Breaking Through the Darkness Together

Reflections for December 2024 from Chante Ishta and Tim McGowan

Introduction by Tim McGowan:

As the human species, there have been many times in our history that we have known the dark night. Many of us have been feeling for a while that the way we have been living on the planet is not only unsustainable, but increasingly and irretrievably destructive to life forms on this majestic and magnificent sphere within the Milky Way. As many of us also feel, we have entered a new darker phase of this global dark night in this country through this recent election. 

So, acceptance of that sensation is the first step, but then what? It seems that we are invited to turn within, to our own interior lives to explore what needs to be healed. The same invitation then extends to what needs to be healed both in our personal relationships and in our relationship with the whole of Nature. It is our separation from those parts of ourselves, others and the Earth that is at heart of the malaise we so palpably feel in the world. 

This journey of personal healing then becomes the starting point. Awareness of the need for healing is not a vague intellectual process, but comes to us through embodied experience, through our own pain and our own personal dark nights. 

In this blog essay, our intention is to explore the dark night and subsequent process of transformation first and foremost on the level of personal experience. Reference to the global dark night is both implicit and explicit within it. 

The following quote yields an opening to what follows. 

“Some periods of our growth are so confusing that we don’t even recognize that growth is what is happening. We may feel hostile or angry or weepy and hysterical, or we may feel depressed. It would never occur to us, unless we stumbled on a book or person who explained it to us, that we were in fact in the process of change, of actually becoming larger, spiritually, than we were before. Whenever we grow, we tend to feel it, as a young seed must feel the weight and inertia of the earth as it seeks to break out of its shell on its way to becoming a plant. Often the feeling is anything but pleasant. But what is most unpleasant is the not knowing what is happening . . . Those long periods when something inside ourselves seems to be waiting, holding its breath, unsure about what the next step should be, eventually become the periods we wait for, for it is in those periods that we realize that we are being prepared for the next phase of our life and that, in all probability, a new level of the personality is about to be revealed.”

~ Alice Walker, "Living by the Word" from We Were Made For These Times by Kaira Jewel Lingo 

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Wisdom from Chante Ishta:

Dear ones,  

I have something to share for this momentous time. A personal experience I’ve withheld too long out of fear of it being misunderstood, of not being worthy of it, of not being able to find language sufficient to convey its power, out of fear of being alone with it. It is about a gift I was given in my darkest hour that completely changed me; something I never imagined existed or could possibly happen to me. I did know that it was something so… and here’s where words fail, (transforming?, miraculous?, awesome?) it was meant for more than me. It had to be carried forward for what it may offer others when the time of need arose.  Because it gave me what I most needed, healed me in my most broken moment, because it was too big for me to contain, it felt like a secret that would kill me to keep.  

And so, in this moment of upheaval, I humbly, gratefully give up this story in service to whomever has need or heart to receive it. 

Before I share this part of my larger story, I will preface it with this: 

We are in a predicament. Chaos, breakdown, collapse.  It’s happening all around the planet. Anyone paying attention to global affairs sees this. All the ways the western mind has built its reality; on beliefs that life is a competitive, hierarchical structure of separate beings, with humans reigning supreme; becoming comfortable thinking life will continue to operate as we were taught to believe; constructing our social and economic systems on the premise that wealth is power, power is control, and that wealth can be freely, endlessly extracted from the earth, have led to this.  It’s the way of thinking we’ve based our ideas of who we are as individuals and a nation and how we behave in this world.

Well, how’s that thinking (belief system) working out for us now?  

Is it the end?

That deeply entrenched way of being on this earth and relating to life is giving us a very powerful teaching on the law of cause and effect. The planet is holding a mirror up that is reflecting back to us the painful consequences of acting under that false story. That old belief system has created systemic break-down from lack of understanding one fundamental truth, that everything is connected. 

All that we came to rely on is now in doubt. Planning for a future in a destabilized, unpredictable world is near impossible. How can we find our bearings or feel grounded when the earth is shifting beneath us? All the emotions that can overtake us: fear, outrage, grief, uncertainty, despair, powerlessness, may emerge at any given moment. The temptation to fall into that abyss of hopelessness is right there. How can we possibly move through this? 

Truly, we were made for these times. Hard to believe, yes, but I know I was. And here’s why… I’ve been there, through that dark night; in a different way, but devastating nonetheless. And I made it through with a story meant for this moment, an experience that annihilated my entire understanding of reality, certainty, meaning or purpose, and which cracked me open to the unimaginable.  What I experienced was so beyond my normal perception, so “miraculous” to use a word, that I’m still awed in this moment, in the remembering. It’s a territory that words fail to fully convey, and I struggle with this object-oriented, English language. But it’s a story meant for more than me because it broke me open to an expansive awareness that there is something much greater and more mysterious working through us, to open the way to a whole new way of seeing and being in this world. 

This experience profoundly changed me, healed me, and infused me with such immense love and gratitude, I knew at my core I had an obligation to share this gift with whomever might have need or heart to hear it.  

This line in David Whyte’s poem, All the True Vows, “a promise it will kill you to break”, felt like an epiphany.  On some level I made an agreement, a vow to pass it forward, and clearly its time has come. 

So here we go, reaching to language the ineffable. 

But first, a little backstory. 

I came from a lineage of harsh judgment, oppression, social conformity, criticism, and control. As a sensitive, emotional, and imaginative creative, growing up in that environment was painfully negating and formative. Suffering the destructive effects of it built to a point in my teens where, having recognized that generational behavior pattern, I made a silent declaration to myself that it would end with me.  

