Living Daylight

"Discover What Scared the Living Daylight Out of You"

"The more we are identified with the false self, the personality, the more we are identified with the absence of basic trust. In order to develop basic trust, and consequently more contact and identification with Being, we need to experience the lack of holding imprinted on our souls. As with any other aspect or dimension of Being, we must first work through the resistance to experiencing the absence or "hole" of it, and then when we fully experience this hole, the missing quality will arise. The effect of the hole of Living Daylight in early childhood is experienced in adulthood in many ways. Emotionally, it will be felt as the need for holding and the sense that no one and nothing is holding you. The feeling of the need itself might be defended against by a lack of trust that anyone will be there for you. This need for holding might be experienced as the desire to be taken care of, the need to be actually physically held, the need for someone to see you and support you.

This can lead to the physical sense that there is a kind of emptiness in the belly which makes you feel as if you are suspended in a cold and inhospitable space. This emptiness carries with it the sense that you want to be held, but nobody and nothing is holding you. As we have seen, the central element of the holding in infancy was physical holding and care, but the sense of holding is also global, including the sense of being held emotionally and mentally. Ultimately, it is the sense that your soul is being held.

Allowing ourselves to experience the hole of holding is a crucial step in reclaiming contact with the holding dimension of Being, Living Daylight. Your sense of basic trust is also increased each time you experience the environment responding to you in a supportive way and each time you experience yourself being held in one way or another. In the process of spiritual work, each time you move beyond your usual sense of reality and of who you are – each time you jump into the abyss with its sense of disintegration or fragmentation and accompanying fear – and you experience Being coming through, giving you a sense of support, a sense of relief, of satisfaction, of meaning, your basic trust is strengthened.

The more experiences you have that involve dealing with painful states and memories, and resolving them, allowing you to connect with various aspects of your fundamental nature, the more that sense of trust is created. The more your soul is held and the more basic trust is developed, the more you will unfold. Providing this holding for who you really are is one of the functions of a spiritual teaching and a teacher. So the whole of the Work ultimately builds basic trust."

-- A. H. Almaas