Seeing in the Dark
So we are finally reaching the end of the calendar year.
The hours of daylight that held us from spring, through summer and into autumn have faded and we enter an extended darkness that beckons a reconnection with our other selves. Like the natural world around us we are asked to trust, let go like the trees, lay ourselves open to ourselves, restore, heal and dream our way forward.
An invitation slides under our front door inviting us to sit stiller, slow our days, sleep and nurture. It requests that we sow the seeds of our future selves, shed what no longer serves us and coaxes us forward into the dark, gently encouraging us in its safety to become present, so present that we start to see in the dark.
A friend of mine and I agree that we’d like this time of hibernation to be official – for all of us in the human world to stand back from our normal tasks and fall in line with everything around us until March - I am wondering what we would learn if this were actually allowed to happen.
As a summer child, the winter months intimidate me. The longer nights feel claustrophobic. The daylight that ‘is’ can sometimes be missed, the hours of darkness weigh heavy, distraction or escape unavailable. We can find ourselves having to sit and be. To be human Beings dreaming, healing and discovering the power of sitting in darkness bumping up beside our edges and stumbling across new paths.
This winter, like many, I am home at a desk and the daylight hours vanish into a screen or down a phone. A dark veil descends and the day is closed.
In search of an opening I started to walk into the night.
Perhaps easier under a big moon but actually doable on any night. In the dark of the evening sight adapts and listening becomes specific. Night hearing is different and my vision has to adjust but somehow neither reduce. As Ram Dass said, ‘the quieter you become the more you hear’. The darker and quieter it is the more there is to notice.
Heavy clouded skies reveal rain, then stars and sometimes even the moon. Whole hedges rock in winds, trees dance, wind whispers and branches move. All manner of wild life, much of which I am ashamed to say I cannot identify, is heard. Definitely a student of this pursuit, I have observed there is a lot to take in outside in the dark, that the light is not the only place for seeing and there is much to learn sitting stiller on these darker winter days and nights.
I find myself questioning my habits of ‘doing’ and notice that my ‘doings’ can be known to lead to a missing. Missing something magical like a shooting star, an owl cry or ending up in a hedge because I answered a text. Sometimes I manage to walk at wolf light – the light when the familiar becomes wild is a passport to another world. After hours of modern work, to disappear out of the front door into the embrace of wolf light and darker, entering a world of the wild and the free. A precious gift as we descend into the burrows of this time of year.
Then deeper into the last month of our year and Winter solstice. The heart of the dance with the sun reaching the most southerly point, the ‘sun turn’. Daylight hours reduced and the night rests, the longest of the year.
This darkest, deepest point offers a place to sit in the glow of what is to come, what we are sleeping, resting, undoing and rebuilding for and on all the nights that follow. We begin our journey to our new, our next, with hope and with time to rest, nurture, create and restore.
There is something in the Winter solstice day that is deeply soothing. A deep connection to something bigger than just human ‘being’. We are reminded of our place as we are when we gaze at star filled skies, bath in the light of the moon and watch the flow of, or immerse in, the rivers and seas.
Secrets are shared and mysteries unravel when we hear and listen to the voices of the earth. When we notice others living here with us and consider these moments as related to our daily living. Our souls know, whether in a city or in a wider landscape. Even amongst the buildings, traffic, noise and a host of other pressures. When we look up and see a cloud, or walk over a river and notice the water, everything just moves. A perspective shifts.
In these darkest days of December outside arrives inside in the shape of a tree and I am humbled. Ritual is the bedrock of celebration when we take time too slow and notice. The making of a coffee, a tea, a meal, a cake and even the folding of laundry. When we slow and embed in an unspoken rhythm we connect to everything. The beauty flows and we are in tune.
Having a living thing from outside inside on these dark nights and days literally breathes air and ‘inter-being-ness’ into daily life. I am not Christian and as a child didn’t experience big Christmas times. And still, the joy, the ritual and the sheer beauty of this being is not lost on me. I water the visitor, say good morning, good night and am also called to light a ‘candle of thanks’ in January. This is my symbol of gratitude as I wonder what the year ahead holds for all of us. This moment alone deeply moves me. It’s my New Year moment. I am lost at the official one.
What are your intentions for the New Year, we are asked. What are our resolutions?
My honest answer is I don’t know.
I think I’d start with health, happiness and safety for all those I love and pretty much everyone else too. The fires that we saw at the beginning of 2020 to never be repeated (so many animals affected not to mention lives) those who have no homes for the many reasons to have warm houses and be warmly welcomed. Our actions as humans to change tomorrow. To know our planet will be beautiful again and we, and all on it, will be too. To feel useful, potent and be a good ancestor doing the right things for our Eden and that of our children and their children.
What I do know is there was a time I would never have imagined myself walking regularly along village lanes, amongst hedges, around fields, beneath trees, listening to unknown noises in the dark. That we don’t need light to see and often precious things unfold in the dark - the dark is a place of great light, peace, discovery and joy if you can tempt yourself into it for a while.
Gaye Wolfson
http://www.yogacollectivelewes.com/
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