In our culture, we're all afraid of the dark.
We’re all taught, most of us from a very young age, that the darkness is bad and that we’d do well to avoid it. And – fortunately or unfortunately, I’m not sure – when handed that message, we’re also modeled the infinite myriad ways to do so.
Pain? No.
Deny it. Stay busy and distracted. More work might work. Numb it. Eat it, drink it, smoke it, fuck it. Channel surf and scroll. You can combine these if you have to. Turn it into sarcasm, then at least you’ll be funny. Maybe no one will hear the ache beneath your laugh.
We can dodge it with “healthy” behaviors, too. Hit the gym. Go to yoga. Go for (another) run. And while, sure, these mechanisms won’t harm you as quickly and directly as some of the more destructive ones and as a replacement they may even be a perfectly beautiful and necessary stepping stone along your way to freedom, even the ultramarathoners can’t run far enough to escape themselves forever, can they?
Interestingly enough, even in the spiritual community there’s a tendency to bypass it – Cheer up! Look on the bright side. Think positive thoughts. Your glass is half full. Be grateful for what you do have.
Excuse me while I barf. My body is having a visceral resistance to your feigned positivity.
Here’s the thing: the truth, well, truths on. It continues to exist, whether we acknowledge it or not, and, sooner or later, it will be acknowledged. It waits patiently, our avoidance having no effect upon it. We can kick, scream, fight, or lie (mostly to ourselves) to keep it hidden (mostly from ourselves), but the best we can do is delay. There comes, as sure as the sun will rise tomorrow, the inevitable moment where we must look it directly in the eye.
Pain is a part of being human. It’s an inherent part of the experience of being a conscious being. We live, deny it as we might, in a world that is, in every moment, in a constant state of flux and change. Leaves die and fall as summer fades to winter. Humans are born, humans age, humans pass away. I don’t mean to be a downer, really, but I do mean to be direct: none of us are getting out of here alive. And the fact that everything, including ourselves (as we know ourselves, at least), is temporary, isn’t, in and of itself, the problem. It just is. The problem comes, though, when the mind tells us that it ought to be otherwise.
The suffering we experience in any given moment is, always, directly proportional to the amount of internal resistance we carry to the way things are.
We want to be happy, yes, of course. But to believe that we should, that we even could be happy one hundred percent of the time, and that if we are having another experience it means something has gone terribly wrong – or worse, that there is something terribly wrong with us – makes about as much sense as willing your favorite season to remain through all four quarters of the year. It makes about as much sense as, as a woman, willing your body to stay in your more social, energetic follicular phase throughout all twenty-eight days of the month. What I’m saying is this: If you try to stop the inevitable cycling of the natural world – let me save you a lifetime of turmoil – you will succeed in nothing but having authored for yourself an experience of unrelenting suffering and resistance. It’s simply not possible.
I use these two specific examples on purpose. Because, I, like most of us in raised in the modern West, was terrified of that metaphorical winter. I, like so many others, I had learned that pain of any kind - be it physical, emotional, mental, spiritual, or otherwise - was bad, wrong, and undesirable. There was no space in my world for fear, for shame, for guilt, for rage. These were the unmentionables, and I believed that if I experienced them, I’d better not tell anyone, and therefore I learned that I must experience them alone. And so, to escape my internal sense of badness, I did what I thought would keep me happy - I moved a thousand miles from home, quite literally to the land of eternal summer, and, as a cherry on top, I medicated my body out of a menstrual cycle for twelve entire years. (This is another topic entirely, I’ll write another whole book on it.) But for now, it’s safe to say, and maybe obvious, that my delay tactics could not hold off my pain forever, and neither will yours.
In that fateful August of 2017, it was time for me to descend.
And most of us, at least the first time, don’t go down gracefully.
What is it about sitting still and alone that has us feeling so vulnerable? What is it about that empty space, when we’ve left the illusory safety of one shore (or been violently swept off of it, as the case may be) and have yet to catch a glimpse of the other, that is so goddamn terrifying? What is it, when we’ve crossed the bridge and it’s burned behind us, that would have us scurry back to familiarity of any kind and has us desperately seeking for a way to do so, for better or for worse? Well, maybe it’s a good thing then, that we simply cannot. Once the truth is out, you can’t unknow it. Once the bell has been rung, there’s no turning back. This is the hero’s journey. The only way out is to continue on through.
