Elder Muse/Day #2: How To Be In The Darkness

Rainbow Clouds After Rainstorm

He was alone for the first time in many years. His loving long term partner had died only last week and he had no idea how to navigate this chaotic world without them. Without someone or something to prove to the world who he was as a man and the importance that had been attached to him like his own skin.

It felt like a darkness that he had never explored before. That he was scared to navigate because there were no known paths to walk. One day a “familiar” appeared to accompany him on this journey. A companion who would not only protect him but also guide him when he felt lost and alone in the darkest of his days.

Where somehow he would be able to open his heart again and start trusting that there would be others walking this path who would remind him what it is like to be fully and completely alive. This wasn’t something that the culture taught him, especially as an elder. He had been taught only to protect, not show too much emotion, and define himself by what he did professionally. And then become “invisible” and “useless” to the society around him as he reached his 7th decade of life.

There seemed to be possibilities that he could explore but his vision for a future, minus the person he loved most in the world and whom he felt safe with, left him bereft of life ever having meaning again. His days were spent in memory and the past, grieving in the present, and no thought of any future.

One day, guided by the dragon that had appeared to him so suddenly, he was walking in the nearby forest and found for the first time a very old elder Oak of 800 years. The instructions were clear. Take off your shoes and bare your soles, and your soul, in the presence of this elder. This oak held wisdom and possibility if he could only listen to the vibrations that transmitted through his bare feet on the earth and his hands on the skin of the tree.

800-year-old Elder Oak

Closing his eyes so as to be more in touch with the flow of energy and the messages encoded there he became still. This was a darkness that yielded insight that he desperately needed right now. How to honor the wholeness of who he was now in this moment.

To let go of the patterns that had him stuck, enculturated and conditioned into a tight container where he could hardly breathe. They had helped him survive and even do well according to societies standards for men, but now they simply stopped him from fully living and allowing joy, awe and wonder to express. From recognizing his own values and trusting others. From opening his heart again.

The darkness he explored with eyes closed, feet on the earth and hands in connection with the oak revealed a love so great that it was almost blinding. Like the rainbow clouds he had seen a long time ago as a child after a rainstorm.

And then in that moment she arrived with her familiar. A woman of magic and mystery, one of the spirits of the old oak, who carried with her those lessons of life hard won. She taught him about compassion for himself and towards others as she had learned along her own life path. Through the tangles, the thorns, the fears, challenges, and the struggles. Through the darkness that transmitted valuable lessons on how to be in the world as an elder. As a human being.

Through compassion she had learned to open her heart once again and trust the choices she made. Beyond gender or age. This she transmitted to the man who stood before her now who would go back into the world living from the wholeness – that essence of being – that was there all along. It would never be forgotten again.

Remember, our spirits are eternal. Our souls are forever……

What actually sustains us, what is fundamentally beautiful, is compassion – for yourself and for those around you. That kind of beauty inflames the heart and enchants the soul. ~Lupita Nyong’o

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SWEET DARKNESS BY DAVID WHYTE

The dark will be your womb

tonight.

The night will give you a horizon

further than you can see.

You must learn one thing.

the world was made to be free in.

Give up all the other worlds

except the one to which you belong.

Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet

confinement of your aloneness

to learn.

Anything or anyone

that does not bring you alive

Is too small for you.

© David Whyte, Copyrighted material.

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Over the next 31 days you will receive a Daily Elder Muse blog post accessed from the unfolding of the day – not planned or scheduled. Yes, the Muse is back again during this powerful and challenging shift time on our planet. May these words, stories and images assist you to remember who you are….

I have no idea what will arise…..but then do we really know ahead of time what our moment to moment daily experience will be? We are only asked to pay attention. ~Gaye Abbott

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Gaye Abbott, Wildly Free Elder, 04/16/24