Darkness ~ by Chris Yeomans ~ part of the Darkness Series

This week, as part of our ‘Darkness’ series, Chris Yeomans writes a beautiful reflection on the experience of being  “a terrestrial, and part of this creation”.

I am not too keen on total darkness.  In strange houses, I often need to open the curtains when I go to sleep, to catch the faint light from the night sky.  Years ago, I suffered from bouts of claustrophobia, and darkness pressing against my eyeballs felt as if I was being smothered or suffocated.  I don’t think I’d do too well in one of those flotation tanks where you are supposed to experience weightlessness and some sort of total sensory deprivation.

I remember very clearly, one winter night, finding the bedroom and the house itself to be a prison.  I wanted to break out. To see.  So I got up and went out into the frosty garden, where there was the glimmer of stars, the faint glow of streetlights.  I looked up at the sky and, rather unhelpfully, panicked that I was trapped on planet Earth.  I couldn’t get off it.  I could only survive within the oxygen bubble that surrounds us.  I felt very much like a fish in a pond – trapped in water, unable to climb out and walk away.  It was bizarre but extraordinarily powerful.

The experience has stayed with me, but the claustrophobic intensity has gradually faded.  I remember talking to a monk about it, who seemed bemused: ‘That’s a bit of a problem, isn’t it?’ After all, it is rather a weird thing and not easy to put into words to share.

Over many years though, I have come, I think, to a greater understanding.  This experience was actually the experience of being one with all things, not a separate being.  At the time it was frightening.  I wanted to scream and struggle and escape. I had no idea how or to where.

But gradually what I felt then has become a comfort:  a very clear awareness that I am a terrestrial, and part of this creation.  That I have no separate existence.  This is a concept that sometimes we struggle to understand, but over time I have been lucky enough to realise that what I felt that night was actually to experience it, to feel it in my blood and bones, rather than to intellectualise it. It was a gift.