Lesson 6. Are You Afraid of the Dark?

Have you ever been stuck in your thoughts, circling the same memories, the same pain? In this deeply introspective episode, The Timesmith takes us down to the metaphorical fifth floor—a space of isolation, confusion, and darkness within the mind. Drawing from childhood memories, trauma, and spiritual resilience, he offers listeners a vivid and healing exploration of what it means to walk through emotional darkness with the light of truth.

This episode isn’t just about suffering—it’s about reclaiming your mind, remembering the truth, and discovering that healing is possible. Whether you’re stuck in repetitive thoughts, battling trust issues, or simply searching for peace, this message is for you. Bring someone along who needs to hear it.

“The truth is, that betrayal is not happening today. And that’s where healing starts.”

🎧 Topics Covered:

• Intrusive thoughts & emotional looping
• Childhood fear and its lasting symbolism
• Trust, betrayal, and reclaiming inner safety
• The power of spiritual grounding and truth
• How to gently help others out of their emotional darkness

👉 Trigger warning: Sensitive themes of trauma and healing are discussed with care.
🙏 You are not alone. You are loved. Let's keep going—together.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:10

Have you ever been lost in your thoughts? Randomness? A thought pops into your head and you don't know where it came from. Many times it's your past. Things that have happened that have not let you go. Why have they hung on? Let's talk about that. Hi, I'm the Timesmith, and welcome back. I hope you had time to check out the last lesson, Release. I know that it's not an easy thing to do, but it's necessary. Remember, this is a journey about overcoming brokenness, searching the mind of brokenness. And if you have been listening from the beginning, then you'll know that this is also about sharing, not just for my healing, but for yours. In fact, I do hear people tell me, this is good, Time Smith, that you're doing this. It must heal you. I will add that, yes, it does heal me, except that this has worked for me, and I've just been hiding and keeping this to myself. Most of these situations I've overcome, and my life reflects it. But what good is it if those around me are stuck? So I took on this task. The sense of responsibility to help others lays heavy on my heart. So it might not be for everyone, but that doesn't bother me. I'll just go ahead and continue to share. And if you're just listening because it's interesting, feel free to just grab your snack, sit back and Maybe learn something. But don't forget that there might be someone around you that might need this. Please feel free to pass it along. I'm convinced that it can actually help somebody. And not everybody had such a bad start the way I have. So there's still a chance. But I do hope that it's sparked your curiosity to find out what's inside of people. Maybe that it can help. Again, I'm not a doctor. And please be... Respectful of people. Don't just unlock people just to unlock them. Be mindful of why they've hidden and isolated themselves. So, if you want, we can begin. Isolation. What does that look like? You know, at the core of these subfloors, there was a situation that happened. A trauma. A trauma that changed my life forever. After the fact, it didn't immediately affect me, except that I knew. But it grew within me. And what that did is it caused my mind to sink. My mind would get stuck in a repetitive thought process, constantly thinking over and over and over again. For those who have not heard, that is suffering. We tend to play situations over. One of the bad things about this is that It's not something I've entirely broken. Many times I do play situations over and over again. And we all have our methods as to how we want to break that cycle. In my case, I tend to pray and read the Bible, exercise, work on my projects. In my daily life, I'm a welder. I fabricate. I build things and some blacksmithing. I also like working on cars. Well, all that to say is that I will find something to get my mind off of the repetitiveness. That's the sickness. But I do want to show you something that's a little bit deeper than the core, than the situation which we found on the fourth floor. But let's go down to the fifth floor. Let's see what happens after. Remember, in the center of the forge, there's a counter. To the right, there's a staircase. To the left, there's an elevator. There's a couch against the wall. There's also frames and pictures. And before I go down, I like adding and showing you that there is more to this room. There are pictures in here, things that remind me of what's good. And not only that, but what's real. If you've been in your head too long, you do lose the sense of reality. You forget what the light looks like. You forget that there's good in you. that there's good things happening to you. I know for some people, they continue to suffer long after. Well, for some of you, in this situation, you might not be going down with me to the fifth floor. You're already there. But let's get in the elevator. I've always liked the way an elevator rocks back and forth. Large doors that close as if we're bringing storage into this space. Well, the fifth floor. Let's step out. What do you see? There's darkness. There's no light here. There's nothing recognizable. In order to find a room in here, you'd have to feel against the wall and try to find a room. But why the darkness? This is where our minds begin to sink. When we can't make sense of what's happened. Confusion. That the situations that have caused us to be traumatized. To be hurt. That we replay. Are more of a sound than they are a visual. But it's dark in here. Let's step into a memory. Let's walk up and see if we can find a door. But I know where everything's at. I've been here. many times when I get off the elevator I count the doors and there's an odd room in here that maybe I wouldn't think would be in here but it is because it helps me to see down here well here's the room let me open the door one of the things about this room as we slowly walk in is me as a child when I was a kid we would watch Saturday morning cartoons I would watch Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Bobby's World, Tiny Toons, just to name a few. And I would sit there on the couch, right, with a bowl of cereal on the table, with the volume low, trying not to wake anybody up and disturb my peace. But there was a commercial, and it asked, are you afraid of the dark? Some of you guys might even remember that. that on Saturday evening, there was a show called, Are You Afraid of the Dark? I just say that to remind you of your