When light surrounds you, be the darkness

In darkness there is no shadow  

The Holy Nights

This thread started on day one of the Holy Nights. The night before, the electricity went off while I was cooking my “last supper”. It made me smile – I had just asked to get to know Mother Darkness a bit better. I lit a candle and finished cooking.

The next morning the power was back, but my water pipes were frozen. No running water. Another smile: back to basics, living with the elements. No dishes, no shower, nothing to clean… so I sat down to write in my diary and pulled a card from my new oracle deck.

“When darkness surrounds you, be the light”  

Ooh, the universe is funny. So probably tomorrow it will be a card about flowing rivers…  

The card itself is mesmerizing and the quote is well known. While writing, it kept on stinging me. A slight irritation. Why all that light everywhere? What’s wrong with darkness? Especially in the field I work and move in, I see and hear so much about it; “lightworker”, “be the light”, “I am light” etc etc. And don’t get me wrong, I do not have anything against light itself and I too surely have my moments when I feel “I am light”.  

What stings me in this connotation with darkness / negativity is a so often subtle energy of hierarchy – light above darkness and the energy of ignorance.  

So why not  

“When light surrounds you, be the darkness”?  

That first holy day I went on reading a book called Shakti Women. Still no running water, so all the time in the world to read.  

And there it was -> Synchronicity.  

Urton’s plea: “we’ve been dazzled by the sun of the Americas and consequently have blinded ourselves of the true depth and scope of the total system”.  

It felt like an acknowledgement and inspiration to go deeper into the matter.  

To me light can be as “negative & destructive” as darkness. It can blind and burn, it can keep you active when you need rest. It can dry you out…  

All has its place and function, so does light & darkness.

In many traditions darkness is linked to the feminine – the womb, the night, the soil that holds a seed.

Light is often linked to the masculine – the father, the sun, the visible.

What triggers me is not one side or the other, but the constant pull towards “only light”, as if that is all we should aim for. When we do that, we lose sight of the whole movement between light and darkness, feminine and masculine, and everything in between.

Through culture, language, dogma, ignorance, we often carry connotations to the word darkness that are simply not true or in best case “partially true”. Which brings me to the subtitle “In darkness there is no shadow” which was my insight of the week.  

In science, light is electromagnetic radiation — photons within a spectrum.

Darkness is not an entity, but the absence of photons.

They are not opposites in the way we often imagine.

What this means literally:

- A shadow only exists when there is light

- Shadow is not born of darkness

- Shadow is born of partial illumination so something is only half-seen.

So our ‘shadow work’ is not about darkness itself, but about what is only half seen.

darkness ≠ shadow

So when I bring this back to me and my inner digging.  

It is not the shadow that I am so interested in, I want to see the whole thing, from all angles. Seeing the shadow is a good direction though, and then turn off the light and meet the whole of it.  

A tantric session to the dark

3 years ago during a tantric retreat we were going into a session where women were receiving. The men were in service.  

My partner lost it right from the beginning, he was all in his head and in doing. I stayed calm and attempted to connect. Asking him to stop doing for a little while and just connect and breathe with me. That did work only for a minute or so. He kept on doing… No connection to me or my body, touching me all over and no idea how to reconnect to himself or me.  

.  

My body did not like it at all. I went from irritation to a boiling point. I was furious inside of me, ready to chop his head off, when he crossed a clear boundary we had agreed on before starting.  

That moment, a split second. Intensely powerful, I decided to own my session, my experience, my body. Using the rage I was experiencing to enter deeper into myself, feeling his touch still on my body and surrender…  

Instantly I went into a trancelike state. Still aware of my body and surroundings and at the same time being in another space / another dimension. I saw a huge portal of 2 pillars with a river which was carrying me. I repeated to myself, “I surrender!” and drifted through the portal. Darkness, all pitch black. “Mother darkness” (never had heard that anywhere). “I am home!”  

“I am darkness!” Say what?!  

For a few seconds my mind kicked in.  ‘If I am darkness, am I bad? What if, etc etc.’ and then stopped it: ‘ If I truly am darkness then I may want to get to know the darkness. “I surrender.”  

As I sank deeper into the state of being…

Mother darkness, such sweetness, immensely nurturing, deeply holding, gentle and soft… I felt like I was becoming one with the floor and the earth underneath my body. I could see, hear, smell, feel things I never did before. The longer I stayed in this state the more it expanded. Mother darkness. “I am home.”  

This experience is why I had the intention for the holy nights to get to know mother darkness better.  

If I would have followed my fury into outer expression and “chopped my partners head off” I would probably not have had this experience in the same way.

I knew I was safe & angry. I could choose to own my experience and use the strong energy to go on.  

When my mind kicked in later, I could have gone on with analysing, following the fear which came with all the “negative” connotations I had towards darkness.

I chose to meet whatever was there.  

And it was mesmerizing.  

In terms of Alchemy darkness is referred to as nigredo  

Prima Materia, a phase, like a pregnant darkness, womb, the earth before a seed sprouts.  

An invisible presence  

So what I am saying here:  

Let's be courageous and go beyond what we are told, beyond the words and go for meeting whatever is there.  

And through our own experiences define what is true for us.  

So perhaps the work is not to choose light over darkness, or darkness over light.

Perhaps the work is to notice what is needed in each moment —and to dare to meet it fully.