Midpoint, Suspension and Darkness

In shamanism we work with cycles of life. The various aspects of the cycles come offering their own wisdom.  

In this video, Kimba explores with you the sacred midpoints of cycles as we are all within the midpoint of a moving season (spring or autumn).

Midpoints within cycles bring a divine pause, which can also feel and be sensed as 'nothing'.  They can be associated with darkness or blinding brightness - both are times when sight is less clear.

Here in this video, Kimba leads us all into a darkness meditation. The darkness is a realm that becomes familiar within shamanism and carries its own wisdom, beauty, grace, rest and even comfort.

While many people perceive the darkness as 'bad' or something to avoid and run from.  When we can go in ... and sit, and breathe and sense with the other senses, we can begin to receive the blessings of this phase of the cycle.

You may feel like remembering that this meditation is here... especially for those times when you could use assistance in those pauses in life.

Video Transcription:

Hello and welcome to our Shaman College blog. My name is Kimba. And today is a combination of teachings and sharing but also an invitation to join me with a meditation practice, and we'll see how it develops.

Right now, it is the midpoint of Spring. So we're at those days that are the midpoint between the spring equinox and the summer solstice. So for us in the Western Hemisphere, you know, we've been coming out of winter. So there's a warming phase and a kind of growing phase. And where we've come into this fullness of spring as we head into the summer. For our friends on the other hemisphere in the Southern Hemisphere, you'll be experiencing... we experience mirror reflections of each other. But we're all in a midpoint of a season of movement. So a warming season or cooling season -  we are all in that midpoint of those movement seasons.

Now, these mid points are very sacred. They offer us very specific medicine. We find them at the solstices for sure, these mid points, these points of suspensions.  If we were on the swing set, or the pendulum -(showing) suspension as you swing this way and then suspension this way.

It's part of our cycle. There is a suspend at the end of your exhale, when all the air that's going to be emptied empties for that phase, there's a suspension. There's a pause where nothing happens. And then there's a growth and inhale.  At the top of the inhale, there is a a suspension and then on the exhale.

So every cycle, whether it be your seasons cycle, breath cycle, life cycle, we have these moments where there's a divine pause.

Now what happens at the pause? What happens at the pause now? Some people, many people, actually...  you know we love expansion, don't we? We love growth, expansion, beauty, colour sensation. Yeah, all of this. And we should...  I mean, it's beautiful, fun, it's colourful, it's synchronous .

And then there's also the the cleansing, the dropping things, emptying, revealing, letting go, shedding, releasing. That's also a movement phase. And often times people really love it. You know? They keep, they keep loving all that shedding, releasing, emptying.

Both are very movement phases. But then there's times when nothing, nothing, nothing. Nothing happens. And that's when, sometimes people might say there is a dark times. These are the kind of depressive times. Or these are the kind of times when self doubt or darker memories can come in. You know, these pieces that we don't like to see or are uncomfortable may start to show up as well. Or, for some people, even worse, nothing.

Okay, so if there's something that shamanism and our deep practices with shamanism gifts us, it's the ability to navigate the dark. And sometimes navigating the dark means sitting and doing nothing.

The dark. When I say 'the dark' and I say navigating the dark, it's not really seeing in the dark because for us, that's what the dark means. We cannot see there. It's not night vision goggles!

It's not being able to see - your sight is  being taken.  And to see might mean realise, it might mean understand, might mean, you know how to put something together... to decipher, to get.

So now at this sacred time between Equinox and Solstice may we honour this divine pause and I invite you to join me now as I guide you through.

Let's go into a meditation now - a kind of contemplation. You could touch your heart or your body. Hands on your legs or on your chest,  close your eyes, if you'd like to.  I find it's very helpful.

Travel inside. Go into you.  Into the dark and to you, into your body. Feel yourself sitting here and get extremely simple. You're sitting here. There's a breath moving. There's the sound of my voice and perhaps the sound of the space around you. Nothing really to see with your eyes closed. It's fairly dark. Maybe the light of the day or the lamplight is still finding its way in a bit. We are awake, and yet something is sleeping. We are awakened yet something is asleep and you're sitting here and your auditory senses are working and your eyes are closed.

Your breath, is moving as we go into the pause, the suspension. As we go into the darkness, you may be entering into a cave, you may be entering into the night. Maybe you're entering into a kind of like a burrow or a hole in a tree. Your body is here. There's breath moving and your auditory senses are working. Your eyes are closed.

What is here? What is here? Soil is here. The ground, perhaps the roots or the rock. You may imagine the sense of smell here, maybe the smell of the soil or the rock or the tree or the roots. If your hand is on your body, whether it be on your heart or on your leg. Feel that contact of your hand to your body, a touch of contact. So the kinesthetic sensation is here.

There's no need to change anything. We're not trying to figure anything out. It's a pause. Your body is sitting here. There's a breath moving. There's a kinesthetic touch of your hand. Hands on your body. There's a sound. There may be a smell, a scent. There may be an internal sense of a cave or hole or burrow.

Now, with all of your effort and  it is not effort with muscle, it's effort with focus with all of your focus, go deeply in like deeper in, deeper into the kinesthetic touch,  the sense of the ground deeper into the sense of your breath, deeper into the spaces between the sounds, deeper into the cave or the hollow.

Not to explore it further, but to explore in fuller. Not to travel new terrain but to open the terrain that is here in the pause. The pause has its own wisdom. The pause has its own vastness. Hang out here a little bit longer...

Can you become it even more? Can you deepen the pause, not to find a further answer, not to see anything more, but to embody the pause even more?

Return to your breath. Feel the breath moving under your hand under your ribs under your clothing. You may want to keep your hands where they are. You may want to lower them. Then just let a little bit of light in through your eyes so a little bit of light comes in. And when light comes in the world of vision, the world of colour also comes.  Then from deep inside of you. Something deep inside knows the dark pause that you were just embodying the richness of the unseen, the fullness in its own way.

So within you, because you are a part of this vast existence and you are one with this vast existence. So within you, is all the growth, creative expression, colour, lightness of being. All of that is within you and all the shedding and the releasing and the emptying and freeing and all of that is within you. And also what's within you. Is the dark,  is the pause. It's the stillness, suspension, unseen, the unknown.

I want to say that the ability to navigate the darkness starts with being able to go into the pause like we just did. And I do believe, and I know this to be true.

And yet navigating the darkness is another type of doing. It's a different type, so I don't want to sound like,  "for step one, go into the pause deeply and fully as you can, into the dark.  And then, you will be able to navigate." As if navigating it is a heightened skill. We could say that the highest skill it's being able to fully truly honour and go in to the the unseen and hang out there.

You could say that what we just did today is the highest skill. And from there, possibly navigation can happen if it needs to.

From this place,  from this place. Thank you. From this place from this place. I really honour you. I honour this place in you.