Rabia Basri was the first female Sufi saint recorded. This fascinating figure lived in Basra, a port city in Southern Iraq in the eighth century. She never wrote a thing but stories about her have been passed down via the oral tradition through the centuries.
One night, she was stooped over her walking stick, searching for something under a streetlamp. A young man came along and asked her if she needed help. What are you looking for?
A needle, she said. I was darning earlier on, and I have dropped it somewhere.
Where do you think you dropped it?
Inside the house.
So, why are you looking for it outside?
Because there is no light inside. The light is on the street.
But what you are looking for is inside.
Yes. Isn’t this what we all do? Run after the light outside while the answers we seek lie within?
Carl Gustav Jung delved into and excavated the depths of our Shadow, through an inner journey, which he described as a descent into ‘hell’. Facing the Shadow can involve acknowledging shame, fear of annihilation, vulnerability, alienation, envy, guilt or blame. All the stuff, as we know, that is so hard to confront. But in there, lives the potential for positive impulses, such as creativity and spiritual growth. He believed the Shadow is an integral to our experience of the world, and we could gain a better understanding of ourselves by working with it.
Our days begin and bring along a flurry of activity. With dusk, quietness arrives and finally, night falls. In the dark we rest our heads on our pillows; our bodies lay down and our minds drift into sleep. The night is a cradle.
In the darkness beneath the ground, sits a seed encasing all its potential, waiting for its time. Before long, the moist brown soil does its magic and life springs. Some rises toward the sun but the that which determines its strength and endurance digs deeper into the darkness where the play of life takes place.
An embryo comes into being inside the channels within cavities of the dense interiors of its mother’s body. It grows and flourishes into a fetus in that fluid space, all its needs met, and before long it is ready to face the light. The dim, secure warmth of the womb is essential to its birth.
Darkness offers something light cannot. It can create an illusion of aloneness, only because we cannot see the others who are in it with us. While it can be frightening, it may be holding us safely till we are ready for a revelation, a new way of being.
When we can embrace our darkness, it includes our love of light. But when we only hanker after light, we cannot embrace darkness. May be darkness is just, a different kind of light.