Dazzling dark
When I shifted into (very early) endarkenment some weeks ago, there was first a sense of fertile darkness... Smooth, full, a ground of all form. Somehow connected with the belly center. A dark fertile womb. Healing and reorganizing at an emotional level. Formless and a void, yet also the source of all form and all form itself. Selfless.
Then, some days later, an alive luminosity came up, infinitely loving, intelligent, receptive, and - when invited - active, and connected with the heart center.
And then, a combination of the two, of a luminous darkness, smooth, fertile, alive, infinitely loving, intelligent and receptive.
Dazzling Darkness
Some days ago, I found an anthology of writings from Christian mystics called A Dazzling Darkness, which is a term that seems to describe what I have called luminous blackness.
Searching on "dazzling darkness" I found this...
. . . it is all still here, both the shining dark void and the experience of myself coming into being out of, yet somehow in response to, that radiant darkness. My whole consciousness of myself and everything else has changed.When I read it, I initially thought I was reading something I had written...! It is a close description of the shift that happened for me some weeks back, and written by an Australian by the name of John Wren-Lewis.
Then he goes on...
I feel as if the back of my head has been sawn off so that it is no longer the 60-year-old John who looks out at the world, but the shining dark infinite void that in some extraordinary way is also "I."My sense is of a shift among 2nd, 1st and 3rd person relationship with the luminous darkness, and they are often there simultaneously. The darkness is You, then I, then both, then an it when I write about it. (The sawed off head is not my experience, but that may be because I am already familiar with this shift of 2nd, 1st and 3rd person perspective.)
And what I perceive with my eyes and other senses is a whole world that seems to be coming fresh-minted into existence moment by moment, each instant evoking the utter delight of "Behold, it is very good." Here yet again I am constantly up against paradox when I try to describe the experience.Yes, it is all always fresh, new, different. For me, that came up during the initial (head/heart centered) awakening some years ago, and is still with me, so I don't experience it as especially connected with the endarkenment/belly awakening, but I can see how it is if that is the first form of awakening, if that is the initial gateway for someone (as it apparently was for JWL.)
For me, the endarkenment shift included a felt-sense, with body and emotions, how it is all very good. It is as if this this luminous dark void as source of all form, holds it all, embraces it, as a womb, with a deep full nurturing felt-sense of all as infinitely OK and good, independent of the particulars of form.
These things only appear as a paradox if our view is mostly dualistic. After a while, it becomes more familiar with functioning within a more nondual context, and it is not experienced as a paradox anymore. Both poles of all polarities are more naturally included.
Thus, in one sense, I feel as if I am infinitely far back in sensing the world, yet at the same time I feel the very opposite, as if my consciousness is no longer inside my head at all, but out there in the things I am experiencing . . .Hm... Not the way it is for me now, but again, I can see how it can appear that way immediately following an initial awakening. For me, the empty awakeness is evenly spread out, as a field leaving nothing out, embracing anything arising outside and inside of this individual, which is just a small thread in the overall tapestry.
Labels: belly center, endarkenment, talking about