Feeling our way in the dark
Lost, found, lost
Take it all apart, unravel it at the seams, ask why it was done this way at all. Wonder about it. For a long time. Longer than you expect.
Leave the empty room empty. If something or someone has left your life, don’t rush to refill the space. There is more to this departure that wants to be understood.
Leave the silence silent.
Stare into the flames rippling around logs, cracking at their frayed edges, crumbling them into coals deep in the roaring belly of the fire’s hungry core. Watch the fuel radiate flame lifting those love-drunken, well-fed tongues, lunging up and licking the sky in an ecstatic dance. Light lusting for the dark.
Stay with the question. Allow the possibilities to unfurl and curl skyward like smoke dissipating into the long night. It seems the dark is closing in with claustrophobic contractions… but it is a supreme design: you are meant to stay, to companion the potential, to ask and not know, to sleep and dream and awaken with the questions still rumbling, cycling and cycling as each subtle shift reveals precisely what’s prescribed for that moment. The gateway will emerge, the clearing in the grey cloud that intentionally obscured your sight in the preparations for readiness. Try not to trouble it all too much.
Someone wise once told me “worry is a misuse of our imagination.” Think about what that energy could be serving. If there is a story to tell, make it one that serves. You are the one writing it after all. Perhaps consider telling no story, just wait. And wonder.
We are in a transitional moment: halfway between summer solstice and autumn equinox. Even if we don’t abide by these shifts consciously, our animal bodies know it. Today is Lughnasadh (though it was marked on August 1, today, August 7th, is the actual celebration).
Imagine this (or maybe, if you’re in this role, you’re living it): a farmer wakes up on August 7th, 2024. Six months ago, in early Feburary, her/their/his growing season started as the murmurings of spring began to stir on the counterpoint day: Imbolc. Imbolc is far too early to plant anything, but it is the moment in the northern hempisphere when infinitesimal little shifts in the sky and in the soil communicate a subtle cosmic-subterranean language of awakening, leading toward Spring Equinox.
On Lughnasadh, the farmer pauses.
It’s time to survey the field of creation.
So much work has been invested into this growing season that’s beginning to reach its culmination, but the height of summer just passed and there is still plenty of time before the harvest date. So much abundance has already been feasted upon and enjoyed with the luscious pleasure of plump fruits ripening in the sun’s warmth, and some of the most durable and enduring food are just beginning to ripen so they can last us through the long dark night of winter.
The sun alone does not govern food production. The moon plays an equally crucial role as its sacred celestial companion. The lunar calendar is the original instruction. We think, we perceive, we conclude with our human minds that it’s the lengthening arc of sunlight in the spring that allows plants to grow more fervently, but it is actually the shorter nights that initiate this process. And, again, it comes back around during the Fall Equinox when the full moon rises around sunset for several nights in a row to offer farmers just enough extra light to finish their harvests before the hard frosts of fall set in.
A wink from the universe. The duality is necessary for balance.
Uncertainty. The magic dark. The void.
Wonder.
A mentor once told me: “As soon as the human mind is certain about something, it becomes mindless.”
I’m re-reading that as I continue typing the rest of this piece.
As soon as the human mind is certain about something, it becomes mindless.
The illusion begins instantaneously: the slipperiness of reality reformulates itself around that freshly determined ‘capital C’ Certainty and everything conspires to posture as supportive evidence of that claim. Confirmation bias.
The merciless addiction to certainty becomes rather boring, when framed this way.
Is uncertainty actually the secret seduction of the universe?
It takes courage to be lost, to feel our way through the dark, to not know.
We can be careful here though. The point of this is to recognize imbalance and to restore harmony. To heal the ways that dominant culture has conditioned us to over-index on eternal light, on ascension, on linear plotlines that must always indicate progress. To make room for un-visible forces being illuminated in different ways with their own intelligence.
On the summer solstice I was guided through a practice from the ancient Toltec lineage that involved bringing the sun and moon back together in our own hearts. It is a technique that involves some pretty simple-seeming hand gestures, but it can be wildly challenging and even physically painful to journey through when done in earnest.
The brilliant elder guiding this exercise reminded us that the sun and moon are already in sync, they are already together. It’s within us that they’re out of alignment which is why this practice is unifying them inside our own hearts. It’s within us that the remembering must occur so that we can heal the ways we have become mindless, the ways we have organized our world to create the illusion of separation that manufactures a ‘capital C’ certain kind of reality.
The sun and moon can never be parted. It is only our filtered gaze that misperceives.
As we journey toward darkening days and greater intimacy with the moon, may we consider courting the magic dark for long misunderstood medicine. Here is one resource on this I’m treasuring:
The Peace of Wild Things
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
– Wendell Berry
Hi y’all! Wow, it’s been a while. I’ve missed being here and I appreciate your patience with me. I’m busy working through the second draft of my novel and I’m totally immersed in it. As Joyce Carol Oates said: “First drafts are hell. Final drafts, paradise.” And as I inch my way in that direction, I couldn’t agree more.
Frankly, it is hard to write here because this isn’t a space to cast off or dump my musings. We are all saturated to the brim with “content”, with people inundating us with info that is so often TMI and overly indulgent. I have no desire to use our / your time that way. However, I love it. And I don’t want to give it up. It’s just going to move at a different pace.
On that note, a little update! I plan to start sharing excerpts of the novel and process notes on writing like I did a few months ago. This is an exciting way I can be here more often. These will go out to paid subscribers only so if you want to stay tuned on novel updates please subscribe or upgrade your subscription from free. :)
Ok, more announcements to come, but that’s all for now.
Big love,
Rachel
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Incredible piece. Very thought-provoking. Definitely gonna check out that podcast!