What if darkness is a promised land?

OSHO Risk, Denmark, 2008
I am part of an Essence training, and this module is about the BLACK.
We are about to explore the black essence from different angles.
One of the things we do is darkness meditations.

The meditation is simple to its form.

We sit 30ish people in a circle in a dark room. Pitch dark. We look into the darkness with open eyes. And we do that for 45 minutes. Then we close our eyes, we can lay down, and just integrate (and rest) for another 15 minutes. And then we walk out from the room in silence.

If someone would look into the room (and was able to see the participants) she or he would see stillness. Silent people sitting still on meditation chairs. If the person was sensitive for feelings and emotions he or she might sense or something more. Different energies, different feelings fuming from different people. And he or she might also perceive small movements in the sitting bodies.

I did this meditation several times. The first time it was a bit frightening to just sit, looking into the darkness. There were moments when I came in touch with death and dying, and that raised my fear of dying. And since the meditation is so long, there was no way to flee from what was happening within. I had to meet my fear of dying silently. And slowly it evaporated.

As I kept doing these meditations something was shifting. I started to looking forward to them. I was curious about what I could experience in the darkness. What would I met? It was sort of a very close encounter with myself and my fears, and my ideas around darkness, life and death.

Sometimes it felt like the darkness gave me an opportunity to meet infinity. It was me, the shadows of my friends in the room, and the darkness. Sometimes the darkness transformed into a universe, sometimes it felt like I wasn’t in my body any more - then it felt like I had a ”soul experience”. And then it felt natural that was I consider to be me (my physical body) might just be one way at looking or perceiving me (and others). It was like I was served an opportunity to be aware of a greater picture. That the ”world” is so much bigger, than we think when we walk around here on earth.

And it was like these mediations opened something in me. I felt sort of a freedom. Like space was opening. That I went on space odyssey’s in the meditations. It as like I, through darkness could dwell in a promised land.

Malmö, Sweden, november 2014
I’ve told my husband I want to divorce him. He immediately dates a very young woman, leaves home to have sex with her. Even if I mentally can understand that he wants to ”prove” that it’s not us anymore, it hurts like hell. And we still live in the same house, and sleep in the same bed.

I don’t know how to handle the pain.

I go down to our session room in the basement. I turn off the lights, and I do a full darkness mediation. Present is so much pain, so much feelings and emotions, so much sadness, so much anger, so many feelings. And it feels like I need to breathe through this. Dealing with whats happening inside alone. And I do that. I sit there in the darkness. Meeting waves of strong emotions. Sometimes it feels like I am going to drown in them. Sometimes I feel like putting on the light again. But I don’t.

To me this was a way of showing self-love. Of meeting all this in a somewhat secure space. And I actually think that these kind of actions has helped me to be who I am today.

And today I see darkness as a possibility. It’s not so frightening any more. Not even my own inner darkness.