Welcome to this meditation for returning to the dark.
Find a position that is comfortable for you.
If you're in bed,
Let your body sink into the mattress.
If you're on the floor,
Let gravity take your weight.
Close your eyes or soften your gaze downwards.
Take a slow breath in through your nose and let it go through your mouth like a quiet sigh.
And again,
Breathe in and release.
You do not need to be anywhere tonight.
There is nothing you have forgotten.
There is nothing you should have done.
The night asks nothing of you except this,
To rest.
I want to tell you something about the dark.
In astrology,
The night sky belongs to the moon and the moon understands the dark completely.
She has phases.
She disappears entirely sometimes into her own quiet and then she returns.
The dark is not an absence.
It is a different kind of presence.
You are in the dark right now and you are safe here.
Notice your body.
Notice where it meets the surface beneath you.
Feel that contact,
That support.
Notice the floor or the mattress.
The weight of a blanket.
Whatever it is,
It is holding you.
You don't have to hold yourself in tonight.
Breathe in at your own pace and as you breathe out,
Let your shoulders drop just a little.
Breathe in at your own pace and as you breathe out,
Let your jaw unclench and all the tiny muscles of your face.
Breathe in at your own pace and as you breathe out,
Let your hands open,
Fingers soft.
If your mind is busy,
I understand.
The night amplifies things.
Worries feel larger in the dark.
Thoughts circle and the mental chatter that the day drowned out becomes audible when everything goes quiet.
So,
Instead of fighting the thoughts,
I want you to try something.
Imagine that your mind is a night sky and each thought that arises is a star.
It appears and it glimmers and then your gaze moves on.
You are not the stars,
You are the sky,
Vast and still and holding all of it without effort.
A thought arrives,
You see it,
You don't follow it,
You let it be a star in your sky.
Another thought,
Another star,
There it is,
There it stays,
You move on.
The moon is always moving even when you can't see her.
Tonight,
She is somewhere in the sky above you,
Doing her quiet work,
Pulling the tides,
Lighting the clouds from beneath,
Keeping the rhythm of things.
And you are part of that rhythm too.
Your body knows how to sleep.
It has been sleeping since before you had language.
Trust that ancient knowledge,
It is in you.
And take a slow breath here and hold it gently for a few seconds.
And then breathe out and again in,
In your own time and hold it gently and breathe out.
And once more in and hold when you're ready.
Your only task right now is to be here,
Nothing else,
No plans,
No problems to solve.
Just the weight of your body,
The rhythm of your breath,
The quiet dark around you.
You are allowed to rest.
You are allowed to stop.
Let the night hold you.
Breathe in the dark softly and breathe out and let yourself drift.
