Lessons of Darkness A Sermon by G. Kevin Mark Synopsis: As the Northern Hemisphere of the Earth descends into the Darkness of Winter, we contemplate Darkness from a perspective of non-dualism, and learn the value of Darkness as a part of the Cycles of Nature. We apply this understanding in appreciation of the mysterious Dark spaces within the soul, and the hidden treasures of the sub-conscious. [Notes on the written sermon: For the written version of this sermon, there are items herein, which were skipped in the live sermon for the sake of time. I have kept them here, for your review. There may have also been a few comments made during the delivery of the sermon, which do not appear here, as well. Also, I do not provide references here. I was not anticipating making this material available in written format, and did not think to make extensive annotations. Consider these items fuel for thought, and research them. If you find something that I have erred on, please feel free to get back to me about it.] Show of hands... how many of you... ...Love Daytime? ...Love Nighttime? ...Love Sunlight? ...Love Moonlight? ...Love Starlight? ...Love Summer? ...Love Winter? ...Love Candlelight? ...Love Holiday Lights? In the religious tradition of my youth, I was raised to “seek the light”, “cherish the light”, “value enlightenment”, to “let my light so shine before men”, and to reflect the “light of God” into the dark world. Darkness, by contrast, was representative of all that which was to be avoided, shunned, corrected, banished, and eliminated. “Darkness” was equated to; Ignorance, Blindness, Depression, Melancholy, Anger, Menace, Death, Danger, Fear, and even Evil. Light was representative of Knowledge, Vision, Joy, Happiness, Safety, Love and Goodness. The Devil was “the prince of Darkness”, and God was “the Lord of Light”. I am certain that there are many of you who also grew up with such associations. Show of hands time again: Who grew up associating Light with “all that which is Good” and Darkness with “all that which is Bad or Evil”? Now, show of hands, who here still has those associations, even just a little bit? I'll confess here and now, that although I'm giving this sermon today, I still catch myself making these associations. There's no shame in this. It's a part of the cultural milieu in which we live. And I want to assure you all that the point of this sermon is not to tell anyone that they're wrong for having those associations. This dualistic view of Good and Evil, Light and Darkness, is a perfectly valid way of looking at things. But it is not the ONLY way. My hope today is to expand our vision a bit, offering some new perspectives that will stretch one's thinking a bit outside the box. Before I proceed, I want to ask your indulgence with a little disclaimer. I make every effort in this
sermon to be cautious not to overgeneralize. I use words like some, many, most, often, frequently, ect... in many places to make it clear that I don't intend to mean “all” or “every” or “all the time”. In particular, the scope of “Earth-Centered Religion” is very, very broad. Today, I'm sharing from a paradigm that I have adopted which is generally shamanic and holistic. Not all Earth-Centered paths share this paradigm, and I don't intend to imply that they do. Also, I make some statements about other spiritual paths or traditions, and I don't wish to imply that all the various spiritual expressions on those branches share the characteristics which I mention. So, please, if you find yourself uncomfortable with something I say here, because it seems like my statement is overly broad, I ask for your benefit of the doubt that I do not intend it that way. In essence, this disclaimer is like a house painter placing masking tape over the trim, so that when I inevitably splash a little over the lines, we can pull the tape away, leaving a clean edge.
