GIFTS OF THE FERTILE DARKNESS

Dear Sisters,

We are here again.  Descending into darkness, entering the deep stillness of the year.  The Winter Solstice draws near.  Though our culture stirs up waves of busyness and activity to insulate us from it, still we can feel it.  The Earth herself emanates this energy of slowing down, coming to stillness, going within.  As the daylight shortens, the nights lengthen and deepen.  Have you gone out late at night to breathe in the cold stillness?  It is as if the whole world is returning to itself.  The descent into darkness is a Return.  A return to our roots, to  essence, to simplicity, to truth, to ourselves.  It is an unshackling- a release- of worldly agendas, expectations, goals, activities, and productivity, so that we can enter into the generative stillness within.  

Our society does not understand and thus does not value this time.  Our culture values continuous growth, increasing productivity, results, expansion- but it has lost touch with the bigger cycle of Life that makes possible such growth.  It forgets the fertile darkness of the soil in which the seeds, in their own dreaming time, germinate.  It forgets the how the soil is enriched and nourished by the leaf fall, how the decay of last season’s unharvested fruit feeds the new seeds that will sprout.  It forgets the necessity of release, surrender, rest.  It knows nothing of the gifts of the darkness.

We must be allowed an undoing.  We must gift ourselves with the grace of unbecoming, surrendering into the unseeable darkness of the unknown.  We must be allowed these times of not knowing, not understanding, not having it all figured out.  This time of darkness is an invitation to release all the trying and striving, the hustle and bustle, the analysis and agendas, the creating and producing- and rest.  Release.  Surrender.  The Earth herself is inviting us to enter into a great ceremony of BEING.  Just being.  

Can you feel the ripples emanating out from that space of stillness?

This is the fertile womb in which all Creation springs forth.  It is the fertile soil in which new life germinates.  It is a deep, ancient, feminine wisdom.

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In ceremony today I received a beautiful teaching on this.  I was deep in the Earth, in a cave of sorts that was completely dark.  I could see nothing around me.  I was asked to begin walking.  

I felt uncertain about this, since I didn’t know where I was, where anything else was, or where I was going.  (Sound familiar? wink.)  But I stood up and began walking, moving slowly out of concern for a sudden rock or ditch.  I moved my arms around, trying to figure out what kind of a space I was in.  How high was the ceiling?  Would I bump my head?  Where was the wall?  My mind was working hard, trying to figure out my environment and what to do; trying to keep me safe.  Finally Mama Cacao stopped me.

“Stop trying to know the unknown,” she said to me.  “You are in the dark.  You cannot see.  You do not know what is around you.  This is not a time for certainty.  You must receive the gift of the darkness.”

I had no idea what she meant, but I stopped.  “Stop trying to figure it all out with your mind,” she said.  “All of your ideas, your concepts, your expectations, your goals- they won’t help you now.  Those are for the sunlit days of creation.  Now it is time to surrender the directives of your mind, and give yourself permission to be in the unknown, in the not understanding, in the directionless dark.  Release any trying, and simply be here.”

So I let go of trying to figure it out.  I gave myself permission to not see, to not know.  I let go of the frustrations, the shoulds, the expectations, the analysis, the need to be validated by- and my attachment to feeling safe- through “having it figured out” (or at least trying!).  I accepted the darkness.  I stopped trying to illuminate the darkness, to make it understandable, navigate-able.  I let the darkness blind me, and in that moment something magical happened.

I began to feel.

It began with my body.  I was suddenly “in” my body in a whole new way.  I felt my feet against the gritty cave floor.  I felt my breath, heartbeat, tingling of energy.  And then I became aware of sensations all around me, connecting with me, soft breath of cooler air, moisture, and sensations more subtle, energy flows and presences, the weaving filaments of vibration emanating all around me.

Mama Cacao spoke: “This is the great gift of the Dark: the awakening of the rest of your senses.   When you release the mental activity and outward focus that you are so accustomed to, you will begin to receive new awareness through your other ways of sensing and perceiving.  It is a whole aspect of your being that you ordinarily do not have access to, that is now available to you.  As a result, there is a new kind of awareness and understanding awakening within you.  This is not a mental understanding; it is not something that can be put easily into words.  It is an awareness that nourishes, like nutrients in the soil nourish a seed.  It is a beingness that allows you to know yourself in a new way.  It is the gift this time of darkness offers to you, if you will receive it.”

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May you welcome the unbecoming as a gift.

May you embrace the unknown as as a friend.

May you receive the darkness as a sacrament,

And rest in the arms of your own beingness.