The door is a great wooden structure, bordered on all sides by a dark brown textured material found in old houses where craft was an art, not an economy.  I can see the natural black lines of the bark.  It is a huge door standing alone on the earth.  There are no walls.  There is nothing but the door.  An open door.

I am standing in the middle of it.  In back of me is brightness, a yellow-white encompassing glow.  In front of me is darkness, like a dense foggy cloud.  I turn around.  Now, the light is in front of me, the darkness behind.  As simple as that.  Turning around.  Choosing my direction.  I can see through neither the brightness nor the darkness.  Both represent an unknown.  I have no emotional feelings; no intuition about either the darkness or the light.

I think: if I choose to walk into the light, does that mean that I am coming from or giving up the darkness?  Are light and dark both illusions, both judgments, both out-pictured conditioned visions of values that I place on past, present, and future experiences?  What makes a part of my life dark and another part light?  If I choose to step into the light, believing it to hold good, will I find that I have actually chosen that which leads me to an experience that I will find to be bad?

What is good?  What is bad?  I turn in my doorway, trying to see the light in the darkness, trying to foresee the darkness in the light.  Which way to go?

I sit down in the doorway, my back against one of its pillars.  I reflect on my past life.  Quickly judging, I would say that I come from darkness and I want to go into the light.  All that I can readily see is pain, frustration, betrayal, disappointment, and disenchantment.  I don’t want anymore of that.  I want all peace, all joy, all love, and forever happiness.  I chuckle to myself.  Deeper reflection shows that I have had all of that.  Don’t I think nostalgically about the good ol’ days?  About the fun and freedom of my childhood?  The time when I didn’t have so many obligations?  A time when I trusted people and believed that the world could be changed and, therefore, saved?

Then, as now, I didn’t appreciate today, this minute, this breath.  I didn’t see my abundance.  I didn’t see love, the love in my life.  Then, as now, I focused on the darkness when, right in its midst, was a light so bright and glowing that I can’t believe (and I’m sorry) that I missed it.

Ah, but not today.  Not now.  Sitting in my doorway, I see that dark and light are perceived aspects of the same experience.  Both are my life.  The rain waters the grass that the sun encourages to grow.  What does it matter which I choose?  The joy or the pain?  Both lead to the same place – to growth, to wisdom, to me – the essence of me.  I stand up again.

I was so engrossed in my thoughts that I didn’t see that the bright yellow-white glow and the cloudy darkness have both disappeared.  Either side of the doorway looks the same.  There are rolling hills filled with nature’s beautiful bounty.

The doorway fades away and I am free to walk in any direction.