Life shows up in infinite forms, the dance of being is eternal. The horror of life is just as much oneness as the beauty and the joy. Horror is not pleasant of course, it’s not enjoyable the same way a sunset is enjoyable. Watching thousands of children starve or to witness innocent people die in a war zone or to experience horror directly, to live through the trauma of seeing your children murdered or your family, neighbours, friends and community ravaged by disease or to see such horrors as genocide and other shocking abuses of power is painful.

I cannot speak as one who has directly experienced any of these horrors but like many of us, I am aware of the darkness in our world have seen some manifestations of darkness in my own life through illness and personal tragedy, have sobbed at the apparent injustice of horrific things happening to good people.

And yet all of that, all the darkness is included in wholeness. Wholeness includes all the light and all the dark. It doesn’t make horror beautiful, it doesn’t make pain feel good. Pain is allowed to be painful. A friend remarked recently that the beauty of life is not in the absence of ugliness but in it’s unconditional accommodation. Wholeness is all inclusive, love is unconditional and therefore all appearances are free to show up including suffering.

The radical heart of this message of nonduality is pointing to the absence of the separate one that suffers. Yes, there is suffering here, there is horror, that much is obvious. But there is no one that suffering happens to. All horror and all suffering is inviting you to see that.

This is either seen and lived or not. I’m not suggesting you go to a war zone and tell people that they do not exist. The rediscovery that there is only being, that there is no separation can arise from intense suffering or it can be realised as seeking fails. Life sings, serenades and sometimes screams of this freedom in every appearance here. The darkness is embraced in the light of being that includes all dualities.

Darkness relies on light to be and light relies on darkness to be. The two are separate in appearance only.