Opening to Darkness: Eight Gateways for Being with the Absence of Light in Unsettling Times

would have never imagined that I needed to go deeper into the pain, deeper into the darkness of it. All I had wanted was out.

Was it a miracle, or was it the ability to withstand a greater amount pain to be free of the pain?

wonder how many times we have diverted our own freedom when we have discovered there is more pain, more trouble, more darkness ahead and we keep adding on remedies.

How can we bear dark times, or, more explicitly, horrifying times, with the skill of an awakened one?

didn’t wait to allow that “something different” to be revealed in the darkness.

Still, there is this experience of what we call darkness that is so palpable we run from it, hide in it, and often seek ways to annihilate it. We speak of light, but we are not sure of light in the same way that we are not sure of darkness. Is the absence of light the nature of life?

Darkness without talking about light makes darkness inconceivable to many. It is much like the darkness of death. We do not know death any more than the darkness we came from. But we speak of a darkness that is not there—it doesn’t really exist except in our perception.

to avoid our suffering rather than go deeper into seeing what is there?