A Brief History of Dualistic Theology The connection of Light to Good and Dark to Evil didn't arise out of nowhere, and is by no means, a Universal, automatic assumption that can be made. Let us examine where these dualistic associations come from. Joseph Campbell wrote: "Persian belief was reorganized by the prophet Zarathushtra according to a strict dualism of good and evil principles, light and dark, angels and devils. This crisis profoundly affected not only the Persians, but also the subject Hebrew beliefs, and thereby (centuries later) Christianity." Zarathustra, or Zoroaster, was an ancient Persian prophet from around the 6th Century BCE. He was the founder of one of the greatest religions of the ancient world, which spread with the Persian Empire throughout much of the Middle East and into the Mediterranean, and even into India, where it had some significant influence. Many people assume that Judaism was the first Monotheistic Religion, but Zoroastrianism developed around the same time, in Persia, which is modern day Iran. This religion was characterized by the worship of a Great God of Light, called Ahura Mazda, who was represented by the Sun, and it was from Him that all Good came... not just “good things” but “Good” itself. He was opposed by a Lord of Darkness, called Ahriman, or Angra Mainyu, who sought to destroy all Good. The realm in which we live was viewed by Zoroastrians as the battleground between these two cosmic forces. This cosmic battle between Good and Evil taking place in the realm we live in was also a primary characteristic of the Manichean religion, which is an offshoot of Zoroastrianism. These Persian religions had enormous influence, as Campbell points out, on Judaism, Christianity, and now, we might add Islam. This is significant, because, prior to this influence, most religions were not focused on abstract concepts like good and evil as having metaphysical reality. The polytheistic deities of ancient pantheons were representations of various forces of Nature, and had projected aspects of Human desires and behaviors. One might love or fear a particular Goddess or God, but they were not considered to be “good” or “evil”. Or, in other words, the gods could bring blessings or curses, based upon our behaviors in relation to them, or sometimes, as a part of their own capricious natures, but “good” and “evil” were merely aspects of life to be endured and expected, not cosmic absolutes. It wasn't until Zoroastrian thought, and its later expressions in the Abrahamic faiths, that we find “God” associated with “Cosmic, Metaphysical Goodness”, and Satan, or the Devil, associated with “Cosmic, Metaphysical Evil”. And, along with this Metaphysical Goodness vs. Evilness, comes its Zoroastrian associations with the Light and Sun vs. Darkness and Night.
Non-Dualism of Earth-Centered Paths With this in mind, I'd like to quote the Sixth Source of Inspiration in the Unitarian Universalist Association: “Spiritual teachings of earth-centered traditions which celebrate the sacred circle of life and instruct us to live in harmony with the rhythms of nature.” Today's service is “Earth-Centered”, a spiritual paradigm which encompasses many of the indigenous religious traditions throughout the world and the ages of history and deep into prehistory. Our ancestors were careful observers of Nature. Today's science benefits from rigorous methodologies and precision instrumentation to aid in our observations. But, for all their lack of technology, our ancestors, for about 200,000 years, have been just as intelligent as we are today. Earth-Centered religions are rooted in lives that are lived in deep connection with the environment, and as such, Nature acts as our first teacher. Within Nature, we observe no such things as “Good” or “Evil”. Nature simply is. There is birth, life, death, and decay. There is the grazing of plants by herbivores, and the hunting of prey by carnivores. There is the struggle and search to find food and good water, and there is the quest to find a mate and bear progeny into the next generation. There is adaptation and natural selection. But these are just the processes of life itself, not “Good”; and not “Evil”. The crocodile is no more “evil” than the antelope it eats. The hare is no more “good” than the wolf that eats it. All creatures merely act according to their natures. Nature is an endless cycle of birth, life, death, and birth again arising out of death. No part of the cycle is superior to any other. This is the cyclical nature of the rhythms of life. Death, as painful as it is for us, and Birth, as joyous a thing, are merely the bookends of Life. Indeed, Life feeds on Death. Think about it... to eat, something must die. With the exception of the lowest forms of life, which are sustained by the mineral Earth, all Life feeds on other Life. Even the plants and trees grow in soil that is saturated with the decaying remains of other plants and animals. There is nothing wrong with this. This is Nature, and the Earth-Centered religions view human-kind as a part of Nature itself; not apart from it, nor above it or superior to it. We are merely one manifestation of Nature. When I told some people the theme of the sermon I was going to give, they looked at me and said: “Of course Darkness is good! We need Darkness to appreciate the Light!” I nod my head at them and say: “This is true. But it is not what I mean. The value of Darkness is not only in providing contrast to light. This observation is still based in a dualistic thought pattern, valuing the Light as superior to the Darkness.” Today, I would like to move beyond that kind of thinking. So, looking to Nature as our Teacher, I would like to present five lessons that Nature teaches us through Darkness. As we contemplate these lessons, we learn that Darkness need not always carry such sinister connotations for us. Many Earth-Centered paths look at Darkness through the lens of these gifts, rather than the dualistic paradigm of Good vs. Evil. I invite you to look through that lens this morning. Tomorrow, we celebrate the holiday of “Halloween”. This holiday has its roots in the pagan traditions of Northern Europe, where the scary, fearsome aspects of Darkness are banished through the process of catharsis. At this time of year, we tell scary stories, watch scary movies, sing scary songs, and engage our fears in a manner that raises them out of the unspoken, unacknowledged depths of our minds, and brings them out into the open, where they can be experienced safely, and sometimes, with humor. This is important to us, because, as we descend into the darkness that the next twelve weeks of the year
bring us, we have to be able to move past our fears, which the Darkness inspires, in order to get to the gifts which Darkness offers.
