Carl Jung wrote this:

“One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.”

I woke from a dream in which I kept receiving pearls to wear around my neck. They were gifts. At one point, Kamala Harris walked in quickly and bestowed a pearl necklace upon me. I was overwhelmed by the pearls, yet I felt proud and anxious to display them and tell my friends what had happened. I left the dream holding that contrast: a bit overwhelmed, and yet proud.

The first thing I did was look up the scientific formation of pearls, because I knew a strong metaphor was present in the dream. I found this:

“A pearl begins when a foreign substance — often a parasite or irritant — enters an oyster or mollusk. Unable to remove the intrusion, the organism responds by coating it with layers of a smooth, luminous substance called nacre, also known as mother-of-pearl. Over time, layer upon layer forms around the irritant until eventually a pearl is created. The pearl is not the intrusion itself, but the beautiful response to it.”

When I read that, something stirred deeply within me.

If a pearl begins with an intrusion and turns into beauty, then why can’t I do the same with the wounds of my life? The words of naysayers. My own conditioning. The seeming wrong turns. The disappointments. The heartbreaks.

What if every turn I took and every word spoken to me was part of the journey that created the pearl that I am?

What if I were willing to shine the light on all my life — not afraid to look at it, accept it, and bring wisdom out of it? What if there was not one thing that wasn’t part of my becoming? What if the pearl that is my life would never have formed without those experiences?

I’ll give you an example.

My father said things to me growing up that could certainly be seen as damaging to my self-esteem. Words like “not enough” or “not smart enough.” For many years, I carried those intrusions within me. But what if those very experiences became the catalyst for deeper understanding, compassion, and awareness? What if they taught me not to make the same wounds sacred in another person’s life?

What is said to us often reveals more about the wound within the speaker than the worth within us. And perhaps compassion itself is one of the greatest pearls we can form in this lifetime.

I was also thinking about my singing voice. Last night, I gave a beautiful concert of songs by Stephen Sondheim. I’ve always felt that singing was one of my greatest gifts, until years ago when someone made a very derogatory comment about my voice. I took it in deeply. It became an intrusion, just like the irritant within the pearl.

For nearly ten years, I allowed that comment to diminish me. Ten years.

Then slowly, something began to shift. I stopped trying to cover or change my voice, and instead began appreciating it for what it truly was: a God-given gift. I began building a pearl around the wound instead of allowing the wound to define me.

That is the invitation of consciousness.

Not denial.
Not spiritual bypassing.
Not pretending we are all light while secretly carrying shame in the dark.

That is why I wrote my book Where is My Red Dress? I’ve often said I wrote it as though no one would ever read it, so that I would tell the complete truth. In doing so, I wasn’t glorifying pain. I was building pearls of wisdom around the experiences of my life. That, to me, is healing.

We cannot change what happened in the past. But we can change our relationship to it. We can stop allowing it to define us. We can surround it with understanding, compassion, truth, and wisdom until something luminous emerges from it.

So perhaps the dream was reminding me of something sacred: that my consciousness is finally ready to receive every part of myself as a pearl of great price.

And then came the synchronicity. As I was preparing for meditation, music was playing softly on my iPhone, and I happened to glance down and see these words: “Stop pushing it away.”

There are no coincidences. Only synchronicity.

Stop pushing away your greatness.
Stop pushing away your wisdom.
Stop pushing away the beauty that your life has created.

The pearl is not the wound. The pearl is what consciousness creates around the wound.

No, we cannot change what happened in the past, but we can build a pearl around it and allow ourselves to shine our truth because of it.

Love and Aloha,

Rev. Dr. Rita Andriello-Feren, Author, Co-Founding Spiritual Director CSL Kaua’i