Seems there's a bit of confusion as concerns some of the stories I've recently told, that they hold contradictory ideas. Let me shed some light on this concern with the following notes:

Things often seem as contradictions to us when we can't see that higher understanding must necessarily include levels; i.e., something can be true in one world, but not always so in another. In this instance, concerning the difficulty of reconciling the notion that, on the one hand, one must learn to "embrace" what is dark within oneself and yet, on the other hand, have nothing to do with it!

First and foremost, one must always meet whatever is moving in them with a wish to understand it; one's liberation is always proportionate to one's realization that whatever one encounters in life is a reflection of one's own consciousness. So, the idea of "trading places" with some painful state means we will consciously work to give up our resistance to it so that, for suffering it consciously, that state may be brought into that light of awareness called "meeting it in the moment." When this dark energy/form is changed (by the light of awareness), the level of self that resisted it the moment before must change as well...become more integrated, because this sense of "self" can't be separated out from what brings it into temporary existence.

On the other hand, one must never allow a negative state to dictate what one is, or does towards it through some form of resistance. All forms of psychological resistance actually "prove" a form of similarity with what's being resisted. One couldn't resist a negative state unless one was identified with something that causes this resistance in the first place.

However, our wish to meet the "dark creatures" -- those energetic forms that reside upon and within the undiscovered country of self -- doesn't mean that we agree to be made in their image, i.e., negative. Again, as with before, by bringing watchfulness to bear in the moment of meeting the resistance, we "bring" that dark state into the light of awareness; and this surrender (willingness to "meet it" on our part) puts everything in its proper order within. Now, transformation and reconciliation are brother and sister...part of the family called Higher Love.