You live in a Forest of Enchantment. Sometimes the brush is thick and there are brambles. And sometimes there are sun-filled glades. Your attention can get caught on the brambles. You can get so caught that the brambles are all you see. You are so busy attending to the brambles, that you forget about the sun-filled glades. And what do brambles and Forest of Enchantment remind you of, dear ones? Darkness and light. Density and freedom.
In life, it has often been as if you walk with a magnifying glass. You notice every detail, and the details consume your attention.
You begin to think that you are only in this brambly spot. You are enrapt in it. In a way, you become fond of your struggle. You may like to grumble about the brambles, the bugs and the itchiness. You wish you could get out of there, but you see brambles, brambles, brambles. You see one wrong thing after another. There comes a point where you simply can't see anything but the brambles. You don't see the sunny glades, for the brambles scratch at you for your attention. You don't see the glades for the brambles.
There may even come a time when you forget glades exist. You may think glades are nothing but an oasis, a beautiful spot that doesn't really exist. You may become a realist. What you cannot touch, see, or hear is fantasy, and what you can see, touch or hear is the only reality for you. You cage yourself, beloveds.
You put yourself into a sort of cage, and you stay there. The door may be open, and still you stay there. This shows how the borders that encage you are the borders of your mind. You see the past, no matter how misinterpreted, as permanent. You sentence yourself to the past, and you perpetuate it. You even make a god of the limits you stay within.
All the limits you impose upon yourself are arbitrary.
No matter how entrenched you may have been, you are removing the bars now. You flex the muscles of your heart, and you bend the bars. The bars that seemed so impenetrable become pliant cloth. You push the cloth aside. You venture out. Wow, what a plantation there is before you! As far as your eye can see, there is sunny glade. Animals frolic there. The birds sing there. You will learn to sing, and, no matter how bright the sun, you will not need sunglasses.
All the while you have been in the Forest of Enchantment, you thought you were in a Forest of Brambles. It is like you hypnotized yourself. Surely you know you have been under a spell. Naturally you know you don't have to stay where you have been. No matter if you have always been there, you don't have to stay. You are free to leave.
It is dark in the Brambles. You belong in the Light. You were born for the Light.
The thorns grow bigger and sharper the more you look at them.
The same is true for the Light. The more you focus on the Light, the more it grows. The Light doesn't really grow, but it becomes more apparent to you. Beloveds, all you have to do is take a minute and look elsewhere from where you have been looking.
You cannot give lip service to the stars and get away with it, not for long. To enjoy the stars, you have to look up at them. You have to discover them, and discover them often. If you want to swing on the stars, you have to know where they are. Look up, and you will see them, and they will see you. You will notice that you no longer are in the Brambles. You have stopped convincing yourself that it was the Brambles for you.