There are parts of us that need the light to grow, and there are parts that need the darkness.
Without shadow, the world would have no dimension. Without winter, there would be no spring. Without death, no life.
The cycles and seasons of the earth move together, around and around, every fall leading to a rise before falling again.
We are a part of this grand pattern.
Historically, the feminine deities presided over the seasons and the darker, inevitable experiences of life—like sickness, suffering, and death. This association has been written into our understanding from the dawn of religion:
The Divine Feminine is in the darkness.
While this perception might ring negative in our modern minds, She was never thought of as “the bad god.” This darkness played an essential role in human existence, in the creation and sustaining of life. We understood this truth intimately when we were living synchronously with the patterns of the earth.
But in the 2020’s in the West, we are out of touch with Her, and we find it difficult to grasp the goodness in the dark.
We muse that the “struggles make us stronger,” or that we endured something difficult, and we are better for it, but this mindset is not an embrace. It is mild acceptance at best, an unhelpful platitude at worst.
How can we begin to embrace the darker, soul-refining side of life when we’ve been conditioned to seek comfort and prefer lightness, often to our own spiritual detriment? Let’s begin by asking ourselves:
What grows in the darkness?
Empathy. When we suffer, we begin to understand the nature of suffering.
We learn how to sit with those who are hurting and bear witness to their experience. We understand that what we need from people in these moments is not input but presence.
Self-compassion. When we break, we learn how to nurture ourselves back to wholeness.
We must point our love inward, a lesson many of us never learned. When we begin to love ourselves, our ability to love our neighbor grows. This is what Jesus meant by “love your neighbor as you love yourself.”
Humility. When we fail, we learn that effort and perfectionism are not enough.
It is an opportunity to come to grips with the truth that we are all equals in the eyes of God. We are freed from the ego’s illusion of separateness and specialness, a powerful source of humility.
These are just three of the virtues that are refined in the darkness, and we feel them developing as we resist the urge to rush past the experience. We grow to understand that there are some lessons that can only be learned when our protective measures no longer hold up.
You don’t grow in empathy when you build walls to protect your heart.
You don’t grow in self-compassion when you shame yourself for experiencing anger, sadness, or any of the other “dark” emotions.
You don’t grow in humility when you have no reason to confront your ego and that need to be superior to the rest of us.
1 Peter 3:8 calls us to these virtues, “Finally, all of you, be like-minded, be sympathetic, love one another, be compassionate and humble.”
And where do we learn and refine these things? With the Divine Feminine in the dark. She is the one who allows us to see just how vital they are to the spiritual path.
Even still, some of us refuse the power of the darkness.
In the modern era, we are able to avoid Her almost entirely if we choose to.
Our wealth and privilege, as well as the abundance of distractions and numbing agents, allow us to avoid the dark any time we’d rather not go there.
We know them well, the ones who have managed to avoid the spiritual refinement of the darker moments of life. The ones who have remained so protected that they’re unable to be empathetic, self-compassionate, or humble.
They don’t know how to empathize because they’ve never really allowed themselves to experience suffering. They say things like “He is so negative” or “She should choose to be happy.” Their response to another’s pain sounds like just get it together already.
They lack self-compassion, and you can often see it in the way they over-manage their own desires and needs by overworking and overcommitting, always pushing for more. And because they demand so much of themselves, they demand the same of others. They often seek work environments where this imbalance is seen as strength.
They lack humility. They have often “earned” everything they have, and their hard work and unique approach is the reason they have avoided suffering, unable to see the role of privilege or good timing in their success. They appear to always be in control. It is important to them to feel like they’ve out-earned or out-worked those around them—this superiority is a lifeline.
You know them.
They are the people that invite you to lunch that your soul politely declines. They are the ones who haven’t changed in all of the years you’ve know them, the ones who tell stories that feel one-dimensional.
These people have avoided or protected themselves from the darkness, or they’ve simply not had the opportunity to experience it due to privilege. And while this might feel good for awhile, it always catches up with us.
Without shadow, light has no dimension. If the seed is never buried, it never grows.
In Mark 10:25, Jesus warns us, “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.”
Wealth gives us the ability to avoid the most spiritually refining experiences life has to offer, often the most uncomfortable and painful ones.
In the modern era, we can simply cut out difficult people without having to engage in conflict resolution and peacemaking. We can go to a new church, make new friends, and disengage from the difficulty with ease. And when that fails, we have addiction and distraction at our disposal, allowing us to disengage and deny the process entirely.
It is a tragedy, this avoidance. When we don’t allow the seasonal experiences of life to shape us, we suffer in a different way.
When we build walls to protect ourselves from the lows of life, we are also keeping out the highs. When we avoid the dark moments that naturally arise, we block out the light.
Brené Brown says, “We cannot selectively numb emotions. When we numb the painful emotions, we also numb the positive emotions.” It is not an accident that, in the West, we are suffering from depression, anxiety, and loneliness in record numbers.
Our calling is to learn to embrace the darkness.
We will experience failure, death, humiliation, betrayal, divorce, and sickness, and we are called to accept these experiences and embrace the journey they invite us on.
We’re to be present with the suffering that comes our way so that we might be refined in the way that only darkness can refine us, and She will sit with us as we do.
The Divine Feminine is in the things of life that require us to deconstruct our ego, rethink our identity and motivations, and experience true rebirth.
She is the womb holding us as we reform, giving birth to the parts we never knew before.
She is underground, allowing the dirt and the dark to sprout whatever seed within us needs to grow.
She is in the burning fire, engulfing our egos and warming us in the dark.
Merlin Stone writes, “At the very dawn of religion, God was a woman. Do you remember?”
There are parts of us that need the light to grow and parts that need the darkness, and from the beginning, She has been the one holding us in the dark.