New moon with eclipse.

3am ramblings

When a moonless night, is met with a morning eclipse of the sun, might it not beseech us to ask: How do we relate to darkness, really? Where do we go when we are empty? What do we do when the light recedes and shadow surrounds? It’s one thing to watch the green shoot of a stem, rising from between jagged cracks in the cement, hurling itself toward the sun in the name of life and vibrant color, and to consider how we relate to light, and fullness, and blooming… But to inquire as to our relationship with the descent and to the darkness served forth by the depths, is a different manner of work.

What do we do? When we are denied the light of both sun and moon, while the leaves tumble down around us and the branches become vacant and barren? As the world heaves the collective sighs of international grief, how do we hold our own hearts in the presence of such emptiness? What are we, when, like the autumn trees, we are stripped of our adornments? When all our gold is surrendered, and we are left absent of glitter and light and presentation?

And then what happens, when we open our hearts to the night and there is no moon shining back to reassure our vulnerability? And we find ourselves unmet, and so we wait for the dawn, certain that the sun will summon relief for us again, only to find our life giving star eclipsed by that same moon that refused to show it’s face?

What do we do then? What can we possibly say?

 Oh Lord of Lords, please let me be empty

 Lord of Lords, please bless me with the privilege of darkness

Take from me the glow of the moon

Hide from me the light of the sun

So that I might feel that which I do not yet have the eyes with which to see

Help me know darkness so that I might become a servant, not of mind, but of love

Make me not a prisoner of perception

Help me to make my life upon the alter of your freedom

So that I may rise for the karmic assignment

And in doing so shepherd all beings in all places to freedom

Because what is an eclipse of the sun, really, but a moment to sit quietly with the parts of ourselves that our conscious awareness has yet to have reached? What is a new moon, really, but a moment to sit inside the place which we spend most all of our energy, trying so hard to ignore. Many stake their entire lives only upon what is known. We work tirelessly to turn away from that which our awareness has not yet cultivated the capacity to illuminate. Because we cannot see the way, we refuse the journey. And here, now, for this one moment, no matter where we turn, the darkness and the depths of the mystery welcome us within their embrace. 

Dawn might be known for it’s rosy fingers, but the darkness has arms too.

So what do we do? When we are stripped of our adornments? Do we simply seek another trinket? Or do we embrace the chance to know ourselves naked? Belly up, back arched, heart open, throat exposed, to all that you do not know and might never know.

How do we relate to the dynamic darkness of our own ignorance? To the places in which, as of yet, the light of our own awareness has not been able to illuminate and explore? What do we do when we cannot turn away because there is no place left to go?

When we receive the invitation to surrender to the darkest recesses of mind and being and matter, do we scramble for a night light or might we revel in the opportunity to become acquainted with that which drives us forth, absent of our knowing? Might we rest in what churns in the dark, far beneath the reaches of our attention, and in sitting there, blindly within it’s hold, come to know it softly, incrementally, one moment at a time. To know it’s touch and it’s smell and it’s sound, and the way it bristles the hair on our necks and smothers the warmth in our hearts. So that like a child, wrapped in the womb of the mother, when the eyes are finally opened they recognize what they see before them, for they have come to know each other gradually, over the course of many somatic moments and corporal time. 

This is how we come to know, that which we do not know. This is how we build the infrastructure of awareness, around which our honesty, integrity, and authenticity are all constructed. This is how we change ourselves. And that is how we change the world.

When the light will not cut through from afar, we must place ourselves inside that which we wish to illuminate. It glows from within, gradually melting the darkness that surrounds, eventually making known that which is not, so that we might act, not from fear, but from love. Not out of ignorance, but from the guidance of wisdom and truth, so that we might become worthy and capable of the kind of life, and the manner of love, we long so wildly for. 

A night empty of moon, and a day void of sun, is an invitation if ever there was one, to sit within the embrace of that which we do not know, and to be softened by the parts of our being that have not yet themselves known light.