Welcoming Darkness

With daylight on the wane (for those of us in the northern hemisphere, that is), darkness becomes a greater presence in our lives at this time of year. Most of us rely on light—both natural and artificial—to navigate our world; darkness, then, invites us to explore different modes of engaging with the world and different ways of perceiving.

Seasonal darkness, combined with the realities of rural winter, challenges my capacity to engage with the world around me. My inner biological rhythms cry out for me to slow down even as holiday gatherings beckon and year-end deadlines loom. Darkness intrigues me, yet I crave sunlight and community in these darkest days of the year.

As I sit here near the woodstove, my backup source of heat during power outages, I chafe against my current reality—a multi-day electrical outage following the first wet snowfall of the season. Increased darkness and isolation accompany this unplanned event—in addition to the furnace and the lamps, the internet and cell service are electricity-dependent. While I appreciate the relative independence of our household, I find little patience or reward in attending to the simple tasks of survival—filling water containers at the hand-pump on our wellhead and feeding split logs into the fire for warmth and to keep the pipes from freezing—when I am longing to be in a light-filled room engaging with others.

As I type this newsletter on my laptop (which, thankfully, I had thought to charge before the outage!), I have to smile at this head-on encounter with “what’s in the way is the way.”

And so, I wonder, how might I engage with winter in a different way? Is it possible to turn toward this discomfort I have rather than running away from it?

One of my writing mentors, Katherine May, has written a fascinating book about “wintering,” which she describes as “a fallow period in life when you're cut off from the world, feeling rejected, sidelined, blocked from progress, or cast into the role of an outsider.” The isolation of a power outage in the coldest season of the year is, for me, a quintessential wintering experience. After clearing my initial responses of pique and indignation, I can hear the quiet voice within that invites me to forgive (dare I say, embrace?) this unexpected reality. As Katherine reminds us in her book, Wintering is a radical act, an invitation to adopt the deeply unfashionable practices of “slowing down, letting your spare time expand, getting enough sleep, resting.”

Does my anxiety around darkness and winter harbor a message then? Psychotherapist Tracy Dennis-Tiwary, author of Future Tense: Why Anxiety Is Good for You (Even Though It Feels Bad), believes it does. In this interview with Dacher Keltner, founder of the Greater Good Science Center, she explains that anxiety signals that we care about the future—and offers valuable insights into building emotional resilience. Our mistake comes when we equate anxiety, which is a concern about the future, with fear, which is related to present-moment survival issues. Fear triggers “fight or flight” responses; anxiety, on the other hand, invites us to engage with the “tensions and contradictions” of life. Rather than jumping to anxiety about anxiety—and all of the efforts we make to assuage our fears—we can become curious about the discomfort of anxiety and its messages for resilience and possibility.

Each time life presents us with an unexpected event, we have a choice: curiosity or resistance? As I move from a sense of indignation—around the hassles and uncertainty inherent in my wintry Vermont home—toward curiosity, I open to a wider range of thoughts and actions.

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Again and again, this moment and this moment, the universe unfolds and I am presented with choice and an opportunity to touch into my inner knowing.

A Practice for Dark Times

Winter is an especially rich time for grounding and 1st chakra practices.

• The 1st chakra is the chakra of grounding, belonging, manifestation, safety, fear, survival, and “shoulds, have tos, and oughts.”
• Touching into our 1st chakra supports and honors our innate grounding instinct, and our capacity to listen deeply and respond to calls for rest and restoration. Grounding is beneficial now—as a recharge in the midst of winter—and builds our resilience for the seasons of longer light, when activity naturally intensifies.

Take a few breaths and ground through your 1st chakra. Say hello to your growing relationship with the Earth.

Send your roots from your feet chakras down into the Earth and feel the deeply quiet and restorative energy that is there always.

Say hello to your 1st chakra. Feel the calm center there, in the midst of this chakra’s spinning light. Invite any fears to release from your 1st chakra down your grounding cord.

Place a rose outside your field. Ask “what is my greatest fear”? Send that fear out onto the rose and take a look at it. Is your fear a matter of survival or a concern about the future? How much of the fear is yours and how much belongs to others?

Explode the rose. Bring your energy back in through your crown and release the energy that belongs to others back to them (whether or not you know who they are).

Replenish with lots of golden Cosmic energy and just the right amount of Earth energy for you at this time. Say hello to your crown—to life as you find it—and set it at a color that feels right to you.

Take a few deep breaths and come on back.