The Fruitful Darkness
“To go into the dark with a light is to know the light. To know the dark. Go dark. Go without sight, and find that the dark too, blooms and sings, and is traveled by dark feet and dark wings.”
At what point do we depart from the feeling of being held within the universal soup of all that is, and fall under the spell of separateness? Is this when our sense of inherent trust fades and the fear of darkness begins?
On the heels of Halloween, and in the window of time at the beginning of November when the veil between “here” and “there” is thin, I want to begin with this: Maybe the chilling phrase, “Come out, come out, wherever you are.” Is not the taunt it has been presented as in fairy tales, but an invitation from fear herself to brave her wrath and her beauty so you can see what you are really made of.
In this northern hemisphere of the earth we are in the midst of turning into the season of darkness. Right now, in this very moment we can feel the steady blanket of night creeping in and shortening the hours of daylight on both ends.
Darkness is often portrayed as a sinister force. We are freed from the darkness of ignorance with the light of knowing. The things that corrupt us lay in the shadows of our unconscious. On an instinctual and biological level we are vulnerable when our senses are shrouded so it even makes sense to be vigilant or wary in the dark. While we need words and metaphors to help illustrate concepts, I think this villainizing of the dark is quite unfortunate and contributes to our sense of separation from the whole.
We all have our beginnings in the fruitful darkness of our Mothers womb. Each night, it is the dark that ushers us into deep reparative sleep. And in the very end of life as we know it, it is the dark that wraps her tender arms around us. It has been my personal experience that it is not light that I have to surrender to in order to know myself, but the dark.
By its very nature the unknowable and mysterious operate beyond our minds grasp, within the unseen. Often in our attempts to illuminate these mysteries through a constant seeking to “know” and/or predict the future, we become trapped in a cycle of fear and/or anticipation. Sadly, when we remain in this predictive stance we can’t access the miraculous unfolding of the present. Yet when we release this striving, and settle into the blanket of silence that holds all sounds, the emptiness that contains all things, and the unknowable that sits squarely within the known; magic happens.
The opening to the darkness, the mysterious unknowable elements of life is not as hard as it has been presented in our culture. In fact, I’m shocked to realize that many among us have discovered their inner riches, and live within fulfillments embrace. It does initially seem to take us against the grain of what we have learned, and even against some hardwired biological fear instincts designed to help us when we are in actual danger. Life has infinite ways of teaching us how to open to mystery, but I’ve found that Yoga provides a helpful scaffolding for those of us who want to take this leap, and sustain us in our shift to calibrating to openness.
I want to share something from my personal journey with fear, the unknown, and darkness: It was 2am, and I awoke with fear in the pit of my stomach, a feeling like I was just about to fall from a tall building. This kind of wake up had been happening for weeks, and I was getting tired of feeling afraid, and of constant interrupted sleep. I had no story to cling to to explain the fear (though I’m sure I could have fabricated one from the things that were happening in my life at the time). It was out of my control and on this night I placed my hands gently on my belly where the fear sat, and I took a deep breath and I said silently “dear heart, here we go.” And I surrendered, or fell, as I had many times before. But this time, the fear expanded, then something indescribable unfolded; a knowing, a feeling, a safety, a wholeness, a naturalness. I curled on my side, and the sound of the wind chimes, crickets, leaves blowing in the summer breeze, the stars, and everything I am, escorted me back to the dark deep dreamless sleep. Nothing has been the same since, and yet everything is the same.
Reflecting back on my life, the waking up at 2 and 3 in the morning with fear has been happening as long as I can remember. It began as a pile of clothes masquerading as malevolent monster, and morphed into waking up with fear of intruders, or losing people I love, money, respect, reputation and so on. She has been asking me to look at her, to be with her, to trust her, to come back to the fold ever since I left.
I have a sneaking suspicion that she has been asking you too. When did you, or will you accept her invitation to come out, wherever you are, and see what you are made of.
With Love,
Nicole