede Griffiths, once transformed my understanding as we were walking by saying, “God is as much in horror and chaos as in order and joy.”

Immediately beyond words, I understood that if we are to get into a true relationship with the One, we have to be able to bless radically what we call darkness as well as light and understand viscerally beyond reason that we cannot sentimentalize the divine; rather we have to learn how to relate to it as it obviously is, free to dance in devastation as well as in creation, in agony as well as joy, in horror as well as ecstasy.

In fact it’s only if we are able to surrender to the real in this way that we will ever be liberated and wise enough to act to preserve and transform humanity. This is enlightened knowledge.

What we come to learn as we surrender and as we open to our super conscious divine identity is that we have been terrified of, ashamed of, disgusted by, our treasures that need reclaiming by conscious compassion and liberated understanding.

We come to understand in fact that a substantial part of enlightenment is endarkenment, the opening to rescuing what is hidden in our shadows from our denial of them. This is crucial to our survival now because if we continue to deny that we are in a massive global dark night which threatens our very survival, we will never discover the hidden meaning of the dark night, that it could be the birth canal of a new embodied divine humanity.

If we continue to deny the madness and cruelty and obscene lust for power that have taken us over, we will never find the way to heal them by addressing the secret wounds that fuel their lethal intensity. The dark night, evolutionary mystics know, is a savage grace. You cannot get to the grace without embracing and understanding and integrating the savagery.

This is amazing work, and when you do this work with the spaciousness, profound joy and calm of your awakened divine self, three powers are awakened in you:

• The power to bless the darkness as an expression of divine possibility

• The power of a much more profound compassion born through a rigorous understanding of how the shadow influences and possesses everyone

• The power of skillful means born from an unillusioned realism that is also lit up secretly by the light.

It is these three powers that we need to awaken to be able to go forward and birth a new humanity out of the death of the old.

This is just a taste of the gorgeous and paradoxical wisdom of the great evolutionary mystics and in the retreat I’m offering, Diamonds in the Dark. In this upcoming weekend retreat (December 4th-6th), I will be expanding this taste and offering you what I hope will be a truly nourishing meal which could forever change your understanding of the place of the shadow and your way of working with it.

I will take you into the mystery of the dark night, reveal to you the five essential laws that operate within it, show how each of the laws contains the seed of their transfigured opposite and help you build in yourself the all-embracing, calm, joyful wisdom that will enable you to hold extreme opposites without fear and help you birth in yourself through grace the new human.

I will also take you into the five terrible shadows that this unprecedented dark night is radiating and reveal to you how making them conscious can liberate in you a new level of love of life of energy and rugged compassion and hope.

I will also survey with you what I consider the seven main shadows of contemporary humanity which afflict us all and demonstrate how in each of the shadows, there is a diamond of divine awareness waiting to be seen, recognized, celebrated, polished and liberated. What I will also be offering are the mystical practices that I and other evolutionary mystics use to work from our divine selves on our battered human ones.

These practices are extraordinary because they help you truly become a loving, powerful, unjudgmental mother/father to yourself, working with divine consciousness consciously on your traumatized and karmically wounded human self, offering a way of participating with grace in birthing the next level of your evolutionary destiny.

Please realize, my friends, that the time has come in the world for as many people as possible to do this amazing work. It has saved my life and continues to fill it with purpose and joy, and I will be honored to share with you the secrets, techniques and revelations that have so inspired me, so they can inspire you in this time where everything is at stake and everything is possible.

I am also offering separately three integration sessions that I designed specifically because I know the power that emerges when so much true information is shared and when we all work together in this radiant furnace. I don’t often do this but I love these integration sessions. They are powerful and unique and they give me a chance to work intimately with you as well as myself and it is this intimate work that is the key to the transmutation of the shadow.

I am keeping the number for these sessions small because I long to work with you at the height of the truth I know and in the intensity of the true presence.

So my friends, welcome to the adventure. As far as I am aware, this is a unique feast and one that I myself am only just becoming awake enough to prepare for you, so it will be an adventure for me as well.

See you soon,

Andrew