Into the Darkness

It’s autumn… the equinox is long past. The sun keeps moving further South and the days, inexorably grow shorter. The darkness is coming.

A few weeks ago, I took myself on a walk fairly late in the day, and by the time I turned around to head home it was quite dark. I live on a dirt and gravel road high on a hillside in a small town in southern Vermont. Trees and stone walls line the narrow lane and many of them are tall, their canopies stretching out over the street and completely blocking any view of the sky. I found myself walking faster and faster, delighted and energized by moving quickly through the darkness with just a hazy sense of the path ahead.

I was reminded of an earlier time in my life when I would run on these back roads for two to three hours at a time. Often, I would close my eyes, seeing how long or far I could go without opening them, trying to somehow sense the boundaries and edges without the aid of my visual sense. It was frightening and exhilarating. The memory made me smile, and I thought, “This is the essence of my journey here — running into the darkness as fast as I’m able, trusting that something – inner or outer – will guide my way.”

In one of our workshops — The Mythic Warrior Men’s Training — at the end of the first weekend the everyone participates in “the run to the Unknown.” The men are blindfolded and brought to the edge of a field where, one-by-one, they have to run, full speed, toward a voice that’s calling to them. The voice at the other end represents a dream they’ve always wanted… a way of living they’ve longed for their whole life…freedom from everything that has, and still, holds them back. When they are caught, they are told to hold onto that feeling for as long as they can, and that this – that feeling – is what we’re all here to find. Many burst into tears at the conclusion.

We live in a world that emphasizes “focusing on the light.” But as we can see in the cycles of nature and the classic yin-yang symbol, the light and dark exist in balance, and it’s a mistake to associate “the light” with goodness, spirituality, heaven, and “higher consciousness.” Focusing on the light makes us blind to our shadow – on heaven makes us forget the earth. Resurrection comes after death, and an inability to let go of the past or clinging to what’s no longer useful will stop our forward motion as sure as anything.

I’m recently back from leading a vision quest in the Gila Wilderness of southwestern New Mexico. It was a rich and powerful time, and two rituals in particular — Calling in the Dark and the Purpose Circle – were specifically oriented around engaging with the darkness. In the first, people called out, engaged and negotiated with those forces in themselves or in the world which they found frightening and had consistently tried to avoid. In the second, people stayed up through the long hours of darkness, announcing, claiming, and celebrating the gifts they had received and asking for vision, gifts, and insights that would sustain them through the protracted dark passageway of the night and through the challenging constrictions of their lives.

In “Sweet Darkness” David Whyte writes…

When your eyes are tired
The world is tired also.

When your vision has gone
No part of the world can find you.
Time to go into the dark
Where the night has eyes
To recognize its own.

There you can be sure
You are not beyond love.
The dark will be your womb tonight.
The night will give you a horizon
Further than you can see.

You must learn one thing:
The world was made to be free in.
Give up all the other worlds except the one to which you belong.

Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet
Confinement of your aloneness
To learn

Anything or anyone
That does not bring you alive
is too small for you.

In the first and most-enduring set of teachings I was exposed to — the Toltec tradition of ancient Mexico — human beings were seen as “fields of energy,” and the point of all practice was to increase your level of energy… to become fully alive. And many of the specific practices encompassed making connections and developing relationships with the great sources of energy in the universe — the earth, mountains, ocean, rivers, sun, and stars… not some airy and above-it-all heaven of unchanging peace through eternity. Where’s the life in that? (Oh, I forgot –it’s an after-life!)

Becoming alive arises from real encounters on Earth, with the dark, the cold, the animals, the wild, the Unknown. So, I thank the Mystery for this journey here — running into the darkness as fast as I’m able, trusting that something – inner or outer – will guide my way. I wouldn’t ask for anything else.