Don’t Be Afraid Of The Dark – The Spiritual Practice In Darkness
- Apr 29, 2023
- 5 min read
Updated: May 2, 2023
Written by: Jon Gottsegen, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
We are in the full swing of spring. Flowers are coming up and trees are budding where I live. This is a time of rebirth and rejuvenation in a variety of spiritual calendars.
There’s still time to dig into the dark though. But why would you want to do this, you might ask? In Western, European culture dark often has been equated with bad or evil, with places of bad or shadowy intent, perhaps the pit or the deep as referred to in the Psalms. Apart from the potentially racist problem of ascribing good to light/white and bad to dark/black, moving beyond this dualism offers rich potential for growth.
Shadow and the Dark Night of the Soul
In fact, the dark places of our “shadow” is a great reason to delve into our dark. It is commonly understood that our shadow is made of those parts of us that we have repressed for any number of reasons. If we don’t get to know these parts, they will come out in unplanned and often unhealthy ways. Psychological projection or transference are two such ways and can be good means for identifying what we’ve pushed into our shadow.
Darkness is also considered a place of confusion. “I’m in the dark,” is a way of saying I’m confused or uninformed, but times when we feel confusion about our lives when what we thought we knew just doesn’t seem to work anymore, can also be ripe and juicy to dive into. In these times, we can work to face and re-evaluate the concepts and structures that we previously held onto so firmly, even so desperately, white-knuckling our way to jam our life’s events into these frames.
The “Dark Night of the Soul” is a manifestation of this confusion. It isn’t depression, as many think of it. St. John of the Cross used the Spanish word obscura for darkness. Things and constructs, particularly ways of connecting to the Divine, are not clear as they were before. John says these states are necessary, that they lead to a new conceptualization of Spirit or the Divine in our lives.
Rabbi Fern Feldman talks about the sacred dark as that place where boundaries and concepts disappear. The dark is necessary to touch the sacred. If you’re mystically inclined, it’s where we can dissolve into the Great Oneness, and in that, or out of that, unity we can recreate a new set of understandings. Hmmm… A modern Rabbi and a 16th-century Spanish, Catholic mystic saying the same thing here?
Indeed, the tradition for the Jewish holiday of Purim is to become so inebriated, one can’t tell good from bad. It is a deliberate one-night venture into an inability to discern. That is followed about a month later by the holiday of Passover, our liberation from narrowness. Note: it is often thought of as liberation from slavery, but the Hebrew word for Egypt, where the Israelites were enslaved according to the Passover story, comes from the Hebrew root of the word meaning narrow or constriction. Hence, when thinking about the meaning of the Passover story for us today, people often say we all can experience liberation from some type of constriction. Perhaps we need to experience the place of not-knowing to attain an awareness of the possibility of moving beyond narrow places in our lives.
That is followed about a month later by the holiday of Passover, our liberation from narrowness. Note: it is often thought of as liberation from slavery, but the Hebrew word for Egypt, where the Israelites were enslaved according to the Passover story, comes from the Hebrew root of the word meaning narrow or constriction. Hence, when thinking about the meaning of the Passover story for us today, people often say we all can experience liberation from some type of constriction. Perhaps we need to experience the place of not-knowing to attain an awareness of the possibility of moving beyond narrow places in our lives.
Even more, darkness can be associated with the womb and the earth. In some practices, we go down into our souls. We descend, not to the underworld like Hades, but to our essential self. The darkness of winter is the time when many earth-based cultures stay in and tell their stories. It’s a time to reinforce the ethos and history of the people through these stories.
So What? How to Work with Darkness?
So what’s the point? We can think of the darkness of particular times in our lives or seasons of the year, and either way, they can be opportunities for deeper self-awareness, but how?
One of my favorite teachings from a Spiritual Director of mine was simple and brilliant. “Just stay curious,” she said. In those moments of confusion or wondering what’s next, the times when the old ways of being in the world don’t seem to apply or work, it helps to have the witness mindset. Try to imagine yourself observing your thoughts, watching your emotions. Sometimes it even helps to picture yourself slightly above and behind your head looking down at you and watching your thoughts. Again, be curious.
There's a deliberate letting go in this process of observing with curiosity. What if the old ways of thinking no longer hold? What if there’s a new perspective waiting to sprout? It’s just a mystery right now. “What if” is one of my favorite questions to ask my Spiritual Direction clients AND myself. It’s a powerful question to ask yourself.
There are many specific practices for this letting go. As in many contemplative practices, it can start with breathing, allowing your breath to flow in you and fill you, and allowing yourself to feel it in your body. You are not breathing but being breathed. At times I have added a particular prayer or mantra to this. Our psalms say, “Into Your hands I entrust my soul.” So I repeat that with each breath to encourage a sense of trust in the time of confusion. There might be others that resonate with you.
In addition to these techniques, it helps to have an attitude of embracing the Mystery, some might say the Great Mystery. Curiosity and letting go lead to stepping into Mystery. This is faith. Not belief, mind you. Not belief in a specific form or incarnation of the Mystery, but a feeling that somehow our lives and this moment of confusion or uncertainty have meaning and purpose if we just unclench a little bit.
To finish, letting go is not the same as not doing anything. We still want to engage in the world. It is just an acknowledgment that as much as we strive, we are not in control, and we are acting on our soul’s gifts just by doing the work.
Jon Gottsegen, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Jon Gottsegen is a Spiritual Director and Nature Connection/Forest Bathing Guide. He loves accompanying people as they explore the depths of their souls and their connections to Spirit and pointing out the places of Mystery and discernment in this process. You can see more about his work at https://www.jonspiritualdirectioncolo.com and https://www.earth-yearning.com.
