We need to spend longer in the dark
‘What places us in the dark? Letting go of those illusions of the mind that keep us from seeing clearly — hope, motivation, interpretation. Always we avoid the dark by rushing on to the next imagined source of life, the next hope or ambition. Never do we settle down and stay quietly in the dark.’
Peter Kingsley
For how long do we gestate?
In these quickening times of speeding energies, a precedence of light flooding the planet, the clear polarisation of light and dark and global transformation, slowing down may seem like a grievous error. Everything seems to call us on board The Starlight Express. Much of humanity has its collective bag packed and is ready to depart the station for new colonies of endeavour.
But the wise man — or woman — is like the ripest of fruit, is pakka as they say in India. Ever mindful of the signs, he knows that the key to success is a ripening that allows him to fall from the tree of life only when he is in perfect readiness for his next initiatory move.
He knows he is not the mover nor the doer but merely and beautifully the embodiment of life’s aliveness. He lives and dies in complete alignment with divine timing and neither tries to separate himself from what is nor attempts to run the show. He has little interest in escaping pain or profiteering in the world.
He came into life to heal the pain he saw from afar, drawing exactly the right experiences into his body to make his contribution to the current collective healing. In all likelihood, painful episodes began early as the long held patterns he carried within his psyche rose up for their final cleansing.
He also understands and holds the essential paradox in this Kali Yuga: the closer we are to the light, the closer we are to the dark, and knows the light is challenged and driven by forces both within and without. One augments the other in fact, in a duel that propels us all further into the light.
‘The childish individual wants someone to save him, the adolescent wants to fulfil himself absolutely and independently, the true man simply serves good company and surrenders to Truth, the Living God.’ (Adi Da)
This seedling waits with eternal patience its time of service. This knowledge is innate, pre-conscious and, of course, mindless. There is no mind to interfere with its sacred duty, no personal desire.
It does not engage in the drama of the search for oneness, now preoccupying most of us, because two-ness is anathema. In a person, it expresses itself warmly and openly and straight up; and in that way it can see and feel the kinks and perversities in the responses of others, those whose wounds remain out front. In that way, he acts as a perfect mirror for those who care to see.
Staying within the earth and in the dark, in the unmanifest, his presence as nothing upholds everything and those within his energy field are healed.
How do we become as little children once more and recover paradise?
We sink deep roots into the unconscious and always keep the bulk of us, quietly, patiently in the unmanifest, our true home.
Michael Meade, the mythologist, writes about the soul’s need for descent, to take us deeper into what is unknown within us. To the mind this can look like madness, yet sometimes we need a brush with death, to go beyond human aid.
Sometimes, we need to get sicker so more of us can be revealed. Sometimes, we need to learn that only the gods can help us, to surrender and allow the current of life to take us to new shores.
In the story of Tristan and Isolde, the eponymous hero is cast adrift at sea, wounded and defenceless, without oar, surrendered to what the Fates may decide.
Those times when we are truly powerless, although dreaded and feared, may just be the key to a life of destiny.
