Finder

There's no "you" who's going towards the "darkness" and therefore must feel guilty. "feeling guilty about going into the darkness" is a false self-referential narrative. Thoughts are arising but not "your" thoughts.

If you have a thorn in your arm, you pluck it out. It doesn't matter that your body is apparent, your arm is apparent and the thorn is apparent, there is appearance in the self that happens. Same with prayer, e.g. If you have apparent trouble in your apparent love life, you can pray to apparent Venus for relief.

Yes, turning in the "right" direction is not willfulness if one considers it as an abandonment of resistance to what is. A melting...a relaxation....a surrender. Language can be so deceptive, because the implicit assumption is status quo = doing nothing. But status quo here is very much doing "something" - maintaining resistance. So you're not doing "something" to turn to grace, you're ceasing to do something.

I'm in the process of integrating my awakening and hopefully I can be of help sharing my experiences upto this point as well as read about the experiences of others. This looks like a nice place and I've been impressed by the quality of the some of the posts I've looked through.