The Divine Darkness
Western culture has mistakenly associated darkness with danger, evil, ignorance and "not God." I say "mistakenly," because darkness can be associated with God and has been so associated in the Bible and Christian mysticism.
According to the book of Genesis in the Bible, before there was creation, there was God and darkness. So in the beginning, God was darkness. The first thing God created was light. Presumably, God wanted to see what God was creating. Before there is illumination, there is mystery.
Without mystery, there would be no quest for knowledge. The ancient Greek philosopher Thales, the first philosopher, asked the question, "What is everything made of?" Philosophy and science began with the mystery behind this question. Thales decided everything was made of water. That may seem an inauspicious beginning to science, but you've got to start somewhere. As a direct result of Thales' question, there emerged the studies of chemistry, physics and Western metaphysics. The light of our science and philosophy emerged from the darkness of a mystery.
Jesus implied that the Kingdom of God involves darkness in a number of ways. He compared the Kingdom to leaven hidden in flour, to buried treasure and to a mustard seed planted in the earth, i.e. in the dark, underground. The implication of his stories is that expansion (like the leaven in bread), the greatest value (like the treasure) and joy and healing (symbolized by mustard, which has both seasoning and medicinal uses) begin in and emerge from darkness. He said the Father sees in secret.
Christian mystics through the ages have understood that God dwells beyond the light of the divine wisdom that we experience as God. That point is illustrated in one of the earliest and most influential books of Christian mysticism, "Pseudo-Dionysius." The book "Dionysius" was probably written around 500, but was for a long time believed to have been written by Paul's convert Dionysius (see Acts 17: 34). It was eventually discovered by means of historical literary method that "Dionysius" could not have been written in the time of Paul, so the book became known as "Pseudo-Dionysius." In other words, it wasn't written by Dionysius, but probably by another person with the same name.
Anyway, it is written in this very influential book,
"The simple, absolved, and unchanged mysteries of theology
Lie hidden in the darkness beyond light
Of the hidden mystical silence . . . .
In the earnest exercise of
Mystical contemplation, abandon
All sensation and all intellectual activities . . . .
Thus you will unknowingly be elevated . . .
To the unity of that beyond being and knowledge."
From that teaching, Christian mystics came to understand that entering into conscious union with God involved the discipline of withdrawing the attention from the realms of sensation, personal thoughts and feeling.
Thus we see that both light and darkness can be associated with our idea of God, if we take seriously the biblical and mystical traditions. Furthermore, this is akin to Chinese metaphysics, which perceives the ultimate reality as the interaction of two cosmic principles that are in perfect unity - the yin and yang. The yang is the principle of light, the sky, the masculine, action and hardness. The yin is the principle of darkness, the earth, the feminine, stillness and softness.
Perhaps if we begin to see that mystery is just as much a part of spirituality as knowledge, that darkness is just as divine as light, we will begin to transcend our conflicted ways of perceiving our experience and to behold the evidence of God's glory everywhere, within and without. Perhaps then we will not so much seek healing as behold the wholeness.