Darkness is the senior brother of light. Yes! I just said so and it’s true. Darkness was here before light came. Darkness is the original and permanent condition of our planet, Earth. It is the Sun, which is not located on this planet, that supplies light to our dark planet.
In other words, if the Sun shuts down today and refuses to supply us with light waves, our earth will be in total and permanent darkness. Even electricity can’t fill the vacuum. When light shines even in your room, darkness disappears. But where does it disappear to? And once the light is taken off, darkness returns. Where does it return from? Yet, we know the source of light and where to turn it off.
Darkness is the summum bonum of life itself. Even man is conceived in darkness inside the recesses of the womb. That’s where we were formed. In the dark chambers of the womb. That’s where our being is formed. That’s where the juices that make up our body parts are shared and distributed over a period before we are exposed to light, at birth.
If we want to plant, we bury the seed in darkness under the soil. We don’t go there every minute to open the soil and check how the seed is doing under the soil. The seed is left in total darkness under the ground and it breaks into lifelessness and forms cotyledons and petals and begins to flourish.
Even the birds of the sky and those on the land, after laying their eggs, must hatch them under the darkness of their wings. They look for dark spots to lay the eggs and still create additional darkness by covering them under their wings to hatch into new lives. It is the darkness that facilitates their creation of new life.
If we want to pray, we most of the time, close our eyes so we can enter into darkness. We shut down the distractive orifices of light to enable us to use the attentive faculties of darkness to reach the deep. We shut down the windows of light and take our minds into the limitless bounds of darkness because, in darkness alone, we see what light cannot reveal.
Even the almighty God, in his infinite wisdom, ensures that, for our body to replenish, we are necessarily made to sleep when it is dark. The best or deepest sleep that replenishes our senses is gotten in darkness. In deep night sleep, we can wander out of our bodies in dreams and contemplations, then wake up refreshed and rejuvenated. Darkness is actually the workstation of the spiritual world. The original state of nature before light was created.
Even God himself remains a secret kept in darkness. If it wasn’t so, we would ridicule him. Have you also noticed that our thoughts and dreams are more easily realized when we hatch them in the dark and keep them there till maturation? Have you also noticed that even the most effectual prayers and supplications are made in the midst of darkness? So darkness is not to be feared but to be used.
I don’t know how you have perceived the dark spaces in your life. As beneficial or adverse and eerie? Be it physical darkness or otherwise, to what use have you put your dark moments other than fear? Can you overcome those fears now and begin your work with darkness? Let’s talk about it.
Citizen Agba Jalingo is the Publisher of CrossRiverWatch and a rights activist, a Cross Riverian, and writes from Lagos.
NB: Opinions expressed in this article are strictly attributable to the author, Agba Jalingo, and do not represent the opinion of CrossRiverWatch or any other organization the author works for/with.