What a weird question, right? But did you ever wonder why black attracts light? I’m not talking about skin colour… I’m simply talking about colours here. It’s been bothering me for a week now. In the Greek Island of Lefkada, surrounded by mountains, I wondered why…

Waking up in the morning on this island, with the mountains as my only view and not the sea, I was reflecting on the stillness and rawness of nature. Where I am, in Nidri, Lefkada, is more or less touristic. The other famous Greek islands have the upper hand on tourism. But don’t get me wrong, this one is also slowly becoming popular. 

Concrete buildings are budding here and there and hotels seem to propagate like fungus. Yet, in the darkness of the morning sky, looking up to those mountains, hearing nature waking up to the sun’s rhythms, I questioned everything… 

Black And White… 

I’m not being poetic, but I do believe what Greek philosophers once said, that the sky of Greece (Ellada), helps philosophers and thinkers. As a witness of the waking of day, I started questioning the reason black attracts light… 

Please bear with me… I’m not going crazy! Not only do we feel it when we wear dark clothing, but don’t we feel it, in times where we seem to be in a dark hole? As if, in the darkest of times, there is a mysterious light that seems to shine on our darkness to enable us to heal, to make us grow, to bring us out of these dark moments. 

While I studied philosophy, we learned that darkness is not an entity … like black isn’t a real colour … it is the absence of light! The more the light will shine, the less darkness there will be!

I’m not sure how my faith can now be described. As a former Catholic Priest, I sort of let go of a lot of preconceived “mysteries of faith.” If I was to be honest … they were never my own convictions… I repeated them out of fear… I carried them with doubt… I taught them with many question marks…

I still believe I’m profoundly Catholic, just maybe very differently … more open-minded, less opinionated, less imprisoned in a system… My core belief is that God does not fit in any of our theological boxes. He is much greater than we can even imagine. I also believe every culture has something right about God that there are seeds of truth and divinity everywhere we look. 

In other words, it just seems so obvious to me that life is not black and white. We never do things out of perfect and pure conviction, we often settle for what is stronger, for what seems obvious. We don’t do things out of pure evil … we are so much more conditioned than that!

Black Attracts Light?

So yes, just as black clothing attracts the light of the sun, I do believe our darkness attracts light. I believe that when something shows up on our path, when we are confronted with our deepest wounds and with our deep interior struggles, it is for a purpose. 

Only you can define and understand its purpose in your life. It is maybe the need to shed light on negative patterns, the need to allow yourself to heal, the need to acknowledge the dark sides of you that need conversion, etc. 

No matter the purpose, these dark moments, these trials, these struggles, these challenges, etc., can find meaning if you allow light to shine upon them, if you allow yourself to be questioned in your convictions, if you allow healing to take place.

Too many people  play the victim. They endure negative events almost as fatality. They do not look for deeper meaning … they victimize and always attract more negativity because they place themselves in a place of darkness with closed doors and windows. 

If only they had the courage to open one window and question what brought them there … maybe they would find answers. Maybe they’d get to find solutions and a better tomorrow. 

I’ve had my share of challenges in the last few years. No matter what happened, I always kept in mind a sentence from a superior I had while a monk. He’d often say, “Don’t try to justify your mistakes … as soon as you do so, you stop learning from them!” He was so right… When we do not try to justify what happened but try to learn from the events, we can literally take giant steps into a better version of ourselves. 

Let’s Attract Light!

If you’ve been reading some of my other posts, you probably know by now that I’m an over-thinker… I process things over and over. I alternate between playing the victim, and suddenly always end-up letting light in and seeing the other side of the story … my side … my own responsibilities. 

It would be so easy to blame others, because no matter the story, as we said before, nothing is black and white and there are wrongs on both sides every time something happens. But focusing on what others did will not help you understand what you might have done to trigger it, or why determined aspects were triggered in you… 

Practice makes perfect! At least, that’s what they say, right? Well, if we allow ourselves to let light in our darkest moments, we will see the benefits and it will certainly come easier with time.

What comes to mind is the image of a musician learning a new musical piece. With all the pieces he’s learned, he can sometimes develop an instinct of what might come ahead … yet, this instinct can become his enemy when learning something new. He needs to let go of certain triggers to allow his whole body to remember the new piece, the new movements. Once, he practises enough, the newly learned piece becomes part of him.  

Letting the light in, doesn’t mean we are welcoming judgment and condemnation; it is only and always to make greater space for love. We do not need others to judge us; we often do a terrible job at it and we can sometimes be more severe than needed. We need to welcome light as a healer that helps us rid ourselves of unnecessary baggage. 

Just like those mornings in Greece, contemplating the rising of the sun, we should allow light to slowly shine. We then start hearing the birds sing, the noise of human activities take place; the roosters start to remind us of the need to wake up, and the heat of the day enters our world. All of a sudden everything takes life, darkness slowly dissipates as the day envelops us. 

So as we alternate between light and darkness in our daily lives, we need not to forget how important it is to let the light shine in! Can you think of any moments in which you decided to let the light shine upon your darkness and have learned a great life lesson? Don’t hesitate to share and comment…