Flickering candles behind familiar stones cast huge and frightening looming shadows,
But soon the sun will rise and when it does the trick will be seen for what it is,
A trick.
All will then become clear that happened in the night.
Hi there and welcome to the session today.
So what you just heard was a little poem I wrote,
A sort of affirmation poem I kind of like to call it,
Which focuses on the nature of negative emotion.
Specifically we're thinking about when there's a kind of big wave of negative emotion or a big sort of period of negative emotion beyond just something fleeting like might be usual.
And that might be anxiety,
It might be fear,
It might be grief,
Anything where you might feel sort of overwhelmed by it,
Kind of like you're stuck in a big storm and you can't see a way out quite yet.
That feeling like there's no way out,
Understanding that and the illusion of that is really the focus of the poem here.
So the message I'm trying to get across in flickering candles is that you will feel very scared,
Very alone,
Very hopeless,
But in reality it's really just the trick of the mind.
In reality everything will be okay and in fact probably is actually okay as you go through this.
But another key aspect of the poem is that we cannot see this until after the storm has passed and that is very important.
We can't see that everything was actually okay until we're out the other side of the problem.
Unfortunately this is just how the mind works.
So the hope with this poem is that it can demonstrate with a relatively simple and I hope intuitive analogy of the candles and the stones how exactly the emotion in question is an illusion and how it's only once the sun rises as it were that we are able to see that.
So everything is okay,
You just can't see it yet while you're in the storm.
But perhaps the main purpose of flickering candles for me at least is to provide hope.
Like I say you won't be able to see the nature of the storm until it's passed so there's not much point trying to pursue that end quite yet.
Instead what we can do is take some hope from understanding that whatever difficult emotion it is that you're going through right now it is only illusion.
That storm is only illusion.
It's only contained within the mind and nowhere else and first and foremost it will pass.
So like I say in a time that feels helpless,
Hopeless and endless I hope that flickering candles can remedy that just even a little by showing that these dark and difficult emotions that you're experiencing do have an end.
This dark period does have an end and that all or most at least will become clear again once that end point arrives.
And one final thing I'd like to add is that flickering candles has come from my personal experience on many occasions of this process and how it works.
Many times I've found myself in what feels like a sort of well of hopelessness that'll never end and every single time it has passed.
And every time it's become clear afterwards that it's some kind of mental illusion where even though it felt hopeless and everything like that there was nothing really there more than all the mind's survival warning systems and alarm bells going off at once.
Nothing was actually wrong but because my mind was so preoccupied at the time with all the alarm bells it was never going to feel at ease and it was never going to see that there was no actual danger.
How could it when there's so many alarms and warning bells going off at the same time?
Even if there is something that's caused the emotion whatever that may be you have to remember that we're dealing with the emotion here.
Just to tame it a little and get through what would otherwise be a much more difficult time and in that respect we can see that the emotion is just alarm bells.
What happens happens.
So the emotional experience as a result is just continuing a story that's already ended or paused and it's in that respect in turn that these difficult emotions are really just false alarm bells.
The danger has ceased but the bells are still ringing.
As a bit of a side note we can also use this to separate the experience which we can affect from the accompanying emotion that we cannot affect and that'll keep going on harassing us by itself if it's not tamed.
This would be a very useful distinction to create to make that time even easier for yourself and so with that I hope that flickering candles can help you in any hard or dark times you go through and then it can convey this understanding in a useful vivid and intuitive way and that said of course you can take whatever meaning you like from the poem.
Don't let your interpretation be limited to what my intention was when writing.
It would be really great if this poem can help you in even more ways than just those I'd originally planned for.
So now that I've explained the poem a bit let's hear it just one more time just to finish and just to bring that understanding back together again in a nice sort of closure.
Flickering candles.
Flickering candles behind familiar stones cast huge and frightening looming shadows but soon the sun will rise and when it does the trick will be seen for what it is a trick.
All will then become clear that happened in the night and with that thanks again for listening and remember there's always hope you just might not be able to see it right now.
For all your best wishes I hope it helps.
Bye bye.
