Last weekend was already daylight savings time?! I thought that days were already getting short enough, and then we had to go and shorten them by another hour too. I'm definitely a person who exhalts in sunshine and daylight, and the winter months ahead seem long and foreboding.
It's not that I dislike shadows and darkness. The richness of a dark night sky only amplifies the beauty of a glowing moon. (Dense dark chocolate ice cream tastes even better with fluffy light whipped cream on top!) I am someone who can appreciate darkness as well. Sometimes it just takes a little bit of sensitivity to understand the complexity of things in the dark.
This is the time of year when the natural rhythm of things moves inward, towards hibernation. Hibernation means warm, hearty food, crackling fires, family and friends, time alone for contemplation and good books. In the natural cycle of the seasons, this is also the end of the harvest season, when all things living start to die. The beginning of the season of darkness is a signal of the end of an old cycle, as well as the beginning of a new one.
When you think of darkness, think of richness, of potency. Yoga teaches us that we are all
purnatva, or perfect, full, complete. But often when we shed our leaves and move into the darkness, our own perfection seems obscured, or maybe we feel dead. Sometimes, we observe this as a lack, and then we start looking for ways to feel more alive. We desire to have more things to fill up the perceived hole in ourselves. The invitation of yoga is to prod this hole, to discover that it is like a black hole, full of more possibilities than we could imagine. To take this first step and to look into the depths of our own darkness is like Opening to Grace: it's a willingness to see that there's WAY more there than we could ever imagine. As soon as we open ourselves up in this way, many of our desires--a new sweater, more friends on facebook, fancier apartment, a second cup of coffee, a bacon cheddar cheeseburger--start to fall away. The abundance we felt lacking in our lives is revealed to us as the nourishing food in our bellies, the clothes on our back, our closest family and friends, a good job, our own aspirations and joys. To receive the fullness of our own darkness is to find the richest blessing of all, individual freedom. Freedom is the richest gift that we possess, and it's something that connects us all.
This season of darkness is an opportunity--to shed the layers from the past year and to retreat into ourselves. As we move inside, we can either let the darkness cloud our vision, obfuscating what we truly want for ourselves and confusing the type of person we want to become. Or, we step fully into the darkness, ready to receive the gifts that are already there, the abundance that will truly nourish us as we move towards our own vision for who we want to become. When we affirm the abundance that is already present, it becomes a storehouse of energy that will fuel all of our greatest endeavors. As my teacher Douglas Brooks says, Life is a gift, and yoga is its blessing. As a form of engagement, yoga is that which allows us to fully receive ourselves as the gift of our own true freedom.