Lesson 1: In Darkness, there is Balance Scientists tell us that the planet Mercury, which is close to the Sun, is hot... about 800 째F on its sunny side. While this probably comes as no surprise to you, given its proximity to the Sun, few realize that, on its dark side, the planet is almost -300 째F. This is because Mercury doesn't really rotate very fast, and there is little on the planet's surface to hold heat. Once the mountains and craters of the planet turn out of the sunlight, they quickly give up the heat they absorbed throughout the planet's daytime to the black of space, and reach these frigid temperatures. On our own planet, the same would happen, were it not for the the cycle of day and night that we live through every 24 hours. This diurnal cycle takes most of the surface of planet Earth through a daily cycle of heating and cooling, which makes our daily high temperature generally peak in the late afternoon, and our daily low temperature arrive in the hours just before dawn. While we may enjoy the long days of Summer, without the night to cool us, we would begin to roast. Of course, we also have the benefit of great amounts of water to act as a thermal sink. Water on the surface of the planet, as well as in the air, holds heat from the day and through the night. The seasonal cycles also serve us by making more of our planet liveable. As much as we don't like the cold and inconvenience of Winter in our temperate climate, the axial tilt of the Earth which produces our temperate zones of the planet in the middle latitudes, and expands the areas of the globe that are conducive to our population. The dying off of above-surface vegetation, such as the leaves which fall from the trees, produces a rich mulch for the building of soil. The freezing of organic matter in the soil breaks open the tough cell walls of plants, allowing them to be digested by the microscopic life in the soil. Year after year, decade after decade, this annual dying off and Springtime revival churns out greater abundance in areas which have four season, than where there is no such die-off and freezing. I'll discuss more about this later.
Lesson 2: In Darkness, there is Rest Other associations with darkness are rest, repose, relaxation, renewal and healing. The night-time darkness is the time of rest. Daylight entering our eyes induces the production of the hormone melatonin from our pineal gland in our brains. By the end of the day, the build-up of melatonin causes us to feel sleepy. Melatonin supplements are sold over the counter as a sleep aid for those who aren't producing enough, and suffer from insomnia. But melatonin doesn't just help us sleep; it also inhibits tumors from growing, prevents viral infections, stimulates your immune system, increases antibodies in your saliva, has antioxidant properties and enhances the quality of sleep. Sleep is an important biological function for us. Many parents tell their children that if they don't get a full night's sleep, they won't grow bigger. This has recently been scientifically proven to be true, with growth hormone production being linked to sleep, and nearly all of a child's growth occurs while they sleep. Lack of sufficient sleep has also been shown to be a factor in the development of obesity, carbohydrate addiction, and Type 2 diabetes. It also causes impaired memory and motor function, and it's been proven that good sleep promotes good grades. Sleep scientists recommend complete darkness for good sleep. Recent studies are also linking artificial light at night to disease, including cancer. Blind women are half as likely to develop breast cancer, and women who work night shifts, such as nurses, are twice as likely. So, to sleep better and protect your health, doctors recommend blacking out your bedroom, and covering any sources of light. They also recommend staying off your back-lit LCD computer screens, smart-phones, and other mobile devices
for at least an hour before your bed-time. One article I found said that if light were a drug, it would be banned by the FDA. While I wouldn't go quite that far, making sure you have plenty of darkness each and every night is a good idea.
