Inhabiting Darkness & Contradiction

In New England, where i live, early January is a time of darkness.

We wake up in the dark. Drive home from work in the dark. And yes, meditate, you guessed it, in the dark.

This is quite a contrast to, say, the summertime, when I frequently meditate on my deck, in the morning sun, with all kinds of bird song serenading each in-breath I take.

I try to not think of either seasonal landscape as "good" or "bad" per se, just quite different.

And in the past year, I've tried to come to value the spiritual practices and lessons that may be more available or accessible during one particular seasonal landscape versus another.

Of course this idea is not mine- what is only "mine" is how I'm actually aspiring to bring it to my own life.

As I wrote in my post last week "Inhabiting Myth as Spiritual Practice," ancient myths have been encouraging women and men to explore darkness in the subterranean underworld for millennia.

In Saki Santorelli's book Heal Thyself he recounts a myth called "The Devil's Sooty Brother" in which a soilder returning from war spends many years in the underworld.

And what is interesting, and maybe even counterintuitive to some of us more linear thinkers, is the soldier's fate to live in the shadows for a period of time is presented as a necessary course of action for healing and growth, as opposed to being a cautionary tale of something to avoid.

20th and 21st century Jungian analysts formalized this ancient idea into a theory by submitting that there is value and healing to be had in the shadows of our psychic underworld, the unconscious.

Thomas Moore, who describes himself as a "lecturer and writer in archetypal psychology and mythology," took this idea a step further in his book Care of the Soul when he declared:

"Some feelings and thoughts seem to emerge only in a dark mood. Suppress the mood, and you will suppress those ideas and reflections...Melancholy gives the soul an opportunity to express a side of its nature that is as valid as any other, but is hidden out of our distaste for its darkness and bitterness."

Moving out of the metaphorical and back into the literal, in an interview I watched with author, professor and Episcopal Priest Barbara Brown Taylor, she spoke about her physical encounter with darkness when she moved from urban Atlanta, Georgia to the rural countryside with quite literally, fewer lights.

This prompted the author to in fact write a book called "Learning to Walk in the Dark" in which she persuasively explored the beauty of darkness on a spiritual level.

Lately for me, as I sit here in the  "really real" darkness of winter as I write these very words, I've been contemplating darkness in relationship to paradox, or what Irish author, theologian and poet John O'Donohue called "Contradictions as Treasures" in his book Anam Cara which means "Soul Friend" in Gaelic.

According to Mr. O'Donohue in his always poetically elegant writing:

"Contradiction is the complex force of growth that disavows mere linear progress in order to awaken all the aggregate energies of an experience.  It is the turbulance and conflict of their inner conversation that brings an integrity of transfiguration and not the mere replacement of one image, surface, or system by another, which so often passes for change. This perspective makes for a more complex notion of truth. It demands an ethic of authenticity that incorporates and goes beyond the simplistic intentions of mere sincerity.

We need to have greater patience with our sense of inner contradiction in order to allow its different dimensions to come into conversation with us. There is a secret light and vital energy in contradiction. Where there is energy there is life and growth...If you remain faithful to this energy, you will gradually come to participate in a harmony that lies deeper than any contradiction. This will give you new courage to engage the depth, danger, and darkness of your life." Pages 114-115.

I've now read that passage at least a dozen times, yet it continues to reveal "a more complex notion of truth."

I think what I find so meaningful is his idea to actually invite, allow and rest with that which may feel difficult or conflictual, while maintaining a faith that there is "a harmony that lies deeper than any contradiction."

And for some reason, darkness, whether as metaphor or that literal seasonal landscape, seems to be the perfect setting for such a spiritual practice, or what Mr O'Donohue might have called a "conversation" with the self.

How can you too explore darkness and internal contradiction this winter season? What fruits might it bear?