childhood. But this was a commercial. And again, they'd ask, are you afraid of the dark? Do you know how to stop being afraid of the dark? And what they would do is they would show a room. They would show the bed and the chair and the jacket on the chair, a small TV, shoes. And they would tell you, try to remember as much as possible in the room. And that's what I would do. I would remember. Then they said, now we're going to turn out the lights. And they would turn out the lights. And some of those figures didn't look like the chair or the jacket or the shoes. The shoes might look like a troll or the chair might look like a short monster. I can't forget the closet. There was always a monster in the closet. But they would remind you what you saw when the light was on is the same thing that is there when the light is off. Hmm. I always found that interesting. So in our house, we had a long hallway and I would walk down that hallway with the light off and I would walk into my room in the dark and look at my bed. Well, until the fear took over and I ran back into the living room. I would rush out and turn the light on in the hallway and and take a second look back and for some reason it just took a second to be able to look inside even though I was already inside. Let's step out. Are you afraid of the dark? Is there something that's happened in your life that you can't make sense of? That it's unclear? That when you think about it there's no clarity? It feels dark and it feels evil. But yet it continues to thrust you back inside that you can take a second look. If there was a way to turn the light on, quite possibly, you would. Well, how can this room be that visible even though it's on a floor that's dark? Well, I brought truth to it. Truth is light. And when I went in this room, it started off with some of the simplest things. That when I was asked, are you afraid of the dark? I would look around and make sure my siblings weren't around. And I would whisper quietly. Yes. Yes, I am. I didn't want anybody to hear me that it scared me mainly because I would get made fun of. I think that that's how trauma is. Are you afraid of being hurt again? Are you afraid of someone violating your trust? Are you afraid of betrayal? Well, sometimes it's hard to speak those things because we know what it feels like. We know that creepy feeling. That's kind of what being in the dark is like. If you've ever tried to walk down a hallway, there's always that sense of somebody walking behind you, causing you to look back and second guess even though you know no one's there. Do trust and betrayal respond the same way as fear? Do they make us forget that when truth is around, it might not be the way fear interprets it? It might not be the way betrayal interprets it. Truth is what matters. If I were to remember in that dark room, before it was dark and it was light, And it was only a chair and it was only a jacket and a bed and a closet. It wasn't those monsters and trolls that, well, maybe for me, that's what scared me. As you get older, those things turn into faces. They turn into hallucinations. It reminds me as why we cope because it wasn't just coping from trauma. It was the continued suffering and what comes from it. what it does to our character, even though we know the truth. And what's the truth? Is that I've been hurt. But that doesn't necessarily mean that the next person will hurt me or betray me or violate my trust. It's something that took a long time to build. And maybe this analogy seems a little spread out, how I associate a room about a commercial when I was a child to trust and betrayal. Well, the way I'm trying to connect it is this, is that there's sometimes things that we see knowing that it's the truth turns into a falsehood when we allow fear and betrayal and trust and lies and hurt to enter our lives. The lens of suffering, as we spoke about a few days ago, is exactly that because there are many different lenses it's not just suffering and just the way when i was a child in that dark room that lens of fear it didn't allow me to see just a chair or a jacket i saw things that scared me i kept having to tell myself this as i got older that it was just a chair it was just a jacket Because it was no longer about being scared of the dark. It was being scared that the darkness was actually taking over me. And again, I have to say that it did. That for many days on end, I would stay down here trying to make sense and find my way out. And you might be in here, stuck. But can I tell you something? What I offer is truth. And the truth is, is that that's not happening today, the betrayal. that happened yesterday or the day before or years ago is not happening today. That's the truth. So maybe you don't know how to get out. Well, grab my hand and I'll lead you back to the elevator. And I might not know what that situation is. Give me a second. Let me close this door. You might wonder how I maneuver through here. Well, I've banged up my shins. I've hurt myself. I've tried and I've wondered. I've done things to try to get my mind to break that I can find healing. But the reality is that the only thing that will bring healing is truth. Well, that door's closed. Let's go back to the elevator where there's light. And let's go back up to the forge. We will come back to this. Maybe on our next lesson, we can discover a little bit more about darkness. Can I ask you something? Can you bring somebody to the next lesson? Somebody that might need this? I think it's time that we get people out of their head. This is a monumental task, but if you feel hurt and at time you feel like you're dying, Or that you're blind. Can you imagine that your neighbor or your friend or sibling might be feeling the same thing? That they may be stuck in a place where they can't get out, not because they don't want to, but because they don't know the way out. Give them the truth. I do have to say that the truth is this, is that you are loved. Love is an important thing in this life. You have a friend, a friend that will do more for you than anyone else ever will. And this friend cares about you. Doesn't want to see you bang up your shins in the dark. So I do feel that there's more to this, but I also don't feel that we need to spend too much time here. We'll go down again. There's a lot to explore. And this journey of this podcast is just starting. I'm not sure how many people are actually listening. And sometimes I hope that I can pick up steam to hear people. I have been invited to go speak and I'll continue to push this message physically and not just hear on a podcast. Always remember, If you feel lost, you can be found. If you feel unloved, you are loved. God bless you. I am the Timesmith.