Lesson 3: In Darkness, there is Creativity Edgar Allan Poe wrote: Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before. Although sleep fulfills our primary need for rest, it is also a time of dreaming. In some Earth-centered paths, there is a saying “Daytime is for work. Night is for magic.” Whether you believe in magic or not, many spiritual paths which incorporate prayer proclaim the value of the “bedtime prayer” or “evening vesper meditation”. It is a focusing of one's intent just before sleep which can guide and direct our dreaming in the night. Scientists have found that our brains enter a uniquely creative state when dreaming, as well as in that twilight state between wakefulness and sleep, where we engage in our most creative thought-processes. Bio-feedback, which uses EEG devices to measure brain waves, calls this state “Theta Wave” state. Some of the most famous inventions and discoveries in human history involved creative brainstorms that occurred to someone while in one of these half-awake states. In our alarm-clock culture, where we're jarred awake each morning, I feel we're short-changing our creativity, in the effort to get to our 8 AM jobs. Some alarm clocks have been invented to gently rouse us out of sleep over the course of an hour or two, but few make use of these.
Lesson 4: In Darkness, there is Sensuality 19th Century romantic poet, Dante Gabriel Rosetti asks the question about under what circumstances one “sees” one's beloved the most... is it in the daylight, when you can gaze into the face of your lover, or in the darkness, when you can see into their soul? He writes: WHEN do I see thee most, beloved one? When in the light the spirits of mine eyes Before thy face, their altar, solemnize The worship of that Love through thee made known? Or when in the dusk hours, (we two alone,) Close-kiss and eloquent of still replies Thy twilight-hidden glimmering visage lies, And my soul only sees thy soul its own? More recently, famous Broadway musical songwriter, Andrew Loyd Weber, wrote the haunting song, “Music of the Night”: Night time sharpens, heightens each sensation Darkness stirs and wakes imagination Silently the senses abandon their defenses Slowly, gently night unfurls its splendor Grasp it, sense it tremulous and tender Turn your face away from the garish light of day
Turn your thoughts away from cold, unfeeling light And listen to the music of the night Close your eyes and surrender to your darkest dreams Purge your thoughts of the life you knew before Close your eyes, let your spirit start to soar And you'll live as you've never lived before Softly, deftly music shall caress you Hear it, feel it secretly possess you Open up your mind, let your fantasies unwind In this darkness that you know you cannot fight The darkness of the music of the night Let your mind start a journey through a strange new world Leave all thoughts of the life you knew before Let your soul take you where you long to be Only then can you belong to me Floating, falling sweet intoxication Touch me, trust me, savor each sensation Let the dream begin, let your darker side give in To the power of the music that I write The power of the music of the night This emphasizes the seductive, sensual nature of darkness, along with elements of the creative aspect. We know that when one of our senses is deprived of input, the other senses are heightened by some mechanism in the brain. Hearing, touch, taste and smell are all sharpened by the loss of sight. So some of the gifts of Darkness are sensual in nature. Sharpened hearing allows us to listen deeper, more intently, in greater detail. We also pay more attention to every stray odor or the passing of air over our skin. The external world becomes less important to us, and we pay closer attention to what is going on inside our bodies and minds. Whether closing our eyes, or wearing a blindfold, or simply turning off the lights, shutting ourselves in darkness shifts our attention to the presence and aesthetics of nonvisual input.