It’s a natural tendency for the protective parts of us to equate the unknown with fear. To assume, in the possibility of change, the worst case scenario and therefore resist it at all costs. The human mind, after all, thrives on the familiar. It will choose a pain it knows over quite literally anything it doesn’t until it has no choice otherwise. It does this to keep us safe in the only way it knows how. Bless its heart, right?
But. When the choices have all been exhausted, the Hail Mary has been thrown, and the universe has still not submitted to our will, it’s time. We turn around and face the music, we turn to look that serpent directly in the eye. We take a step, however timid, forward into the darkness.
And it swallows us.
Just like you expected, it’s confusing, it’s creepy, it contains everything you’ve ever feared. The crippling shame, the self-mutilating guilt, the absolutely blinding rage, they’re all there. You cry until you puke. You sleep for days on end. You’ve left everyone behind to descend into hell, and you’re damn well glad you did, because now no one asks you “How are you doing?” or “What are your plans?” Without blinking, you’d cut their throat and drink their blood for breakfast if they did, and they know that. That’s why they’re afraid of the dark - they’ve heard there are witches in there. And there are, you now know. Because you’re one of them now. But you’re green.
Learning to navigate the dark comes, like anything, only by doing it. You can’t be prepared, because if you’d have known, you never would have gone. When you start, you really make a mess of it. You fumble, you stumble, you bleed. You learn the trip-ups only by tripping up, you see the obstacles only after falling on your face on top of them. What else could give you such a nice, intimate look?
At some point – as you open your eyes just a tiny bit wider in order to see better in the darkness – you realize, with a bit of a shock, really, that you aren’t alone. There are others in here. And not just the spiders, the snakes, and the owls, as you’d expected. There are people here, too. Some (as you’d suspected before your arrival, while calling them crazy, of course), quite literally call themselves witches. Some call themselves shadow workers, shamans, or healers. Others, though, you’re surprised to find out, just call themselves midwives, nutritionists, therapists. They don’t even necessarily warn anyone about the space they reside in by tagging that mysterious ‘holistic’ or ‘alternative’ onto their titles. And some, strangely enough, have no titles at all. Maybe they simply call themselves mothers. Maybe they call themselves Joe. Whatever they go by, they are here for one thing. They are here, waiting for you, in order to teach you their craft. They, through having spent their own time here in the darkness, have become the guides and the illuminators of the underworld. And you realize you’d do well to learn from them, humbly. (You left your pride at the surface anyway.) They are alchemists, all.
They do not fear the darkness, because they know the darkest shadows are cast by the brightest lights. They know - not only as a concept but as an integrated experience - that it is, in fact, darkest before the dawn, and that at those moments when you least want to and least believe that you could possibly take one more step into your pain, that’s the time when you must. They are kind and patient, but they are firm. There are no exceptions, they tell you. You must keep going, deeper and deeper still, into the darkness, for they know that is the only way to return to the light. And they will hold your hand as you return there in order to learn it, too - that the dawn will come. It is, as spring after the longest winter, inevitable.
As you lean into trusting them, slowly, of course, you start to realize you’re no longer afraid of the black cats and spiders. They become kind of like friends. At some point you realize even the demons weren’t quite what you thought. Your pain, as you become willing to feel it, loses its power over you. And then suddenly one day – it catches even you by surprise – you laugh again. This is the witch's cackle. It’s the sure sign that you’ll make it out alive. And interestingly enough, you’ll make it out feeling more alive than you have ever felt, having already died a million deaths inside that black void, the fear of any more having all burned up in those hellish flames that now warm you like a southern summer.
As dawn breaks, you are liberated. You have come to find out what exists on the other side of your deepest fears – you. You still exist having come through what you were sure would kill you. You realize that it was only everything not you that has been left behind to burn.
And to that, the witches say good riddance!
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