Post by wren on Dec 31, 2006 20:51:58 GMT -5
When we are stripped of the senses of sight and hearing, other senses begin to come alive. Beyond the five senses, these are the inner senses of the soul and spirit. Our eyes, in the light, fool us into believing that only what we see is real. We’ve been taught to disregard the other things we ‘see’ in our childhood. Only in the darkness can we find them again.
I used to be afraid of the dark when I was little. I used to cover my head with my bedcovers, thinking to fool the ‘monsters’ into believing I was asleep. I had somehow reasoned that they would not harm me if they believed I was sleeping. Later, I would again find fear in darkness. Certain movies seemed to trigger that sense of dread and doom for me. I found the ‘Exorcist’ to be a horrible movie, for example, and it haunted me for years.
We are taught early on to fear the darkness, though perhaps inadvertently. ‘Always be home before dark’, my mother would say. The first thing we do when entering a darkened room is to flick on the light; unless we’re in a really bad horror movie and then monsters lurk in the darkness. We leave the light on when someone is out, to light their way back in the darkness.
Somewhere along the way, we’ve forgotten what the darkness truly holds for us. The character from my unfinished novel, who seems to have been speaking my thoughts before I was aware of them, said, “They light the dark to keep it at bay, while missing the beauty of the night and all it has to offer.” I wrote that before I knew personally what beauty the night and the darkness hold.
In my own life, I have learned well the difference between desire and longing. It was the longing for wholeness which brought me from a place of utter despair to the unflagging faith that I could become well and whole again. It was a longing for understanding and connection that allowed me to hear Danu’s voice that first night in my garden. And, it is longing that now leads me to follow that same voice into the wilderness to discover my soulgift and all I might have yet to offer my community.
Once in the darkness, with the light extinguished and our desires along with it, our true longing can be revealed. Only when we allow the darkness to overtake us, can the shaping our own lives and our souls begin. We become the clay in the potter’s hands, formed and molded and even carved, willing participants in our own destiny. We can choose to ignore the darkness and the shaping but we will be unhappy in the process. It is when we accept, with open hands and hearts, the gifts the darkness has to offer that we truly begin to grow.
Following my first night alone out of doors, I felt moved by the darkness and the peace I had found there. I came to see that my illness had been a long dark night from which I had just emerged. I wrote the following poem following that night:
I saw myself as that seed that waited in the darkness of my illness, its hull being broken to release the inner being. I saw myself as an invisible little oyster, in pain and alone in the dark inside my shell, while the world raged on around me. It was only when I had spent a long time fighting against my pain and my illness that I began to see there was a different way out of the shell. I saw myself as I was and accepted exactly where I was in the darkness, just before I allowed the Shapers to show me the way out. In the process, I found a rare, beautiful, warm pearl inside me, formed from that very pain and illness. As is always the case, the oyster must die to free the pearl. So it was with me.
Desire masks longing. We want, we accumulate, we covet and we seek...trying to fill the emptiness. Things do not fill the holes in our souls because our souls are fluid. Just as stones sink to the bottom of a pond, ‘things’ sink to the bottom of our souls. It is only in the mist, the smoke, the clouds and our dreams that we can find our true selves, for they are as fluid as we are. It is only in the darkness that the Shapers can do their real work, if we willingly submit to Their efforts on our behalf. The journey is terrifying as well as joyous, for it is submitting to the death of our desires that we are reborn by the birth of our longing.
I used to be afraid of the dark when I was little. I used to cover my head with my bedcovers, thinking to fool the ‘monsters’ into believing I was asleep. I had somehow reasoned that they would not harm me if they believed I was sleeping. Later, I would again find fear in darkness. Certain movies seemed to trigger that sense of dread and doom for me. I found the ‘Exorcist’ to be a horrible movie, for example, and it haunted me for years.
We are taught early on to fear the darkness, though perhaps inadvertently. ‘Always be home before dark’, my mother would say. The first thing we do when entering a darkened room is to flick on the light; unless we’re in a really bad horror movie and then monsters lurk in the darkness. We leave the light on when someone is out, to light their way back in the darkness.
Somewhere along the way, we’ve forgotten what the darkness truly holds for us. The character from my unfinished novel, who seems to have been speaking my thoughts before I was aware of them, said, “They light the dark to keep it at bay, while missing the beauty of the night and all it has to offer.” I wrote that before I knew personally what beauty the night and the darkness hold.
In my own life, I have learned well the difference between desire and longing. It was the longing for wholeness which brought me from a place of utter despair to the unflagging faith that I could become well and whole again. It was a longing for understanding and connection that allowed me to hear Danu’s voice that first night in my garden. And, it is longing that now leads me to follow that same voice into the wilderness to discover my soulgift and all I might have yet to offer my community.
Once in the darkness, with the light extinguished and our desires along with it, our true longing can be revealed. Only when we allow the darkness to overtake us, can the shaping our own lives and our souls begin. We become the clay in the potter’s hands, formed and molded and even carved, willing participants in our own destiny. We can choose to ignore the darkness and the shaping but we will be unhappy in the process. It is when we accept, with open hands and hearts, the gifts the darkness has to offer that we truly begin to grow.
Following my first night alone out of doors, I felt moved by the darkness and the peace I had found there. I came to see that my illness had been a long dark night from which I had just emerged. I wrote the following poem following that night:
Out of the Darkness
In the depths of darkness
A seed of change awaits its time
Soft and sweet it is cradled
In the Mother’s arms sublime
Time has no meaning in darkness
Secrets are shadowed in rhyme
Changes take place unbidden
And unseen below enshrined
Above it seems all is dying
While it merely sleeps for a time
Rest must come before action
Energies reserved and refined
The seed of rebirth awaits the Sun
His magic touch full of might
Birth is a mystical process
From the darkness to the light
In the depths of darkness
A seed of change awaits its time
Soft and sweet it is cradled
In the Mother’s arms sublime
Time has no meaning in darkness
Secrets are shadowed in rhyme
Changes take place unbidden
And unseen below enshrined
Above it seems all is dying
While it merely sleeps for a time
Rest must come before action
Energies reserved and refined
The seed of rebirth awaits the Sun
His magic touch full of might
Birth is a mystical process
From the darkness to the light
I saw myself as that seed that waited in the darkness of my illness, its hull being broken to release the inner being. I saw myself as an invisible little oyster, in pain and alone in the dark inside my shell, while the world raged on around me. It was only when I had spent a long time fighting against my pain and my illness that I began to see there was a different way out of the shell. I saw myself as I was and accepted exactly where I was in the darkness, just before I allowed the Shapers to show me the way out. In the process, I found a rare, beautiful, warm pearl inside me, formed from that very pain and illness. As is always the case, the oyster must die to free the pearl. So it was with me.
Desire masks longing. We want, we accumulate, we covet and we seek...trying to fill the emptiness. Things do not fill the holes in our souls because our souls are fluid. Just as stones sink to the bottom of a pond, ‘things’ sink to the bottom of our souls. It is only in the mist, the smoke, the clouds and our dreams that we can find our true selves, for they are as fluid as we are. It is only in the darkness that the Shapers can do their real work, if we willingly submit to Their efforts on our behalf. The journey is terrifying as well as joyous, for it is submitting to the death of our desires that we are reborn by the birth of our longing.
