Forms of darkness
I read parts of A Dazzling Darkness earlier today, an anthology of writings from Christian mystics. My attention was first drawn to the title, and then on of its chapters on darkness.
Reading the selection under that chapter, I was reminded of the many forms of darkness...
There is the darkness of evil, of what appears as Other and not desirable. (Not used my mystics much, thankfully, since mystical awakenings does away with the sense of I and Other and reveals all as Spirit.)
There is the darkness of the dark night, of loss, of failed expectations, of a profound sense of hopelessness.
There is the darkness of not knowing, of finding ourselves as that beyond discursive thought. This is the darkness from an absence of the "light of mind", of conventional thinking and abstractions.
And then there is the darkness of the luminous blackness, the fertile darkness, formless and arising as and allowing all form.
The three first ones are metaphors, poetic expressions, analogies, and produced by the thinking mind. And the fourth one seems to be a direct experience of fertile darkness, of luminous blackness (from my own experience, others I have talked with, and also as described by Almaas. Even right now, there is a sense of this luminous blackness as formless, yet in and as all form.)
Labels: dark night, endarkenment, talking about