Lesson 5: In Darkness, there is Life Lately, I have been studying permaculture. Raise your hand if you know what permaculture is. Permaculture means both “permanent culture” and “permanent agriculture”. It's a science and art of establishing self-sustaining, sustainable, ecological systems to create productive organic gardens. These gardens can be food producing, or not, but much of the focus recently is on the potential of permaculture to help meet our demands for food in the 21st Century. Recent studies coming out of Denmark have been supporting the idea that we could quite possibly produce food for this planet organically in high-intensity, locally-grown organic permacultural gardens. The studies are showing numbers that range from just below the productivity rates we see with conventional agriculture in the low range, to as much as four times a much food, in the high range of the estimates. In a world that just topped seven BILLION human beings last week, that's promising news. I recently checked out the book “Gaia's Garden” from the library, by Toby Hemenway. I have been enjoying it as an introduction to permaculture. Allow me to read a little from the book about soil:
A Latin American farmer once told my friend, Ianto Evans, “Of course you have terrible soil problems in your country. What do you expect when you call it dirt?” In our culture soil gets little respect. Most of the words for this fundamental substance are derogatory. When we want to know the worst about someone, we say, “Give me the dirt on this guy.” Dirty movies. Earthy language. We hold at arm's length anything soiled, dirty, or muddy. Yet soil is miraculous. It is where the dead are brought back to life. Here, in the thin earthy boundary between inanimate rock and the planet's green carpet, lifeless minerals are weathered from stones or decomposed from organic debris. Plants and microscopic animals eat these dead particles and recast them as living matter. Most discussions about soil focus on what soil is: what it's made of, where it comes from, what its physical qualities are. Of course it's important to know these things if we want to understand soil, but the physics and chemistry of soil are only part of the story. We also need to know what soil does. For years, scientists viewed soil mainly as an inert sand-like substance for holding plant roots, into which we poured fertilizer. But soil is alive. One key to having a garden that's bursting with healthy plants, well-balanced insects, and thriving wildlife is to stuff the soil with as much life as possible. Think of soil life as the base of a pyramid. Stacked upon this base are plants, then insects, and finally animals, each dependent on the creatures below it. The greater the number and diversity of soil organisms–that is, the broader the pyramid's base–the larger and more diverse will be the flows of nutrients among them as they release the fertility stored in the soil. Bigger nutrient flows mean that more plants, both in numbers and varieties, can thrive on that abundant fertility. In turn, an extensive array of plants will attract a copious assortment of insects, and those plants and insects will provide food and shelter for a more diverse collection of birds and other animals at the top of the pyramid. Diversity builds diversity. How much life is in the soil? At least as much as above ground. When we look at the landscape, the plants and animals on the surface are obvious, but it's not easy to visualize how much life lies underground. With a few numbers, we can begin to glimpse the abundance. A teaspoon of good pasture soil may contain a billion bacteria, a million fungi, and ten thousand amoebae. It's hard to believe that anything else can fit into that teaspoon, but soil critters are small. There is still plenty of room for the clay, silt, sand, water, air, humus, and assorted small molecules that make up the rest of the soil. Above ground, an acre of good pasture may support a horse or two, say about a half-ton of animals. But living in the soil of that acre may be two tons of worms and another two tons of bacteria, fungi, and soil animals such as millipedes and mites. That one-horse-per-acre soil may contain eight or ten horses' worth of animals below ground. Vegetarians may be appalled, but much of gardening actually involves raising animals: the tiny ones under Earth's surface. Unfortunately, in America and elsewhere, we've engaged in the practice of killing our soil, often intentionally. Herbicides and pesticides kill the microorganisms in the soil. Tilling releases nutrients trapped in the organic matter in the soil, creating a temporary boost to plant growth, but we aren't replacing it, and tilling year after year has gradually reduced the amount of organic matter in the soil. Indeed, we really don't have much in the way of soil any longer throughout North America. What we have is dirt... the simple, physical medium for holding the plants' roots. They don't get what they need to grow from dirt, but rather, from petroleum based fertilizers. Indeed, much of our dependence on petroleum is in the way we engage in agriculture. Drive a Prius, if you want, but if you're not eating organic, your diet is the equivalent of driving an SUV, and if you're not eating locally-grown produce, that's like driving an SUV made in China, and shipped here. In an age when energy is getting more
