What is in your darkness?

A journey into the Valley of our Soul

Nov 30, 2020

Hello Hedge Schoolers,

Hope this letter finds you well in the world. 2020 has been a year of much darkness across the world and it is only fitting we dedicate a deep inquiry to it. This week we quest on the question "What is in your darkness?"

As a kid, I always slept with my arms fully under the covers. I was sure that there were monsters under my bed who liked to dine on the scrawny arms of young children. The story would only amplify if a strange noise screamed out in the night. Flash forward a few decades later and I found myself on the precipice of my first night on a solo vision quest. Three days and nights deep in the bush of New South Wales by myself, fasting from all vices. As the dusk dimmer faded to darkness, I remember the promise I made to myself. Embrace it all with full surrender. One of my guides, Leon Cossar (a powerful holder of space and beautiful Bardic soul), challenged us to not use our torches at night. My first internal response was delightfully colloquial. But I knew it was my first threshold to cross.

"Gents, your eyes will adjust."
Leon Cossar

And so I curled up on my slightly deflated mat and let the darkness wash over me. My hearing, supersonic. My nervous system, awash with stories of demons and devils. But my eyes did adjust. I didn't get much sleep that night but I did sleep. It was my first step over the threshold. It was the first step toward death. A death to the old story.

"When I'm walking a dark road, I am a man who walks alone"
Fear of the Dark - Iron Maiden

The Valley

Last week we explored David Brooks powerful metaphor of the Two Mountains. Our First Mountain is the first half of our lives. Spent with largely a singular focus on individual accolades and accumulation, life is spent blissfully unaware until a calling whispers across the winds of our life. It is here where we can put our fingers in our ears and look the other way. Or we can heed the call and begin the transition. The Valley is our descent. It is the process of Incendence, a journey into the darkness towards the cocoon where the transformation will take place. In mythology, this is a quest to the Underworld. A journey that scares the crap out of us. But traversing the Valley is needed to allow us entry to the second part of our lives. Entry to the Second Mountain.

Die to it all

There are times when the descent into the darkness is a conscious move. A deliberate call to adventure. There are other times where we are abducted into the Underworld. Great tragedy will do this. My brother's death did this for me. And I did die. To the old, to the illusion that death wouldn't call on my door.

Rather that realising that it takes death for there to be birth, we just fight against the fear of death.
Pema Chodron

Darkness brings death to our doorstep. And this darkness is not just present at the end of our lives. Darkness and death are with us every day. But our eyes can adjust.

Being and Seeing

Author Stephen Covey calls 'being' our human sight. As meaning-making beings, our presence determines the story of our lives. Being present is the gift of sight available in every moment. The stillness of being truly present allows us to truly gather our lay of the land. On Quest, being present to the sounds in the dark of night without judgment enabled me to see. That stillness was fragile but it was there. And in that stillness, the lonely call of silence came my way.

Real silence puts any present understanding to shame, orphans us from certainty, leads us beyond the well-known and accepted reality, and confronts us with the unknown and previously unaccepted conversation about to break in our lives.
David Whyte

Being alone with our thoughts is a scary proposition to many. We escape through vices and distractions. Bloated and confused, we shield ourselves from what lurks in the shadows.

Lurking in Shadows

Carl Jung brought the term Shadow Work to our understanding. Shadow work is the deep work that takes place in the Valley. Often we believe our conscious quirky desires and voyeurisms are our shadows but they aren't. Depth Psychologist Bill Plotkin defines Shadow as "what's true about you that you have no clue about. It is what you fail to notice about yourself." It is unconscious. And not always a bad thing. Plotkin says that we can have a positive shadow, which he calls a Golden Shadow, or a negative shadow, which he calls a Sinister Shadow. In this week's Quests, I will outline a great tool for helping to surface that which hides in our shadow. The Golden Shadow is something our Ego believes is too good to be ours and our goal is to work to reclaim these vital pieces of ourselves. The Sinister Shadow is our unsurfaced negative traits and our goal is to take ownership of these and make peace with them.

The shift is in the mud

Everyone wants transformation. But transformation is done in the cauldron of the valley. It is alchemical, carved in the unknown. The deepest and most difficult work where we truly earn our stripes. We earn the transition to the new form. According to Ken Wilber, there are two options here - transcend and include or slip back to the known. Forward with a new skin or back to the comfort of the known. Guidance is needed.

North Star

The strange thing about my eyes adjusting in the darkness was how the moon become my anchor. Its prominence in the night sky a beautiful reminder of the power in contrast. Working through our darkness is challenging work. And often we can feel alone in the experience. The guiding light during this time is not internal. We find guidance and meaning in how we show up for others. Our Second Mountain is how we show up in our lives to serve others. In the Valley, we work towards a Service Mindset. After tempering our inner transformation, we move towards contributing to the outer transformation of our communities and culture. We give our gifts to the world in service of others.

Quests

Johari Window

A simple psychological tool to provide a personal 360-degree view of yourself. It begins with a list of adjectives.

A simple psychological tool to provide a personal 360-degree view of yourself. It begins with a list of adjectives. The individual being 360’d chooses 5 or 6 adjectives that best represent themselves. Friends/Peers then select 5 or 6 adjectives that they believe best describe the individual. Once the choices have taken place, they are mapped on the Johari Window.

The Arena houses the qualities that you and others nominate as visible.
The Blind Spot houses the qualities that others select that the individual didn’t.
The Façade houses the selections that the individual chose but peers/colleagues didn’t.
The Unknown houses the adjective selections not made by either party. They represent possible avenues to explore

You can complete an online version at the links below. Complete the first section yourself and then share it with others to gauge the Blind spots and the Unknown

https://kevan.org/johari (nice and positive)

https://kevan.org/nohari (at your peril)

Golden and Sinister Shadows

How do we make the unconscious conscious? The first step is awareness. Notice when you have an emotional reaction (positive or negative) to another person’s behaviour. What about their behavior caused you to react? It may be a quality you have secretly desired but repressed or it may be an unknown bias that has links to a prior bad experience. The gold is in the darkness. Pay attention to it.

This week I’ll close out with a beautiful Albert Camus poem.

My dear,
In the midst of hate, I found there was, within me, an invincible love.
In the midst of tears, I found there was, within me, an invincible smile.
In the midst of chaos, I found there was, within me, an invincible calm.
I realized, through it all, that…
In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer.
And that makes me happy. For it says that no matter how hard the world pushes against me, within me, there’s something stronger – something better, pushing right back.
Truly yours,
Albert Camus

Much love,

Steve

Hedge School