SITTING IN DARKNESS IS A GOOD THINGYesterday I shared a Shakti sister’s writing about why darkness is not a “bad” thing. Today, I want to further this discussion just a smidgen more by exploring the use of language as a means with an end.
I encourage you to sit with the following thoughts for a while, for it is not an easy concept for our very polarized minds to understand – at least it wasn’t for me. But when you can get to the point where you are able to see both sides of the coin as neither good nor bad, but simply as ways of using an abstract means (language) to label things in the physical world (the end) …I believe you will be able to bring much healing to your soul.
Let’s start with our concept from yesterday: Darkness vs Light.
What if darkness is not something to be feared as we have so often been taught to fear….and my sister so beautifully describes, but something that teaches us? What if there was no darkness, no night? Would the Light make any sense to us? Could it be that the Divine is in both the Darkness and in the Light?
What if darkness simply is a means for us to grow in understanding of our world, both outer and especially inner? What if darkness, instead of being feared and pushed away by the worldly means we are so good at using, wants us to befriend it – to give it space to express itself, to be heard and seen and known? What if the darkness is part of our soul just like the darkness is part of the cycle of life in our days and years? What if the darkness is here to help us turn inwards, to restore and rest? What if by continuing to reject or deny the darkness without letting it have its voice in our life, we are rejecting half of who we are…leading to a divided soul? What if we want to truly accept ourselves, if we want to truly integrate ourselves, we must learn to sit in darkness without chasing it away?
WHAT IS BAD IS GOOD AND WHAT IS GOOD IS BAD
This concept of fearing and letting in what is typically the “bad” – in this case the “darkness” – is something that I have been working at in my own life. See, in teaching my mind to open up, in teaching myself to rephrase my life, one of the things I have come to the conclusion is that there are no absolutes as we have generally been taught. It is simply the lenses we put on top that make something an absolute. You can put it this way: We attempt to label things “bad/sinful/evil/profane/dark” so that in our minds we therefore can know what is “good/righteous/truth/sacred/light”. We cannot know what is “good”, if we first don’t know what is “bad”. We cannot know what is “sacred” if we first do not label something as “profane”(1).
This concept of fearing and letting in what is typically the “bad” – in this case the “darkness” – is something that I have been working at in my own life. See, in teaching my mind to open up, in teaching myself to rephrase my life, one of the things I have come to the conclusion is that there are no absolutes as we have generally been taught. It is simply the lenses we put on top that make something an absolute. You can put it this way: We attempt to label things “bad/sinful/evil/profane/dark” so that in our minds we therefore can know what is “good/righteous/truth/sacred/light”. We cannot know what is “good”, if we first don’t know what is “bad”. We cannot know what is “sacred” if we first do not label something as “profane”(1).
For without the darkness of “evil” we would not know what was the light of “good”. For without the dark, cold earth swallowing up the seeds of our plants, there would be no growth of our plants that nourish us. For without the despair of the long Winter darkness, we would not know the Joy of the long Summer light. For without the darkness of the grave and the stench of death, we would not know the power of resurrection nor the beauty of rebirth. For without the “darkness” of the Feminine Lunar energy, we are not fully able understand the “lightness” of the Masculine Solar energy. For without the “Darkness” we cannot see the “Light”(2).
I would argue that we need both sides of the coin –
light/dark, good/evil, death/resurrection, death/rebirth, sun/moon, feminine/masculine –
if we ever wish to see the Divine in action.
If we ever want to experience the fullness of the Divine,
one must open up the mind and the body to beholding both sides of the coin at once.
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NOTES
(1) This concept of needing both the dark and light was illuminated in my life by a gentleman that wrote the book God, Myth & Metaphor: The Profane Reality of the Goddess. Everything in the book is pretty much online in his blog except for the intro and conclusion. Mr. Rozzoti systematically uses the symbols of the triune God applying this concept of the Sacred, the Profane and the Wholly Other to enlarge our thinking and move our minds towards a new reality that Jesus painted for us 2000+ years ago.
(2) I received this in my inbox just a few days before Christmas and found it timely that the Divine truly is moving in the Christian world to bring us back to an understanding of how we need both “sides of the coin” for deeper spiritual understanding of our physical bodies. Really what is being called as “progressive” is returning to age old wisdom from a time when the world was more balanced…one could say from a time when we lived in a Garden: A light in the Darkness.
