Depth Perception
Does more light expose us to more dark?
A precursor to Na Soilse {seal -sha}
This is a doorway into the book I am writing. This story is a writing engagement as a Spiritual Quest. It stretches through the fields of creativity and receptivity to step a little more boldly into the Unknown. Through it I have met guides, Bridge Beings and entities, Na Soilse. These characters act as companions that bring wisdom, direction, playfulness and peace. It feels like they come to visit me through the day and even wake me during the night. I channel this as a living myth, and it has become a soul companion. While it still looks for its name, for now, I call it Na Soilse — The Lights, as Gaeilge.
A question that has been occurring to me a lot lately is what are the consequences of broadening our consciousness? It seems to me the higher I extend my vibration the deeper I seem to plunge. Does this weigh up? I cannot quantify how much light balances the dark. While sometimes emotions take their time revealing their true source, my mood inconsistencies push me to investigate further.
Maybe these plummeting descents have always been with me. I met death relatively early in life, and it gave me a veil. Something to look through, obscuring or protecting? It led me to dive into deeper understandings.
With heart and mind hungry art, philosophy & psychology helped to provide rich answers. But there was this other knowing that was stirring as I was still forming my questions. These seem to sit more comfortably in the spiritual realm. My concern is how cautious do we need to be with desires around deep questions?
To-do lists and problems and self-inflicted worries. We invent and invite them to help us move through the day. Excited plans that hover overhead, loosely, waiting to be manifested. The turns my mind takes, in relation to my emotions, can lead into lack: scarcity of resources, of belief, of competency. This is when tasks flounder and stalling begins.
The more I open into gratitude — a state I feel I can live in and extend broadly -
the more I notice how finite it can feel in practice. Life gets dense we are forced to let go.
The darkness rolls back in.
Does more light simply expose more dark?
Are expansion and descent opposite energies? Perhaps they’re spiralling loops, intersecting cycles.
In yogic philosophy (specifically Tantra, Kashmir Shaivism, and classical Vedanta): Consciousness expands by becoming more aware of what was previously unconscious. By connecting more consciously with our energy centres we can widen our perceptions and soften our defences. Be open to more subtle channels and become more sensitive to truth. While I feel I am a novice I have been learning more ways to Trust the process.
So many feelings and many ways to process. Unresolved grief, ancestral or childhood emotions, existential questions and the collective heaviness. It is a powerful and asks to be experienced with patience. I step closer to creativity to help them take shape. And yet I want to make my weeks, more strong! More full, vibrant and honest. This endeavour is like a plunge. It is your nervous system integrating new layers of awareness.
Moods rise and fall, twist and turn, showing how transitional this state is. This is where I meet the Bridge Beings — the characters in my story, the guardians of my threshold states. Here I witness the space between old identity and emerging identity. I am learning to venture more courageously between seeker and sharer, between private healing and public guiding.
Threshold spaces are volatile.
This is what the Bhagavad Gita calls the “churning of the inner ocean.” When the ocean is churned, nectar rises and poison too. Waves crash of confusion and settle into clarity. Running back to break again. This is where grounding practices come in—not to make you smaller, but to help you hold the expansion.
The more light you cultivate, the more honest you become about the darkness that was already there.
The darkness isn’t increasing, awareness is.
We each have instigators that rev us into our exploration. Paths that reveal, threads that energise. They help navigate so we understand the scales we are capable of holding.
My own path has been shaped by an early encounter with death and grief has been a strong and quiet guide. I can now pull threads of my understandings together with more compassion and significance.
People who meet loss early in life, it is said, often develop, heightened existential awareness and deeper emotional wells. I admit to having a longing to understand life’s unseen architecture which has been cumninating through spiritual learnings and attunement.
Intuition is a realm of fascination for me. Could it be an intersection of philosophy, psychology and spirituality? Mind, meaning and sacred energy living on the same terrain waiting for our attention and resonance. My investigation to meet my intuition is through this story. It is a type of homecoming. It is a spiritual one, with a strong relational connection to the mythic and archetypal.
Perception (Periscopian), inner conflict (Tension), identity formation (Compass), the soul’s impulse toward wholeness (Soulitude).
When we expand and create, we envision more possibilities. We consciously open energetic channels and raise our capacity, our emotional and spiritual bandwidth. But with this expansion often comes a reset — the nervous system responding, recalibrating. We can feel contraction, fear, lethargy, even the desire to shut down. Grounding and gratitude become essential — not to shrink, but to support the body in catching up to the soul. As I re-engage with refreshed awareness, I honour three things that help me understand my quest:
Integrity. Presence. Congruence.
These answer the questions about responsibility and respect. It seems it is not that more light creates more dark.
Rather it is by engaging with energy work, creativity, spirituality, and conscious expansion that reveal what was hidden — waiting to be integrated, waiting for your compassion, and your companionship.
How many lengths and breaths to go?