Little did I know what I’d signed up for. 

From that point forward, I was determined to liberate myself. I was going to live my way, the way I thought was right. I would fight for a more just and loving world and allow my own intuitive sense of right and wrong to guide me. That led to passionate engagement with environmental activism, to living a lifestyle that didn’t conform to convention. I was active and outspoken with my opinions on issues I saw as threatening to the health and well-being of people and the planet. I was fully invested and fueled by my sense of righteousness. 

So, you may see what I couldn’t see at that time. That that same pattern of control I’d thought I’d vanquished had simply morphed into a new expression, my iteration of the old story. I was so certain that I had built my life on right choices, I had unknowingly set the stage for my own downfall. 

And down I went. Into the abyss. 

Falling into darkness.  

2010 

Three months, three devastating events that shattered my world. Suddenly losing my best friend and soul sister to suicide, followed by the unexpected death of my beloved youngest brother, and then hearing the impossible news of my only child’s diagnosis of a rare bone cancer. 

1 2 3 

Death, shock, grief, terror, dread, despair. All the demons closing in. 

Death of love, death of joy, death of meaning, death of purpose, death of dreams, death of beliefs, death of knowing anything. Death. The void.

Nothingness. 

Darkness. 

Every semblance of who I was, what I represented, any notion of influence or power or control, obliterated. 

Everything I’d ever loved and worked for and lived for, destroyed. 

Everything I ever knew…gone. 

I was emptied. 

There. In that emptiness. Suspended. Knowing nothing. Wanting to cry for help, needing help that no words or faith, if I had any, could find.  

Why? What?  

Silence.  

The ground beneath me had shattered, brought me to my knees,  

All I could do was surrender, let go, and sit in the dark in silence.  

There. That was apparently where I needed to be. 

Nothing else could have prepared me for what came next. 

If only words could hold it all. 

Amazing grace. 

That night, sitting on the floor, in the dark.  

Not meditating. (Not my thing.) 

Not praying. (Non-believer.) 

Just sitting in the silence. 

A hollow of grief. (My eyes well now as I recall this.)  

Questions couldn’t form. Answers didn’t exist. 

And there, in that emptied shell, something so beyond my ability to describe, entered, washed through me, cleansed me, freed me, liberated me from my own prison of judgment where I could see the perfection of everything; feeling, knowing everyone and everything as perfect on their own evolutionary path. I could see how my parents were exactly what I needed to find my own way. In a convoluted way, they showed me who I wasn’t so that I could find my own truth. And the forgiveness and compassion and gratitude for everything that flooded through my entire being, changed me in that expansive moment of grace. I was, in a word, transformed. And I dare use a word that once evoked cynicism; reborn. From that moment on, I was changed and could see everything through a wider, clearer lens of compassion. The love at the source of that experience, that inhabited me, was what I could only describe as holy.  For the first time in my life, it became known to me; there is something much greater than us at work. And I might even call it God. 

There is so much more to this story that may someday be written and shared. But what I wanted to tell you is this: 

What we’re facing now, collectively, may be humanity’s dark night of the soul. And whatever it takes to break down false beliefs of separation that have caused such suffering on Earth, is what’s necessary to clear space in our consciousness for a magnificent, loving Truth to enter. We are all One.  Each of us is part of an infinitely creative, unconditionally loving Source. We were born belonging in this One, ever- expanding body of evolving consciousness.  

We are loved beyond imagination, a love shown in every new turn of this planetary expression of Consciousness, this sacred, glorious, living Earth. In every way She nourishes our bodies, minds and souls with sustenance, wonder, and awe, and She demonstrates her exquisite nature, her deep intelligence, her wisdom and magnanimity. We are all Her children, all Earthly beings our kin. All interwoven in this gloriously intricate Web of Life. 

But, as we humans have estranged ourselves from our non-human relations, forgotten our responsibilities to love and tend to their well-being, our hearts must now ache at the suffering and loss we created by breaking that bond. We’ve broken the Web that sustained us, and the consequence of that is having to struggle on a diminished life support system. We are not designed to exist independently, without our non-human kin, our allies.  We are left adrift now, ill-equipped to endure alone to traverse an emptying world. We, too, will be emptied. 

This ending is a procession of loss. Allow yourselves to honor life as witness to the living and dying, to feel and grieve and celebrate the experience of loving as deeply as you have, all this worldly human experience has afforded you. I encourage you to attend to what still exists in the natural world. Go outside, breathe the remaining breath still given us. Give thanks. Thank the trees. Thank the winged ones for the songs that inspired symphonies. Thank the Mother waters that birthed all life. Engage with the non-human beings. Pay attention. Listen. Nature has extraordinary and profound ways of responding to our open presence, welcoming you, healing, reflecting our hearts, and communicating with us. Our ancient and loving Mother Earth is still here to remind you how magnificent love can be. 

We’re all on this dark road together.  Let’s join hands and hearts, holding compassion and gratitude for each other and Mother Earth, and for the extraordinary privilege of being alive in this epic time of breakdown. May our grieving hearts be broken wide open to the light at the Heart of Creation and to the Mystery within the turning of this sacred ground.

Love each other. 

Love like there’s no tomorrow. 

Love endures. 

“We’re all just walking each other home.” ~Ram Dass

Chante Ishta 

December 2024