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Befriending the Dark

How is your relationship with the dark? I mean, the darkness that comes after sunset, the one we call night?


Mine has been complicated, throughout my life: a combination of both fear and awe woven together. I exist in the in-between spaces of these two experiences. My first conscious awareness of this difficult relationship with the dark/night, came when, in a reunion with some of my middle school classmates, a friend shared her experience of running at 3 or 4 am in the morning at a local sports place in Tijuana. I cannot recall what the rest of the conversation was about because, after hearing that, my mind was fixated on how such experience of running in the dark was not accessible to me. I was also surprised to hear that she, a young beautiful woman, didn't fear being alone at night in that place.

As I reflect now, I can point to the times where the darkness was a challenging time for me growing up: after our home was broken into, after my grandmother's death, etc. But I can also remember times when the darkness has brought to me an immense sense of awe, wonder, and reverence. Such as the time I visited the Ocean Beach pier at night with a boyfriend. We stood at the very end, looking into the vast, dark, and mysterious ocean. I could feel a deep sense of both fear and reverence come over my entire body. I equated that experience of darkness with both mystery and immensity; an abyss, nothingness, an ocean of darkness.


Many years later, while visiting Nicaragua, I experienced the loving, profound, life giving energy of the night. I felt both embraced by and comforted by that darkness that felt gentle around me. That darkness felt also mysterious and immense, but there was a gentleness to it; it felt inviting in some way. When I think about it, I feel captivated by its magic again. That's it, that's the word: it was magical. As if many good ancestors and good beings were present.


I have never experienced darkness in that way in the city, though. But the power of the night is not limited to certain parts of the world or the land, because all land is connected. I attended a Dark Sky event recently and I have been thinking about Darkness more since then. I wonder about the nocturnal creatures that live near and around me, I wonder about the plants and the ground cooling off at night during the summer. I also wonder about the silence, stillness, and quiet that comes with the night.


I am one who believes in the inherent goodness of life, of nature and its cycles. So I believe that there is goodness to the night. We learn a lot from what we can see, but the night invites us to rely on other senses, to figure out our place in the nocturnal landscape and our relationship to the environment at night.


I am not trying to romanticize the night. If anything, this is my own attempt to make sense of the contradictory feelings I hold about the night: fear and awe.


I have come to understand that when I allow fear to take over, it is because I had convinced myself that I could control all things around me in order to keep me safe, but I know that's an illusion. Yes, I can control some things. Yes, I can make certain decisions to reduce my vulnerability and risk of being a target. But what I am also trying to do, is to recognize that goodness of the dark and the night regardless. I am making sense of this in-between space, of this twilight zone in which I move, gently and reverently, towards a greater understanding of the wisdom of the dark and the night.


In that sense, I allowed myself to show up to her as an apprentice: eager and open, to hear what she has to say.





 
 
 

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