The Mystery of the Dark

I’ve been thinking a lot about the dark recently. The dark that is the opposite of the light we know during the day.

We experience the dark every 24 hours; it’s a cycle that has happened forever; the night follows the day and the day follows the night.

We were taught, as children, to fear the dark. It was the purview of malevolent forces, “bad guys”, monsters and other scary things. Something to fear, to avoid.

It strikes me as odd to be taught to fear one half of the natural rhythm of our lives, and to close off any opportunity to experience the possibility that is the dark.

The last several nights I have been out in the middle of the night with my dog. I have been in the dark; in the quiet and in the moonlight. Its been a magical space, with silence and the glow of the moonlight and its reflection on the snow. In that silence, I hear the crunch of the snow in the cold as I walk. I have even seen some shadows on the snow, despite the dark.

I feel a sacredness there, standing in the dark. The darkness has a palpable sense of soul presence. There to be felt, heard and seen.

A place of possibility.