scarce and more expensive, it's something we really need to consider. This killing-off of our soil by agriculture is taking another toll. You see, real soil, full of organic matter, is like a sponge, holding vast amounts of water in its matrix. A tract of native prairie holds an entire reservoir of water in the inches beneath the soil. In California, during the Gold Rush years, miners chopped down trees around their claims in order to build sluices for their placer gold mining. They were mystified, as the streams which once ran year-round started to experience terrible floods during the rainy season, and dried up entirely during the long, dry California Summers. We now know that each tree, and the little ecosystem around a tree, including the underbrush that shelters under them, formed organic reservoirs that held moisture from the rainy season well into the dry season, slowing the run-off. As the organic matter died off, these reservoirs disappeared. Consider what this means to us in the Midwest: This past Summer, the great floods along the Missouri river had everyone looking at the big Army Corps of Engineers built dams up-river, but what few realize is that all our vast farmlands are no longer storing the snow-melt and rainfall like they used to. Even though we blame the floods on the record precipitation, they were made much much worse by the diminished capacity of the soil to retain moisture, allowing all that precipitation to find its way to the riverbeds, and into the homes of our displaced neighbors. There is a terrible cost for paying all of our attention to that which grows up into the light, and ignoring or disrespecting that which occurs in the darkness beneath the surface.
The Cost of Ignoring the Unconscious Now let us turn from the outer world, and the lessons of Darkness that Nature has to teach us, and look at the psyche. Pioneer psychologist Sigmund Freud had what could be called a dualistic view of the psyche. He saw the soul divided along Manichaean lines, with a Superego of Moral Goodness being opposed by the Id of Hedonistic Instant Self-Gratification, with the Ego consciousness of the individual caught in between. This view is calls up the image of the angel on the one shoulder, whispering in one ear, and the devil on the other shoulder whispering in the other. Psychologist Carl Gustav Jung saw this model in a rather different way. Jung referred to a holistic Self, that was comprised of one's anima (or soul), personae (or masks) and shadow (or the unconscious, unacknowledged aspects of Self). The shadow was regarded by Jung as “dark”, but not in the moralistic sense. Rather, the shadow, to Jung was the unconscious source of creativity and power. Instead of being in conflict with one's shadow, Jungian psychotherapy was focused on becoming consciously aware of one's shadow and integrating it with the rest of the Self. The shamanic tradition I was trained in takes a generally more Jungian approach to this. It views the psyche as containing a multitude of aspects, each with its own set of characteristics. Some aspects are preferred, and are worn by the individual as an “identity”. However, other aspects are suppressed, hidden, rejected, denied, or otherwise repressed by the individual. My teacher used the Spanish term “Los Olvidados” to refer to these, meaning “The Lost Ones”. These aspects equate to the Jungian shadow. In this anatomy of the psyche, the shaman views all aspects as essentially good, with a gift to offer the individual. Like the permacultural view of the soil, we honor and respect the teeming life that exists below the surface. And there is similarly a cost in ignoring these Lost Ones within our psyches. They don't go away just because we don't want to acknowledge them. Many of the problems in our lives come from clinging too tightly to our identities, and rejecting aspects of our Self for one reason or another. And we find that that which we reject or deny most in ourselves, we project upon others. Much of the hatred in this world, such as homophobia, arises out of the shadows of individuals and their own
repressed desires. The shamanic practice of “soul retrieval” sees psychological trauma as being fracturing to the Soul, causing bits and pieces to be flung off. The shaman engages in soul retrieval with the seeker in order to find and reintegrate those lost shards. This process is depicted mytho-poetically in the Jim Henson movie “The Dark Crystal”. Show of hands: how many have seen this movie. In this movie, the elf-like gelfling, Jen, is given the heroic mission to find the lost shard of the Crystal of Truth, that had been fractured 1000 years prior, creating a divide between the cruel and nasty race, the Skeksis, and the urRu, a hunchback race of kind mystics. Once Jen reunites the shard he finds with the body of the Dark Crystal, the Skeksis and the urRu merge with each other, and transform into UrSkeks, the original wise and powerful race that they once were before the Crystal was fractured. In our affirmation today, we read Utah Phillips' statement that “the deeper the root goes into darkness, the more light the tree discovers”. We know that trees are roughly equal in size below the ground as they are above. Indeed, a tree's above-ground growth is often limited by its growth beneath the surface. The tree is often used as a symbol in Earth-Centered religions as a metaphor and model of both cosmological reality, as well as the inner workings of the psyche. Many Earth-Centered paths make use of various techniques and processes, including mythological story-telling and rituals, guided meditations and trance-work, as well as individualized counseling with