For many of us, there are deep pockets of time when we cannot write. When it feels like we are empty. When our branches are bare, and our roots have stopped growing. We are frozen, can’t bear fruit.
These periods of time used to freak me out. I’d think, “Oh my God, I’ve lost it! I can’t write anymore. All my creativity is gone!”
I’m currently taking a class with a wonderful spiritual growth teacher. And she read us a poem this past Saturday that touched me deeply and explained how these “winters” work.
I wanted to share it with you.
SWEET DARKNESS
By David Whyte
When your eyes are tired
the world is tired also.
When your vision has gone
no part of the world can find you.
Time to go into the dark
where the night has eyes
to recognize its own.
There you can be sure
you are not beyond love.
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.
Take Action. Are you in a fallow period? Could you accept that you need to go into the dark winter and be alone? Could you recognize that perhaps your energy is being drained by things that do not serve your creativity? Could you “give up all the other worlds except the one to which you belong?”
Winter is a time for shedding, and going inward, into hibernation.
Instead of dreading these periods, let them take you deeper into yourself and your gifts and your recognition of what serves you.
The one true thing I’ve learned is that without these times of quiet inwardness, you will ultimately be unable to bear fruit.
Lean into the sweet darkness.
xo pv
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