Fertile Darkness
Meditation
Since my last posts in October, there has been an election. The results have interrupted the trajectory of my writing, creating a gap between where I find my post-election self and where I left my pre-election ideas. For the time being, at least, I’m not interested in what other people were thinking before the election either. I’m not listening to podcasts or reading articles from before the election. In their wake, however, immediately following the election there has been a plethora of expressed thought and opinion. I’ve been looking for something that entices me—hits me squarely in all the right places, beckons me forward on some path that makes sense.
I have taken no position since the election—offered no guidance, taken no steps, come to no conclusions. My thoughts are all over the map. They are not congealing. Yet there are things I am noticing. For instance: Like many others of us, I view the election’s outcome as a kind of diagnosis of death. How, exactly, or what it will look like is uncertain, but it is clear that we have a fatal disease. And so, in the weeks leading up to the inauguration, I have the strange feeling that I am doing things for the last time. On the one hand there is, naturally, poignancy and grief. But beneath those emotions is a recognition—that what we will be losing, while precious in its familiarity, is, at its core, defective. It created in us a kind of addiction while at the same time conveniently providing for us a kind of heroin. There were times in our history when we almost kicked the habit—almost made something of ourselves after all. But in the end, the heroin got us.
And so, I believe, The Great Unravelling will soon be upon us. And perhaps, instead of continuing to limp along as we have been doing for several decades, never really fixing our underlying problems and dying a longer, slower death, it is best that it turned out the way it did. While the shutting down of our internal organs over the next four years will be extremely painful, at least it will all be over quickly. I just wonder for how many years afterwards, our country will parade around as a zombie.
So, with thoughts like these rattling around in my head, I decided not to write anything new! During Trump’s first presidency, I wrote a few pieces about human hubris. From them I selected Hierarchy, dusted it off, and stitched it up in a few places. I think it does the job of examining an original sin from which many of the perversities of our civilization developed.
Striking an equilibrium between the relentless busyness of the thought world and the empty but fertile ground of my being, has always been vital in order for me to thrive. Never more so than now. How else can I possibly navigate the decomposition that lies ahead with any kind of grace? So alongside Hierarchy, I am also providing the previously-written poem, Fertile Darkness, which plumbs the depths of meditation. I hope it bring you some equilibrium too.
Also, I so hope you’ll engage with me on this. What are you thinking, feeling? Whose thinking has spoken to your soul? Let’s make a community. We are going to need each other.
Fertile Darkness
I close my eyes and darkness descends. Or does it? Shadows and light play upon my closed eyelids. I watch curiously as images appear. Remembering to empty I freefall into the fertile darkness leaving thoughts behind me. Only a swelling spaciousness remains. Breathing in this alive, yet empty moment I become aware of a buoyancy— A sense of release. Relief. What is this feeling? I open to it allowing it to permeate. My body resonates— diaphragm and solar plexus happily glowing. Cradling these precious embers I let the warm glow envelop me. Is it inside me? Or am I inside it? With the opening of sensation I lose interest in thoughts: ideas of agency and judgment curl up quietly in a corner. Slowly I notice the velvety black softness of silence settling around me. Here in the cushioned darkness a tender, blue light of something unnamable and impossibly pure flickers within me. Was it there before unnoticed? Held in its enchanting yet intimately familiar radiance I am entirely secure— content to my very core— perfectly complete. My grateful breath bathes my chakras with each rise and fall. From the very depths of my existence a bubble of elation slowly rises until exceeding its edges it implodes in an all-encompassing sigh— blessing and sanctifying each exuberant cell.
Thank you, Susan. I know you are a meditator too so it means a lot that you liked it!
What a stunning articulation of that strange psychic terrain.
I feel this deeply. The sense of watching the scaffolding fall and realizing that, beneath the grief, there’s also relief. The addiction to our own illusions couldn’t last forever. Your words remind me that despair, when held consciously, can be a form of prayer.
Thank you for writing from that honest middle ground.