Wintery darkness leads us to the mystery

Listening to Peter Senge speaking today at the Presencing Institute's Global Forum he spoke about the human drive to simplify; in order to understand, in order to control. Hence we have academics reducing their knowledge into models and theorems that can only ever really approximate the real world. And we find corporations seeking to create pattens and mono-cultures of products, goods and foods. At the heart of all this simplification is the mystery, a much deeper complexity. How we approach the multiverse of complexity is quite different to the world of simplicity, hierarchy and order which seeks to control and take dominion over that we are ultimately apart.

This led Peter to turn to an ancient sacred text that has been telling us this very same thing for thousands of years in a much more eloquent way.

The opening lines of the Tao te Ching say ...

The Tao that can be spoken of
Is not the Everlasting Tao
The name that can be named
Is not the Everlasting name
The nameless is the beginning of heaven and earth
The named is the mother of ten thousand things
Therefore, ever desireless
One can observe the hidden mystery;
Ever desiring
One can observe the manifestations.
These two issue from the same origin,
Though named differently.
Both are called the dark.
Dark and even darker,
The door to all hidden mysteries.


And this brings me to the teachings of a lesser known person Tchenka Sunderland, an astrologer amongst many things, who has been telling those who wish to listen that we are living in a time of too much light and that we should be less afraid of the dark. Winter is the time of year to become aquainted again with the dark, both in the season cycle outside and in our own embodied inner journey of the year. Only by returning to the dark can we renew, refresh and return again. If we don't allow for winter we literally burnout. Society burns out and individuals burn out. Hence we live in a world were the suicide death rate out ways any other form or cause of death in the world today. We are burning out through climate change and all the present consequences to life that come with that and we are burning out ourselves and all the psychological pain and suffering that comes with that to communities, families and friends.

When will we stop simplifying and controlling the complex and start to live gracefully in the mystery embracing the darkness?