Awakened by Light
A dream, a burst of blinding sunlight, and the movements of the psyche reveal how the God Force awakens us from darkness toward love.
When Psyche Speaks in Lightning
A depth psychological colleague recently described therapy and life itself as an electrified tightrope. The phrase stayed with me because it captures something essential about being human that is difficult to articulate yet deeply recognizable once we begin paying attention to the psyche's movements.
Life rarely unfolds on stable ground. It sways beneath us, surprises us, unsettles us, and occasionally shocks us awake. We move through uncertainty, longing, heartbreak, tenderness, and unexpected beauty while trying to maintain a sense of balance and meaning.
Perhaps that is why dreams matter so much. Intuitions arrive unexpectedly. Certain encounters feel charged with meaning beyond ordinary explanation. At times, life itself seems to speak through images, feelings, and synchronicities, quietly reshaping how we understand ourselves.
The God Force often moves through these openings, not as something distant or supernatural, but as a living presence within ordinary experience. A dream in the night, a sudden inner knowing, or an outer event that mirrors an inner shift—these moments sometimes help us see more clearly and live with greater depth and feeling.
Over time, I have come to believe that the real work is not to escape uncertainty but to learn to remain open within it.
The Pit of Vipers
Years ago, a man I’ll call Harold came for therapy, carrying an unmistakable intensity. Oddly enough, he immediately reminded me of a character from one of my metaphysical thrillers—a dangerous, highly psychic criminal lawyer whose greatest struggle was his inability to surrender to love, despite his deep longing for it.
Harold’s first dream revealed far more than any explanation could.
He dreamed he had been shoved into a pit of vipers and could not claw his way out. The image carried an unmistakable sense of psychic truth. His own psyche had placed him inside a world shaped by fear, emotional defensiveness, and the consequences of a life lived at a distance from vulnerability.
Yet before the vipers struck, he looked upward and noticed a glimmer of sunlight.
The dream shifted in that moment. The image no longer spoke only of entrapment or despair. It also suggested possibility. Something living remained present even within darkness.
Neither of us knew what would emerge from the session, but something had already begun moving internally.
The following week, Harold returned and described what happened immediately after he left my office. As he drove away, the morning sun rose sharply over the mountains and blinded him so intensely that he had to lower the visor, put on sunglasses, and squint carefully to get onto the street.
Then he reflected quietly on what had happened.
“The light in the session literally blinded me until I adjusted,” he said. “What happened afterward mirrored what I felt inside.”
Experiences like that cannot be reduced to a simple explanation. Yet anyone who has spent enough time listening carefully to the psyche eventually encounters moments when inner and outer life seem to move together symbolically, as though something deeper is speaking through both at once.
Learning to Stay Open
Over time, Harold continued his inner work. He listened more carefully to his dreams, noticed subtle intuitions more readily, and became increasingly aware that outer events sometimes paralleled movements within him.
His changes did not happen dramatically or all at once. Most meaningful transformation rarely does. At first, there were only brief openings into feeling, small moments of tenderness, and subtle cracks in the emotional armor he had relied upon for much of his life. Gradually, however, those moments deepened into a greater capacity for intimacy, emotional honesty, and love.
What touched me most was not simply his growing ability to love others, but his growing willingness to allow himself to be loved in return. For many people, that can be the more difficult step.
Perhaps that is part of what the God Force continually asks of us—not perfection or certainty, but participation in life as it unfolds. The willingness to remain emotionally present despite disappointment, vulnerability, and fear. The willingness to stay open enough for feeling, meaning, and relationship to continue moving through us.
The electrified passage through life is not something we master once and for all. We keep walking through uncertainty, heartbreak, tenderness, longing, and love as best we can, adjusting to the shifting currents of being human while remaining open to what the psyche continues to reveal.
Sometimes awakening arrives gently, and sometimes it comes with the force of blinding light that temporarily disorients us before allowing us to see more clearly. Harold’s dream, the sunlight rising over the mountains, and the slow unfolding of his capacity to love all seemed to move within that same mysterious field. Over time, he was not rescued from life so much as awakened within it, learning gradually to trust the light that had been trying to reach him all along.