As I write this, a heavy rain washes away my day’s plans. I had hoped to go swimming and fishing with my son, but now I’m here in front of my computer. A small voice in my mind wonders if this is the beginning of the end. The Iowa State Fair ended yesterday. The community pool just closed their doors for the season. The kids go back to school next week. Everywhere I look I see reminders that the expansive growth and warmth of summer must yield to the fall.
Logically I know that he way of life is structured in cycles. Yet, when my own personal growth and warmth yield and I fall into dark moods, feeling stuck or helpless, outrage or despair, why then do I rarely think of the inevitable seasonality of life? When I look to nature I see myriad cycles of growth and decay; accumulation and letting go; abundance and scarcity. Yet, so often, when my inner landscape is flooded, dark, barren or cold I take it personally. As if the fact of feeling anything but happiness were itself a sickness – or worse a weakness – to be overcome. As if my personal darkness were an affliction setting me apart from the human family.
Who wants to be with a downer? Why can’t I just be happy? What the heck is wrong with me?
What if these moods were a calling to experience a personal winter of sorts? An invitation to stretch deeper into our roots; into the dark mysterious soils of our souls to find new sources of strength and vitality from which to draw? What if we could see our lives in the same way that we greet the changing seasons: an inexorable dynamic flow of life force where the alternations provide the necessary resources to develop the depth of character required to live a meaningful life? Perhaps then we could meet the experience of depression, of anxiety, of grief and despair not as an unwelcome visitor whom we need to evict as soon as possible; but rather as a weary guest who, if treated honorably, is capable of imparting wisdom, insight and perspective that enriches and deepens our sense of who we are and what brings meaning to life.
As our Earth tilts towards autumn, the weather will become more temperamental, reflecting a transition between two more stable states. There are times in life when we can no longer hold on to who we have been in the past, and yet who we are becoming is unclear. These seasons of transition require us to surrender and develop a willingness to enter into the darkness; to hole up in a metaphorical cave when caught out during an unexpected storm; or to venture out into the rainy nights when called to our quest.
Today’s poem, Sweet Darkness, by David Whyte, shines a little light on the wisdom and necessity of heeding the calls of darkness. We will expand on the theme of navigating life’s dark and difficult times at our next Wild Inner Stillness Men’s Retreat in September. Click here to learn more about this opportunity to connect, grow wiser and gain inner strength with other men.
Sweet Darkness
By David Whyte
When your eyes are tired
the world is tired also.
When your vision has gone
no part of the world can find you.
Time to go into the dark
where the night has eyes
to recognize its own.
There you can be sure
you are not beyond love.
The dark will be your womb
tonight.
The night will give you a horizon
further than you can see.
You must learn one thing.
The world was made to be free in
Give up all the other worlds
except the one to which you belong.
Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet
confinement of your aloneness
to learn
anything or anyone
that does not bring you alive
is too small for you.