Keeper of Darkness
Our world today has been made too bright with artificial lights. Many have lost our ability to see in, and through, the dark. We have also lost our wonder in the stars, and our connection to the cosmos. Without such bearings, we harbor a misguided sense of our place in this world. We misbelieve; all the light is out there, darkness is dangerous. Increasingly, we fear the dark. Too still, too quiet. The dark night exposes our belief of separateness and our terror of aloneness. What it threatens to unleash is the umbra of our eclipsed self. We fear losing our mind.
Moreover, as the outer world gets grossly illuminated, darkness festers in our inner world. We stopped gathering around fires to share stories about the dark, fearing exposure of the darkness within. Layer upon layer of fear, and hush—no, we do not talk about these. Yet, our mind cannot stop thinking. More and more dis-ease builds up in us. We have created a monster, fed it, and now, trying all we can to cage it. Doom and despair. Run, get away from here. There, to the light at the end of the tunnel. Don’t stop; don’t turn back; don’t look into the dark. Keep moving.
Stop.
Catch your breath.
Let us release our need to be right, so we do not make darkness wrong.
To be in the dark; let us suspend, too, our need to know. Sacrifice the promise of certainty to our profound desire of truth.
We begin by respecting what we fear. Let us turn toward the ground and bow, face our humility, and admit that we know little to nothing about the dark.
Revere this unknowable.
Can’t see anything? It’s okay, we don’t have to. Let your other senses guide you.
Feel the tremors.
Sense its expanse.
This darkness existed before the light, before knowing.
Awe. Feel the mystery.
The air grows thick and velvety, erasing my thoughts with its descent. More of me fades to join the mystery. Still here and not here. A disappearing and an appearing act. Something ceases, and something lives. Breathing. Pulsating.
I cannot see anything else, but I see the darkness—the radiant black.
May we be, not just keepers of light, but keepers of darkness too.
P.s. If you are interested in exploring the amount of light pollution we have in our world, check out this map.
🍯 The Dandelion Notes ~ Writer’s Fund
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Hello & welcome — I am glad you are here. I am Rosslyn Chay, facilitator, healer, poet—each of these, a very human attempt to mend our fractured relationship with our nature and free the truth of who we are from the weight of our history. The Dandelion Notes are field notes on my attempts.