Welcoming Mystery with the Dark Season

When something’s going on,

something else is going on.

Notice the something else, too.

- William Stafford

My friend Anne whispered this wonderful poem into my email recently and I delighted in this elegant expression of how I keep my sanity. There is so much going on right now. 

The darkest season of the year is nearly here. The trees and animals and even people can rest. The stars are more present than the sun, inviting us to develop our connection with the Universe. It is a time to invite dreams to germinate within for the year to come. Darkness offers us sacred gifts.

It also feels like a dark season. If absence of daylight and the social isolation of the season aren’t already getting you down, there are the horrifying headlines. We are witnessing the destruction of so many things that we hold precious! It’s like watching lights being extinguished. We are left wondering, “What’s left? What’s next?” in the great unknown which also feels like darkness.

The terrifying darkness is happening AND the nurturing darkness is happening. It can be hard to notice both of them. 

My quest to understand the great Mystery of how darkness gives birth has driven my spiritual path. Sacred teachings about how death and life are woven tougher have transformed my ability to be present in and with the dark. 

Engaging with the dark season is one of my most meaningful spiritual disciplines. I get better rest and notice that my spring is more inspired. Perhaps more significantly, I feel less fear about darkness or dark experiences. 

This fall and winter Eye of the Heart is offering three opportunities to engage with darkness, opportunities that both embrace the fertile power of the dark and help us transform our fears. 

Winter Rest

Winter Rest offers you the support of community to create space for darkness and winter rest. On select Thursday nights we will gather on Zoom for about 10 minutes to ritually unplug and prepare ourselves to enter into the dark together. The remainder of the hour - or the evening if you like - is for you to rest.

Being in the dark wakes up our smell, hearing, touch, and imagination. We connect more to life, to dark, and to the community sharing this practice. We connect to dream time.

Dancing into the Dark

Enter into the dark season through dance, music, myth, creative exploration and community. Through a creative, embodied process we will enter into myths that explore the Divine Mystery that holds life and death together. 

Our role models in ancient myth and contemporary mysticism speak through the Sacred Feminine and inspire how we can grow into our feminine strength, with increasing clarity and authority as we age. No dance experience is necessary. Come nourish your body with joy, beauty, and movement that cultivates rather than expends energy.

Opening to Darkness Book Study

We have lost our wisdom traditions’ sacred transmissions on how to be with the darkness. It is time to relearn spiritual practices to ease the terror that emerges when we enter the darkness or encounter the unknown or unknowable.

Opening to Darkness by Osho Zenju Earthlyn Manuel is one such sacred transmission. This book will take you through eight gateways for being with the authentic nature of dark and for knowing darkness as transformative. Attend live sessions or listen to the recording.

I hope you will join me in greeting the coming dark season of the year with anticipation and curiosity about what the dark holds for us.

With big love,

Emily Jarrett Hughes