one's elders. These processes, when applied to penetrating beneath the surface into the darkness below, is sometimes called “shadow work”. Many Earth-Centered paths engage in shadow-work as a fundamental aspect to their path. We intentionally develop our psyche's metaphorical root system, in order to strengthen the tree, and allow it to reach higher toward the light. This time of year, as we descend into the shortest days, and longest nights, many Earth-based paths look to the trees, and how they drop their leaves of Summer, withdrawing their strength from their branches into their roots. The sugars of a tree's sap are withdrawn into the roots, where its strength is carefully banked against the cold of Winter, so that it may survive the long cold nights, and burst forth again in the flourish of Spring. Similarly, it is this time of year when many Earth-based paths encourage a turning-in... an introspective, meditative time of reflection upon our lives, stir up that which lies beneath to examine our shadows, and address them consciously. While this time of year may be conducive to this process, we have the option, of course, of engaging in this process, as needed, year-round. These processes are, in essence, the “Cognitive Therapy” of an integrative shamanic psychology.
Love and Light One thing that one sometimes hears in today's spiritual circles is the salutation, “Love and Light!” People wish each other “Love and Light” with beaming smiles. Whenever I hear this, I smile, knowing that the well-wisher may mean the best, but I silently wish them “Love and Darkness” in return, knowing that they would likely not understand the sentiment, if I expressed it aloud. I have known many seekers in many religious paths, Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, and yes, Earth-centered, as well, who cling to this idea that we must always seek more and more light, all the time, and under all circumstances. This New-Age concept is at odds with the deep wisdom of the ages, which values the whole cycle of light and darkness, and seeks to integrate the two. One common misconception many have about those who follow certain Earth-Centered paths, is that because we might embrace Darkness, we must be embracing Evil. While this may be the case with some immature or tortured souls, Evil is not the intent of most Earth-Centered spiritual traditions.
Darkness is embraced because of the desire to heal the divide that Dualistic thought has created. Those who judge Earth-centered faiths and practitioners from their own Dualistic paradigms fail to grasp what is really at work in the paths they are judging. I hope that some greater understanding has been offered to you in this sermon, so that none present here this morning will make that same error. One last concept I would like to raise is that in Jungian psychology, as well as the shamanic paradigm many of us work in, recognizes that beneath the surface, we are all interconnected. Trees in a forest may appear to be separate and distinct entities, but, below the ground, their roots intertwine. It is believed by many permaculturalists that forests themselves are single entities, with communication of sorts passing between their roots. Show of hands: How many here saw the James Cameron movie, “Avatar”? In this movie, the communication between the life forms of Pandora graphically reinforced the concept of the “interconnected web of all existence”. The Na'vi of that movie referred to the spirit of life on Pandora as “Eywa”. Of course, this fictionalized spiritual path bears great similarity to many indigenous Earth-centered religions. In my own path, I have a semi-theistic concept that encompasses the Spirit of Life on Earth, which I name “Gaea”. The “interconnected web” of the Seventh Source, to me, is Her body and blood. Whatever you call it, we are all connected. What connects us, as human beings, is our very humanity. It is in our 23 pairs of chromosomes. Like a forest of trees, we share far more beneath the surface than we do above-ground. We are alive, we are animals, we are vertebrates, we are mammals, we are primates, we are great apes, and we are Homo-sapiens. This shared humanity unites us through our shared needs, and our instinctual social nature. But so long as we embrace only the above-ground light of Egoconsciousness, we maintain the illusion of separateness. By looking beneath the surface, we can see how our roots intertwine, in the rich soil of the Collective Unconsciousness, and how we nourish and support each other. “No person is an island unto themselves.” In the darkness below, we are One. We are Universally United, and here, as Unitarian Universalists, let us always remember the Value and Lessons of Darkness, and embrace the Dark, even as we seek the Light. So mote it be. Included for your inspiration and enjoyment: Utah Phillips was a singer, songwriter and labor activist. He was also a Unitarian Universalist, and a gentleman whom I was honored to meet before his passing. You can read more about him at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_Phillips http://thelongmemory.com/ Also, you can see/hear him on YouTube. I transcribed his last public address for his memorial service, which follows here. The first paragraph was our affirmation for the Lessons of Darkness Service. The service was entitled “Tapestry of Faith”, and the speakers were invited to share from their own personal faith perspective. This address touched me in such a way that it has now been woven into my own “tapestry”.
