how do you trust the darkness, if you’ve only been told to seek the light?
If everything you’ve learned about the darkness has a negative connotation to it? That it’s a scary place, better left suppressed than acknowledged or understood?
Think for a sec the last time, or even the first time you felt embarrassed about something. Maybe you were rejected by someone, humiliated, maybe flaws or shortcomings were exposed? how did you process that? Were able to make sense of the thoughts and emotions running through you? To understand what the feelings meant, where they came from, why they came up, how to feel them and eventually, let them go?
As a little kid, I didn’t.
I was shy and I thought a lot. Like, a lot a lot haha but I couldn’t link them up to the right words to articulate what I wanted to say. So I’d either say nothing, or I’d cry, so not a fun time. And before you think “tears are nothing to be ashamed about,” you’re not wrong but these were different tears lol these were a defence mechanism to get out of things — a trick I learnt that ended up backfiring because I couldn’t share my thoughts about most topics = leaving me to feel misunderstood up until about four years ago… these tears didn’t show how much I cared about something or how passionate I felt, these were more like the tears a two year old has when they’re having a tantrum. It’s called the ‘terrible twos’ because they’re starting to explore and process more about themselves and their world but don’t yet have the words to describe it, so they have a tantrum. That was me, as an adult. Not a fun time, not the same tears — I tear up sometimes when I speak now, but they don’t prohibit me from sharing. Anyway, how’d we get here? lol back to the story..
The inability to express myself was a main driver to starting this blog too, so it’s not all bad… I created this platform as a way to express myself. An outlet where I could get thoughts and feels out of my head, align it to pūrākau or whakapapa and share how practical and relevant our knowledge systems are in everyday situations.
So to refer back to the title, ‘how do you trust the darkness, if you’ve only been told to seek the light?’ Our whakapapa dictates that darkness always precedes light, mai I te kore ki te pō ki te ao mārama. From the potential, idea and formless, to the darkness, confusion and unknown, to enlightenment and physical manifestation. There is no success without struggle. Life without death. Creation without destruction. Growth without discomfort.
“in understanding the darkness, we understand ourselves.”
I didn’t always know there was a disconnection between my thoughts and my words. I just thought crying was my thing. I assumed that would be my life and forever be misunderstood. But in understanding what I had suppressed for so long: tracing the crying back to when it began, as a sprout, facing up to why I’d do that, and overtime work on replacing the crying with more effective modes of expressing myself, like writing… I began to understand myself on a deeper level.
And we can easily swap out the crying for investigating thoughts of whether or not I’m enough, if I’m worthy of love and compassion, comparing myself to others or to expectations of what/where/who I ‘should’ be… in diving to the depths my mind and my heart, to figure out where these beliefs came from, what they feed on and why I hold onto them, I expose them to the light, to be healed and released.
I trust the darkness because it’s part of me, it’s part of my whakapapa and who I am.
I trust the darkness, because it reveals aspects of me I’d been confused about, or had never acknowledged before — but had always been there, waiting to be remembered, uncovered.
I trust the darkness, because it forces me to reflect, review, reevaluate, reassess, redesign, reimagine..
How well I navigate the darkness determines how I experience the end result; the light, enlightenment, healing, achieving the goal, ‘success.’
So how do I trust the darkness; unknown, unfamiliar, uncomfortable, confusing etc.?
What other option is there?
Tēnā tātou,
Hana.