THE JEWEL WITHIN THE DARKNESS
You ask me, "what is this darkness?" You ask me, "why this darkness?" You ask me, "how can there be light within the darkness?" You ask me, "isn't the darkness a bad thing, something to be avoided, something to get rid of?" You wonder, what I mean by "allowing the darkness, embracing it, meeting it with kindness" and so on.
Well, my friend ... let me try to open up this conversation about darkness. First of all, darkness has a bad rap. From the point of view of the divided mind, light is good and dark is bad. From the point of view of the ego-self, anything that is uncomfortable or unwelcome must be avoided at all costs. From the point of view of the personhood, only the high and the good and the light and the perfect are acceptable ... as long as the image of high and good and light and perfect match who you think you are or who you'd like to be.
But the darkness is not a monster. It is simply that which you don't want to see, don't want to embrace, don't want to welcome into your heart. It is all those unacceptable feelings that have been pushed down for a lifetime or for aeons. It's a personal, familial, ancestral, cultural and archetypal patterning that has created this groove of "pushing it down". And as this dark pool of repressed material accumulates, it becomes a little distorted and it becomes somewhat intense. Until it starts to seep through the cracks. Until at some point in your life - when you're a little softer or a little more beaten up by life, when you're a little more vulnerable or a little more ready - the darkness erupts.
Perhaps it seeps through as a background desolation or despair, a kind of meaninglessness or lack of vitality. Or perhaps it bursts through as an uncontainable rage or a river of melancholy or a black hole of depression. Perhaps its a creeping sense of dissatisfaction in life or sense of unworthiness or futility. There are many ways the darkness makes itself known to you. But we are conditioned to turn the darkness into a "mental illness", some kind of problem to be fixed. And so we do everything to deny it or find a solution to make it go away. And in so doing, miss the wisdom and grace of darkness. We miss the opportunity for growth and new life. We miss the jewel that is waiting for us in the depths.
It is in the depth of you that you can rest and simply remain open. It is a kind of waiting in the unknown, a liminal space of not trying to find a solution but simply being patient and kind. It requires you to not jump to any conclusion about your "condition", to not grasp onto the thoughts that have been agitated, to not attempt to get rid of anything. The unknown is a gentle listening to a deeper intelligence than ego-mind.
The darkness arises from your depth ... and when you are ready, it will inform you of a much vaster you, a you that has the capacity to embrace and feel and allow the movement of all energies. And if you don't identify with these energies, but simply allow their movement, you will see that who you are is aliveness itself. You will see that you are not who you think you are, you are instead the unbounded awareness in which all storms are free to dance and release themselves from the bondage of suppression.
In this way, you discover the light in the darkness. You discover the lightness of being at your core, the jewel of freedom in the midst of all experiences. You discover that there really are no opposites in life ... only those you create in your mind.
My friend, your true self is beyond division. Your true self is beyond the yin and yang and yet recognizes and allows the yin and yang to play within the experience of life. This is the leela, the dance. But you are not the dance, you are the awareness within which the dance takes place.
My friend, take heart .. there is a jewel right here in every experience. My friend, open your heart and let the light shine through the cracks. It is the light of being. And you are that.
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