I have looked through some books on the dark goddesses and fertile darkness, including the Jungian Dancing in the Flames: The dark goddess in the transformation of consciousness and the Buddhist/shamanic The Fruitful Darkness: Reconnecting with the body of the Earth.

I read lots of books of that nature in my early twenties - Jungian views of the goddess, ecopsychology, ecospirituality, deep ecology, and so on, and found a deep resonance even then. It made sense on all the usual levels, and it was an experiential reality as well in different ways.

Yet, what strikes me now after the early endarkenment awakening is the difference between metaphor and direct experience of this fertile darkness.

Fertile darkness as metaphor

At the one hand, the dark goddess and the fertile darkness is a metaphor that works well at many levels. It is the yin, the earth connection, the body connection, lived and experienced. It is yin complementing the yang: the fertile darkness complementing the luminosity, the earth complementing the heaven, the relatedness complementing the detachment, love complementing wisdom.

And there are so many ways of working with this, including shadow work, body work and rituals, each one allowing us to deepen into it, allowing it to be more alive in us.

Direct experience of fertile darkness through endarkenment and belly awakening

The endarkenment awakening is certainly related to all of this, and what I have done in these areas have probably helped set the stage for this belly awakening, for this new shift.

At the same time, the endarkenment awakening is also very different, at least in my experience. It is an awakening clearly centered in the belly, and in the consciousness realm rather than the energy realm. It is an awakening where there is a direct and immediate experience of this fertile darkness, of the velvety blackness, empty and full at the same time, a ground of form.

The darkness is no longer just a useful metaphor, but a lived experience.

And this darkness can envelop anything arising, including anything arising in this personality. It makes it all OK, and seems to over time allowing it to heal and knots to unravel.

Enlightenment and mind, endarkenment and emotions

In a way, the endarkenment seems to do for emotions what enlightenment does for the mind.

Enlightenment clarifies the mind, allowing it to reorganize to the new awakening of everything as Spirit.

Endarkenment soothes the emotions, allowing them to reorganize to the new awakening to the fertile dark ground of form, to everything as the goddess and Spirit as well.

All as empty luminosity, and dark fullness

Also, in the initial awakening in my teens, everything was experienced as empty luminocity, including this physical body. Every cell in this body, and all form, was empty luminosity, golden, as a hologram with form and no substance.

Through the endarkenment awakening, there is a sense of the dark fullness of everything, a fertile loamy fullness of all form. There is a sinking into and as form in a very different way.

And this is, of course, just another form of transcendence and immanence, ascension and embodiment.

Labels: emotions, endarkenment, enlightenment, healing