The Little Soul And The Sun by Neale Donald Walsch

This parable is quoted from the book Conversations with God

There once was a soul who knew itself to be the light. This was a new soul and so, anxious for experience. "I am the light" it said. "I am the light" Yet all the knowing of it and all the saying of it, could not substitute for the experience of it. And in the realm from which this soul emerged, there was nothing but the light. Every soul was grand and every soul was magnificent and every soul shone with the brilliance of God's awesome light. So the little soul was as a candle in the sun. In the midst of the grandest light, of which it was part, it could not see itself, nor experience itself as Who and What it really is. Now it came to pass that this soul yearned and yearned to know itself. So great was it's yearning that God one day said, "Do you know little one, what you must do to satisfy this yearning of yours?" "Oh, what, God? What? I'll do anything!" the little soul said. "You must separate yourself from the rest of us" God answered, "and then you must call upon yourself the darkness"

"What is the darkness, o Holy One?" the little soul asked. "That which you are not" God replied and the soul understood. And so this the soul did, removing itself from the ' All ' going even unto another realm. And in this realm the soul had the power to call into it's experience all sorts of darkness. And this it did. Yet in the midst of all the darkness did it cry out, "Father, Father, why hast thou forsaken me?"

God replied: "Even has have you, in your blackest times. Yet I have never forsaken you, but stand by you always, ready to remind you of Who You Really Are; ready always ready, to call you home. Therefore be a light unto the darkness and curse it not. And forget not who you are in the moment of your encirclement by that which you are not. But do praise to the creation even as you seek to change it. And know that what you do in the time of your greatest trial can be your greatest triumph. For the experience you create is a statement of Who You Are - and Who You Want to Be.

God said to the little soul, "You may choose to be any Part of God you wish to be. You are absolute divinity experiencing itself. What aspect of divinity do you now wish to experience as You?" "You mean I have a choice", asked the little soul. God answered, "Yes. You may choose to experience any aspect of divinity in, as and through you."

"Okay," said the little soul, "then I choose forgivness. I want to experience myself as that aspect of God called complete forgivness." Well this created a little challenge, as you can imagine. There was no one to forgive. All God had created was perfection and love. "No one to forgive?" asked the little soul, somewhat incredulously. "No one," God repeated. "Look around you. Do you see any souls less than perfect, less wonderful than you?" At this the little soul twirled around and was surprised to see himself surrounded by all the souls in heaven. They had come from far and wide throughout the kingdom, because they heard that the little soul was having an extraordinary conversation with God.

"I see none less perfect than I!" the little soul exclaimed. "Who, then, shall I have to forgive?" Just then another soul stepped forward from the crowd. "You may forgive me" said this friendly soul "For what?" the little soul asked. " I will come into your next physical lifetime and do something for you to forgive," replied the friendly soul. "But what? What could you, a being of such perfect light do to make me wnat to forgive you?" the little soul wanted to know. "Oh," smiled the friendly soul, "I'm sure we can think of something." "But why would you want to do this?" The little soul could not figure out why a being of such perfection would want to slow down it's vibration so much that it could do something 'bad'. "Simple," the friendly soul explained, "I would do it because I love you. You want to experience yourself as forgiving, don't you? Besides you've done the same for me." "I have?" asked the little soul.

"Of course, don't you remember? We've been All Of it, you and I. We've been the Up and the Down of it, and the Left and the Right of it. We've been the Here and the There of it, and the Now and the Then of it. We've been the Big and the Small of it, the Male and the Female of it and the Good and the Bad of it. We've been the All of it." "And we've done it by agreement, so that each of us might experience ourselves as the grandest part of God. For we have understood that... 'In the absence of that which You Are Not, that which you Are, is Not'. 'In the absence of cold you cannot be warm, in the absence of sad you cannot be happy. Without a thing called evil, the experience you call good cannot exist'.

'If you choose to be a thing, something or someone opposite to that has to show up somewhere in your universe to make that possible.' " The friendly soul then explained that those people are God's Special Angels and these conditions God's Gifts. "I ask only one thing in return," the friendly soul declared. "Anything, Anything," the little soul cried. He was excited now to know that he could experience every divine aspect of God. He understood now, The Plan. "In the moment that I strike you and smite you," said the friendly soul, "in the moment that I do the worst to you that you could ever imagine - in that self same moment...remember Who I Really Am." "Oh, I wont forget!" promised the little soul. "I will see you in the perfection with which I hold you now, and I will remember Who You Are, always."