The human eye loves the light. Feasts of colour and varieties of shape continually draw towards the shore of its vision. Movement excites and attracts the eye. So much of our understanding of ourselves and the world finds expression in metaphors of vision: awareness, seeing, clarity, illumination, and light. To become aware is to see the light. It is interesting that, outside of poetry, there is little corresponding geography of differentiation or appreciation of darkness. Darkness is the end of light. We are confronted by the unknown. Though we peer deeply into its anonymity, we can see little. We speak of darkness as the domain of mystery. Darkness resists the eye. It is where all our vision and seeing becomes qualified and revised. Marina Tsvetayeva wrote an amazing long poem called “Insomnia” in which she recognizes the ancient presence of the night:
Black as—the centre of an eye, the centre, a blackness
That sucks at light. I love your vigilance.
Night, first mother of songs, give me the voice to sing of you
In those fingers lies the bridle of the four winds.
Crying out, offering words of homage to you. I am
Only a shell where the ocean is still sounding.
But I have looked too long into human eyes.
Reduce me now to ashes—Night, like a black sun.
Translated by Elaine Feinstein
The Bright Night of the Earth
Yet the eye can become accustomed to the dark. Country people know this well. When a city person moves to a rural region, she is often overwhelmed by the darkness of the night. Houses shine out like beacons, but all roads and fields are buried in pitch darkness. She discovers how brightly and magically the night sky shines through. With no light pollution, the stars and moon perforate the night with such lucid brightenings. When you leave a lighted room and go out into the night, you are almost totally lost and blind at first. Then, as your eyes grow more accustomed to the night, the outlines of things begin to loom more clearly; shadowed presences become visible. There is an inner depth and texture to darkness that we never notice until we have to negotiate the absence of light.
It is no wonder then that Nature supplies the most appropriate metaphors for the spiritual life of the mind. The fecundity of such metaphors is their capacity to disclose the slow creativity of the dark. The darkness is the cradle of growth. Everything that grows has to succumb to darkness first. All death is a return to darkness. When you sow seeds, you commit them to the dark. It must be a shock for seeds to find themselves engulfed in the black smother of clay. They are helpless and cannot resist the intricate dissolution which the earth will practise on them. The seed has no defence; it must give way, abandoning itself to the new weave of life that will thread forth from its own dissolving. A new plant will gradually rise, observing the ancient symmetry of growth: root farther into darkness and rise towards the sun. When the new plant breaks the surface of the ground, it is a gift of the hidden wisdom of the clay. She knows the mystery of growth. This wisdom finds such solid expression in trees.
The Tree as Artist of Belonging
There is something so sure and dignified in a tree’s presence. The Celts had a refined sense of the worthy wonder of trees. For them many trees were sacred. Near their holy wells there was often either an ash or oak tree. The Yugoslavian poet Ivan Lalic captures the secrets of wisdom and guidance that direct the tree’s growth. In his poem “What Any Tree Can Tell You,” he follows the patience of the tree as it navigates the dark. The tree knows how to avoid the stone and knows where to seek the water:
…should it not act so,
to foster its own loss, its branches will be stunted,
its upward effort hunched….
Translated by Francis Jones
The tree rises from the dark. It circles around the “heart of darkness” from which it reaches towards the light. A tree is a perfect presence. It is somehow able to engage and integrate its own dissolution. The tree is wise in knowing how to foster its own loss. It does not become haunted by the loss nor addicted to it. The tree shelters and minds the loss. Out of this comes the quiet dignity and poise of a tree’s presence. Trees stand beautifully on the clay. They stand with dignity. A life that wishes to honour its own possibility has to learn too how to integrate the suffering of dark and bleak times into a dignity of presence. Letting go of old forms of life, a tree practises hospitality towards new forms of life. It balances the perennial energies of winter and spring within its own living bark. The tree is wise in the art of belonging. The tree teaches us how to journey. Too frequently our inner journeys have no depth. We move forward feverishly into new situations and experiences which neither nourish nor challenge us, because we have left our deeper selves behind. It is no wonder that the addiction to superficial novelty leaves us invariably empty and weary. Much of our experience is literally superficial; it slips deftly from surface to surface. It lacks rootage. The tree can reach towards the light, endure wind, rain, and storm, precisely because it is rooted. Each of its branches is ultimately anchored in a reliable depth of clay. The wisdom of the tree balances the path inwards with the pathway outwards.
When we put down our roots into the ground, we choose from life’s bounty, we need to exercise a tender caution about where the roots should go. One of the vital criteria of personal integrity is whether you belong to your own life or not. When you belong in yourself, you have poise and freedom. Even when the storm of suffering or confusion rages, it will not unhouse you. Even in the maelstrom of turbulence, some place within you will still anchor you faithfully. These inner roots will enable you later to understand and integrate the suffering that has visited. True belonging can integrate the phases of exile.
The Suffering of Self-Exile
Many people sense a yawning emptiness at the centre of their lives. This secretly terrifies them. They become afraid that if they engage the emptiness, they will lose all control over their life and identity. This fear drives them towards permanent flight from any possibility of real self-encounter. They keep conversations always on safe ground. Often they are the humorous figures who constantly joke and will not allow any question through their protection shields. They labour valiantly to be accepted by others, but no one, not even they themselves, ever gets near them. A phalanx of language and movement keeps them hidden. It is as if their every word and gesture strain desperately into the safe middle distance. Yet they long all the while to enter the door of their own hearts, but fear has hidden the key. This is a neglected and unattended region of suffering, the secret suffering of the permanently self-exiled. They are always circling within inches of home, yet they seem never to be able to get there. They are somehow forlorn, and their presence is dislocated. The suffering here is the exile from true inner belonging, the voice of forlorn longing. It is as if a secret limbo has opened in that region between a person’s intimate heart and all his actions and connections in the outer world. In the intense whirr of dislocation and fragmentation which assails modern consciousness, this limbo has become ever more extensive. There is a consuming loneliness which separates more and more individuals from each other and from their own inner life.