yoga practice with James

Dark Awakening

Dec 18, 2014 | Musings

The darkest time of night is before dawn.

When we are waking up.

When we are waking up, it may well feel like we are getting lost more deeply in the dark, in greater uncertainty and confusion, in a seemingly impossible or overwhelming situation. But actually, when the difficulties we face thicken and coagulate, they take a more solid, graspable form. This will then allow all the layers of our awareness, including the more surface and rational layers of our mind, to actually comprehend what has happened when we do make a shift. The thickening of the problem and our experiencing its subsequent dissolution allows the change to actually be realised.

Here too, it can be helpful to consider how the dawn comes. It is not like a light switch. Gently, gradually, the light begins to warm and soften the tone of the horizon, almost as if embers of a fire beyond it are starting to breathe and flare more fully again. Gradually then, the day breaks. How beautiful this phrase is! The day ‘breaks’ open, but how is this break? Soft and smooth, the light of the day grows out of the harmonious meeting of the dark and the dawning light, flowing into fuller expression from that magical junction point.

And so it is with us. As we learn, steadily, more and more what it actually means to live in the junction point, the dissolution of limiting habits starts to unfold more smoothly and efficiently. This dissolution of our congealed, previously limiting patterns itself becomes a habit. The thickening darkness of what might previously have been felt as an overwhelming ‘what have I done to deserve this?’ crisis, is now recognised, with liberating and energising gratitude, as the herald of a brighter dawn and a renewed way onwards, closer to the Sandhya (junction point) of eternal meeting.

James Boag | Whole Life Yoga

The yoga of the whole human being. Practical philosophy, storytelling, movement, inquiry, looking in ways that reach beyond our habitual ways of looking.

Listen to James’ unique whole life yoga perspectives on the WHOLE LIFE YOGA podcast.

Additional Categories

share with friends