Darkness is an Essential Part of Abundance

Darkness Is An Essential Part of Abundance

Today marks the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere. Winter begins on this day.

Many of us seek abundance and we seek to live enlightened lives. And yet, on this time of the solstice I want to celebrate the darkness as an essential part of abundance.

What if the hidden obstacle standing between you and living an “Abundantly Alive Now!” life is that you don’t have enough darkness in your life?

Darkness and Light

Throughout nature, life is a balance between night and day, dark and light. And yet, many of us live as if the balance of the dark and light doesn’t matter.

Nothing has thrown us off balance more than the machine called the computer and the invention called the internet. There is no darkness in cyberspace.

In earlier times, people used the winter as a time to prepare for the coming growing season. Farmers took care of their tools, fishermen tended their nets. Women spun wool. People used the winter as a time of retreat.

Not us. Not when we can have lights blazing 24 hours each day. Not when the internet never quits. Not when business is open somewhere 24 hours a day in our global economy. Not when we are told that we have to adapt to a world that never sleeps.

Yet our effort to live in the light without respite sets us at odds with nature itself. Nature demands periods of darkness alternating with light.

I sometimes wonder about the health of trees in store parking lots. Have you seen them? The basic plant process of photosynthesis requires a dark phase. Plants take the energy of the sun and transform it into food for the plant. Yet, the well-lit trees in parking lots across the land are exposed to light all night long, night after night. At a time when a tree needs darkness to create energy for itself, sodium lights cast a weird orange glow over the tree.

Don’t Snooze, You Lose

Human beings aren’t all that much different from the trees. We are people who need the darkness but we expose ourselves to relentless light. Most of us are chronically sleep deprived. Closing our eyes to darkness seems like a waste of time, when there is so much to do. We are convinced that if we snooze we will lose.

And yet, lack of sleep threatens our health in profound ways. Sleep research has become a hot topic in medicine. Many of us suffer because we don’t sleep enough. Sleep researchers are claiming that many of us overweight, not because we eat too much, but because we don’t get enough sleep. The lack of sleep throws off our biochemistry.

What is especially significant is the effect of sleep deprivation on our brains. The latest research indicates that our bodies don’t need sleep but our brains do. One of the primary tools used to abuse prisoners is to deprive them of sleep. And yet, that is what we do to ourselves. We deprive ourselves of sleep in our unyielding quest after our elusive goals. We don’t allow ourselves enough dark time to rest our brains. The consequences are disease, stress, and confusion.

Sabbath

The Sabbath is a uniquely Judeo-Christian concept. Many people have rebelled against the idea of keeping Sabbath. They see it as a time of restriction, without understanding that the concept of Sabbath was a truly revolutionary and liberating idea in religious history.

Sabbath blesses the idea that that people are neither slaves nor machines. We are not meant to work constantly. We are meant to rest periodically. To take stock. To slow down. To have one day each week devoted to something other than work.

Choose To Celebrate The Darkness

How does any of this relate to abundance? Constant striving demonstrates a failure to trust in the essential abundance of the universe. A choice to live an “Abundantly Alive Now!” life is rooted in the consciousness that there is enough. In this dark time of the year, you can choose to celebrate the darkness and slow down, rest, and rejuvenate.