Today is the Spring Equinox. Equinox is one of the two moments during a year when there are exactly as many minutes of light as there are dark in the day. In the spring equinox we turn toward longer days and more light.

My thoughts, dreams, experiences and conversations of late have me reflecting on the difficulties we humans experience assimilating darkness into light at psychological, spiritual and emotional levels. In the physical cycles of life, during day we anticipate  night, and in night we prepare for day – it is a loved and understood part of the dance of life. Yet it seems that at other levels we try to split dark from light as if they didn’t belong to each other. At the most simple and personal levels, I seem to see the drama of the intractable nature of the conflict between Palestine and Israel played out. 

As humans we all want the same thing fundamentally: a home, security, love, respect, freedom, basic needs met. Any “other” who appears to threaten one of these basic needs takes on shades of darkness in the mind, at conscious and unconscious levels. The other is defended against instinctually in an honest attempt to protect ourselves and the ones we love, provide for them, and survive in peace.

The idea that there is any such thing as “other” is a mistaken illusion; that is becoming clearer and clearer as we move toward a more global consciousness. Yet there is this inertia, and we continue to base our whole lives on the illusion. Science is proving what the ancients told us and common sense tells us – that we are all one thing on this planet. We are one organism. Just as darkness and light are part of the same circle, self and other are too. We are all part of each other.

At a personal level I hold all of this to be true – but, if anyone hurts me, my child or a loved one, my instincts go to “other”. It takes conscious effort to remember and understand that that “other” is as much a part of myself as my own arm or leg. The needs, hurts, worries, fears are the same as my own.

Today on the Equinox I think of the balance between dark and light that we are experiencing, and hope to find it in myself. As we move toward more light, I also pray that we also move toward more consciousness. There is such a need for figuring out the dance of all of this “otherness.” Politically our nation is on a brink on such a key issue, and personally I see the same challenge in a lot of places. There is so much potential. I hope we work it out.