Coping with Darkness Without Conceding

By Susan Stanton Rotman

Introduction by David Spangler: "
Susan Stanton Rotman and I live on opposite sides of the North American continent, she in Boston, and I near Seattle. Yet, more often than not, it’s as if our respective subtle colleagues share the same room together, putting their heads (or energy fields) together to send us compatible and complementary communications.

Often, reading what Susan has received, it’s as if I’m hearing my own inner allies speaking, and I know the same is true for her.  But this is not surprising, as there are common messages reflecting common intents and a shared love as the subtle worlds reach out to many people around the globe to provide inspiration and assistance during these difficult times.  And they are difficult times! Stress visits all of us, for we all share humanity’s communal energy field; we are all linked.  Whether it’s the pandemic or social and racial injustice or political divisiveness or just plain anxiety and fear, we seem surrounded on all sides with challenges not just to our physical well-being but to our spiritual wholeness as well.

When my children were young, among our favorite family novels was Susan Cooper’s wonderful series of books beginning with
The Dark is Rising.  That title would seem to sum up what many people are feeling.  But over and over again, my subtle colleagues ask us not to “fight the Dark” but to stand in and hold the Light, to be confident and empowered in who we are as individuals whose essential nature is Light.  If the “Dark is rising,” then all the more need for us to stand taller in our Light and in the power of our love.

Susan’s subtle colleagues express this eloquently.  It is with great appreciation for the love that surrounds us all that we are happy to share, with her permission, what they have to say."

We have now spent most of this year facing the physical, economic, emotional and psychological threats and consequences of the COVID pandemic, along with the parallel crises of social upheaval and protest against the inequities of racial injustice, and the ever heightened polarization of our divided nation as we watch the sacred tenets of our American experiment in democracy attacked and depreciated on a nearly daily basis.  We are all exhausted.

We are indeed navigating a very difficult time.  I feel and hear and know the anxiety and the loss that so many of you experience.  I want to reassure you that we are strong together, and we will emerge from this time of transition into a brighter future.  What we are slogging through right now is the cost of transformation.

In the meantime, I thought it might be helpful to share a communication I had with my inner contact earlier in the summer.  I was sitting in prayerful contemplation and I posed the question "How can I understand the fact of darkness in the world?"

An inner voice stepped forward with this response:

"It is not so much to understand it as to accept its reality. Try it.  See what acceptance feels like."

So I tried it.  I moved into trying to accept the presence of darkness, rather than trying to fight it or ignore it or deny it.  And I found that if I accepted it is present I need not be fearful of it.  There was a clear shift in my body, my mind, my emotions--everything shifted.

My inner contact continued talking about darkness:

"Be bigger than it.  Light absorbs dark.  Or surround it.  But do not weep over it, that is a form of denial.  Denial is paralyzing and will not move you or others forward. We have said to you before:  Hold the light.

Hold it steady, BE it.  Darkness will always present itself, in one form or another, but light is greater.  You need not fear darkness if you are in your full Self Light.

The answer is not to fight it but to accept it is part of the equation.  To fight it directly is to empower it, to make it bigger.  You cannot defeat darkness with aggression or fear.  But you can blind it with brilliance.

To fight it directly reinforces its presence.  It brings the focus of thought onto the darkness, giving it more manifest power.   You can know there is darkness and be aware enough to direct yourself towards disarming it, but the means of disarming it matter. 

Your thought and intention matters.  Your heart matters.  Your focus must arise from your own sacred knowing, as an alternative to darkness.


Do you see what we mean?  Create the alternative, rather than reacting and responding to the terms as set by darkness.

Be bigger.  Be fuller.  Be brighter.

Know thy self.  You are Light, it is your source.  Darkness is but the symptom of that which has forgotten its source.  Do not go into that darkness lest you lose sight of your own light.  You can address darkness from without it, by setting your own goals, your own field.

We do not mean abdicate to darkness, to fall from your own resources and power in front of it.  Just the opposite.  Stand in the wholeness, the completeness, the fulness of who you are, of your Self Light, in your expression of Source. This is the strength stance, if you like you could envision it as a warrior stance, like the Archangel Michael stands in light.  But it is not a negatively aggressive stance. 

Michael’s sword of light represents the power of light to cut through darkness and illuminate not by show of force but by a show of the Light that is Love.  That is the true source of power."


Just as I was preparing to post this message today, I received an addendum!

"Light, Love, is a real force, it is actual, not imaginary or merely a thought.  It may be held and concentrated and directed towards good and beneficial practical and concrete outcomes.  It requires only the focus on and acknowledgment of its presence, the act of heart opening or expansion.  Love together with hope is a powerful antidote to fear and the hatred fear breeds.  Weaponize Love!  It is the warrior stance of transformation."

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