top of page
Search

Love and Darkness

annelisamacbeanphd

As fires continue to rage in Southern California, increasing numbers of us will either be directly affected or will be asked to sit with another who has been touched by the pain of severe and shocking loss. How to be with the immediacy of such grief? How to hold such tender loss? How to be held, alone or with another, by the darkness?


In ways the conscious mind isn’t always able to understand, we can actually be held by death, by endings, by darkness. But coming to that direct experience isn’t easy; it’s not really something that’s been taught or honored in our 21st Century pursuit of sparkling brightness, youth and comfort. The sacredness of the transformative power of darkness is held outside conventional impulse to focus on the fix for intergenerational trauma, the movement toward light and relief.


But it’s not only the light that can hold us. There is a holding benevolence in the lunar descent, in the dimming of light. There is a bias toward the light in our cultural and spiritual traditions, but there is an initiation and transformation which can only happen by way of the darkness. Ultimately light and dark work together, and rely on each other. Their contrasting characteristics literally make them known. This defines the cycle of life, a perpetual relationship between light and dark . . . It is holy. Darkness is essential to the initiation of the wounded healer, and to developing our capacity to hold others in dark times.


The recent fires in Southern California, consuming entire communities and beloved landscapes, have amplified the need for the capacity to be present to loss, to grief, to death, to darkness. Allowing others to fall apart in your arms, unravel, be without hope, and feel lost, you may sense there is some sort of wisdom unfolding, but it is chaotic, uncertain, and not easy to stay with.


While it is natural to want to do whatever you can to help them feel better, listen carefully to what it is they are truly asking for. Extend to them a calm, regulated nervous system where their experience can be validated and held, exactly as it is. Assure them, with words and with your presence, that they need not "get over it," "accept everything as it is," shift into a "higher vibration," "stay in the present," be cured, transformed, or "healed" in order for you to stay close.


To sit with someone whose world has literally and figuratively burned to the ground is to confront the raw edges of human vulnerability. It is to stand witness to their ashes, while resisting the urge to hastily rebuild or provide false assurances. Just as the fires devastate, they also clear the way for renewal, though the timeline for regrowth remains unknown. Trees blackened and hillsides scorched may someday hold flowers and forests, yet the grief for what was lost is not diminished by this inevitability. It is the same with the soul’s journey: dissolution and renewal are intertwined, each part of Love’s unfolding.


As you attune to the "other" in front of you – as well as to the alchemical "other" within – feel the creative flow of love as it fills the space between, crafting you both as vessels of sanctuary for the pieces of the broken world, for the shards of confusion, and for the crumbled hopes and dreams that have dissolved in front of your eyes. Honor the holy truth that the forms that love takes will always fall apart – for this is their nature – in order that they may come back together in more integrated and cohesive ways.


Please do whatever you can to help others in whatever way you are able: attune to their emotional experience such that they feel felt, listen carefully to what they are saying, and how they are making meaning of their lives.


Slow way down, bracket your favorite psychological and spiritual jargon and theories, and allow yourself to be curious about how they are making sense of their experience. Feed them, hold them, speak kindly to them, provide sanctuary and safe passage for love to disclose its mysteries. By your presence, more than your words, remind them that love is here, that we are alive together, that they are alive, and love is alive as us.



17 views0 comments

Recent Posts

See All

Comments


bottom of page