The darkness comes and asks so much of us. When it comes it can be scary. Darkness can bring our worst nightmare or something we never imagined possible. It can change things forever. It gets at all the ways in which we are limited and vulnerable. It showcases deep seeded feelings of being powerless and isolated, and reflects how we then act out of despondency.

But the darkness is not necessarily there to make us suffer, not necessarily there to drive us to feed the negativity that those seeds can fester within us. More so, to call us to consider how, within the strong presence of darkness, we can uncover the Light of Awareness. (To be clear: the light of Awareness is not just plain ole light, which is absent when it is dark, the Light of Awareness is present no matter.)

The yoga scriptures tell us these deep seeded feelings are common to us all, the whole human race. They are the fate of the individual, necessary to be an individual. We are shrouded by them deliberately so that we live a full life, this life born of dichotomy. Which propels our life’s journey of practice, contemplation, more practice and more contemplation, and then lots more practice. We begin to fathom who we are beyond this form, and we can come to know who we are within this form.

What we come to realize in the Light of Awareness:

1. We are endowed with an immeasurable power, the awesome power that is the One within the many (powerful), but we are also driven and bound by a worldly power and wealth that is in the hands of only a few (powerless).

2. We can connect and be together– across time, space, ideology and history (in union)… and we can also feel extremely cut off by our differences (isolated).

3. We are as infinite and capable (resilient and joyful) as we are finite and irresponsible (vengeful and despondant).

We don’t get to chose or write every part of our story. This can seem to be the insurmountable obstacle to our fulfillment. But when we sit with the darkness we can also strengthen our resolution to work with what has been, for each of us, written in the stars. We can live and thrive in the full spectrum of dark to light, and we can ultimately be at ease with all that comes and goes, by learning to trust its purposefulness.

This is what the darkness asks of us. To engage in a process of making peace with who we are, as an individual, as humanity, as cosmic stardust.