U. Utah Phillips "Tapestry of Faith" Service – 13 April, 2008 Unitarian Universalist Community of the Mountains – Grass Valley, CA The Earth is my Mother and the Sun is my Father. When my Father rises in the morning, my Mother and Father embrace, and out of their union comes everything that I eat, everything that I wear, everything that I live in. It doesn't need to be any more complicated than that. The deeper the root goes into darkness, the more light the tree discovers. I am— we are all— surrounded by the fruits of light and darkness, for which I give thanks to the Mother, the Father, and the Living Spirit of All. I have, since I was a boy, lived within the circle of the seasons. Our earliest ancestors saw how a shadow declined from a particular tree, and then came back and then declined in the opposite direction. And I told them there was a pattern to all of this, and that was so different from the chaos that we thought we were born into, and that we could, through cooperation with it, become part of the pattern, become consonant with it, and flow with it. In my garden, the flower is growing. It grows without effort toward the sun. The sun is ninety-three million miles away, and it burns, and the flower grows, and the Earth turns in that balance of centripetal and centrifugal force. Each one living in the exercise of its own virtue. And I don't mean virtue in a moral sense. I mean virtue in the Greek sense, arete: "that which enables a thing to perform its function". A ball bounces by virtue of its elasticity— a knife cuts by virtue of its edge— that construction of 'virtue'. Knowing the virtue, the true name of a thing, gives you its use. Each one of us possesses a unique and specific virtue. Like the flower, like the sun, like each star, like every leaf on every tree. Discovering what our specific and unique virtue is, and living in the exercise of it, will bring us further into that larger pattern, so that we will become consonant with it, flow with it, flow through it. Time. In the beginning there was nothing. But even in nothing there is a possibility of something. We are all possibilities of Time. We are all possibilities evolving toward a reality, which is One. In the course of the infinite, time forgets nothing, but remembers all things. If I am real— if that virtue which I attempt with all my heart to animate, and to live— If that virtue is real (call it 'soul' if you want), then I can be spontaneously divorced from reality. But I will persist in the course of the infinite, Time forgets nothing, but remembers all things. In that Infinite Time, and in that Infinite Persistence, I must be all things. I must be each one of you, endless times. And you me, endless times. I must be every leaf on every tree. All of us, moving, evolving through time toward One. That means that I never have to worry about giving up anything, losing anything, my life or whatever, because in a time, all things are given. Sun high, sun low, Sun come, sun go. Awake with leaf, asleep with snow, Little streams together flow. This is all that we shall know. I never speak of these things socially. I started having these ideas when I was eight years old, and by the time I was twelve, they were finished, and I had my spiritual path, which I've been pursuing since. I've never written of it— I've been asked not to— I won't explain why. But I will speak of these things as a source of comfort for a dying friend. I would also do it here, because this is family. This is a spiritual family which I have chosen, and this is a family which will not and does not make rules for me. This is the family which says to all of us— enjoins all of us— to think with the mind that we have, and not the one we're "supposed to have". Thank you.