This is the darkest time.
The very deepest and darkest time of the cycle.
The moment in the night before the dawn.
The end of the out-breath.
Before the next in-breath draws a new life back in.
This moment and all the moments of dissent that lead to it call us to rest.
They call us to leave.
Cold outer shell.
The winter landscape.
Where the ground and the trees are bare.
These times call us to leave.
Our own winter exterior.
And turn inwards.
They call us to let the sharp sense of sight soften behind closed eyes.
These times call us to turn inwards.
To the inner landscape of our body and being.
To parts that have never seen and never will see the light.
To the space behind the eyes.
Where there is a velvety darkness that is beyond seeing.
That is beyond fear.
These times of darkness call us to the pit of our bellies.
Where the fire in our bellies can warm us from within.
These times call us to be with the other hibernating creatures of the earth.
To nestle down.
To burrow down into the warm spaces.
To warm ourselves at the hearth fire of our own hearts.
The darkness inside is thick with texture.
With feeling.
With memories.
All these are like creatures of the darkness.
They surge and roll.
Like waves on a dark sea.
They want nothing other than to be held and allowed to roll through.
They hold many stories.
As we dive deeper and deeper into the inner darkness.
The words of the stories have less and less meaning.
There is only shape and form and feeling.
Rolling on and on.
This darkness has no sense of direction.
It asks nothing of us.
It asks us to know nothing.
To rest at the very edge of dissolving.
It asks us to rest more and more deeply.
In the dark spaces of the year and in the dark spaces of our body.
Offers us a place to rest.
A place to finally set down the tools of our trade.
The busy things we do that make us who we think we are.
Offers us a place to rest away from all of that.
And far away from all that we are on the outside.
In a cave in the deepest recesses of our hearts.
There is a flicker of light.
A flicker of light that keeps our hearts beating.
That pulses through the darkness of our beings.
So that no matter what we do.
Our whole beings pulse and throb with life.
Life that is beyond anything we can say or do.
The pulse of life that hides in the places where we rest most deeply.
Where we give ourselves to the deepest of dark places.
Where the light returns.
