darkness within darkness

I first came across the Tao Te Ching, an ancient Chinese classic text, half a decade ago, when the world was in the chokehold of a pandemic.

At the time, my rational brain was looking for a way to make sense of the uncertainty that had suddenly befallen us. 

It took me a while to understand that uncertainty had always been a way of life. I had been too caught up in the false assurances of daily routines, laws of the land, and well-crafted plans for the future to even acknowledge this simple truth. 

Then daily routines were upended, laws were changed, and a bright future ceased to exist except as a forgotten memory. The only thing that remained was a vast, unfathomable unknown.

Coming across the Tao Te Ching, the popular English translation by Stephen Mitchell, in those times was a fortunate stroke of serendipity. 

I didn’t even have to read the entire text, which comprises 81 sections in all, to grasp the heart of the matter. The first verse said it all. It begins as follows:

The tao that can be told

is not the eternal Tao.

The name that can be named

is not the eternal Name.

Several interpretations of these lines abound. I’m no expert on philosophy, let alone the Tao Te Ching, but I certainly know my own mind, thoughts and spirit better than anyone else does.

I interpret these lines to mean that the instant we label something, we limit it by our definition, and by that very act we fail to explain its true essence. Which, ironically, is also something that cannot be fully explained in the first place.

So how does this pertain to writing, especially writing into the dark?

Writing into the dark is a journey into the unnameable. We cannot tell where a story will lead, or what a character will say or do next. 

If we attempt to identify, define and specify any of these aspects of storytelling beforehand, we move away from the story that had been waiting, all agog, to reveal itself to us in its entirety.

The instant we try to shoehorn a story into a predetermined outline, it is not the same story anymore. The moment we try to cast a character within the boundaries of a particular trope or archetype, the character’s real essence, or at least some of it, the unnameable, indescribable kernel of it, is lost. 

Sure, there will still be a story and a character at the end of it. It simply won’t be the story that had wished to be told or the character who had merely wanted to share with you what transpired and trust you with the innermost secrets of their heart.

The unnameable is the eternally real.

Naming is the origin

of all particular things.

Free from desire, you realize the mystery.

Caught in desire, you see only the manifestations.

In order to tell an existing story with its existing characters who keep recounting their adventures in our ears in loud, animated whispers, we have to tell it as it is. 

The instant we start naming a story as falling within the confines of a 3-act structure or defining it as neatly fitting into a 15-beat blueprint, in the hope of slotting this mysterious, amorphous, indefinable thing we call story within the confines of a more solid formula, something with which we can finally grasp this thing that defies all logical explanation, we fail to see it in its entirety. 

We only witness the shadow of a spirit, not the sparkling, shimmering force of life itself. 

We only see the afterglow, having missed the journey of the glorious sun beyond the edges, both of this physical world and our limited worldview.

We can only behold the mystery when we’re not trying to solve it. Once a solution is found, the mystery ceases to exist.

If we can let go of our attempts to define and label, to rationalize and explain, to control and predict, the Universe reveals her secrets to us generously. 

Enlightenment comes of its own accord when we’re not actively seeking it. 

Our unconditional acceptance and understanding of the story that already exists then allows its beauty to unfold in ways we wouldn’t have known were even possible.

Yet mystery and manifestations 

arise from the same source.

This source is called darkness.

Darkness within darkness.

The gateway to all understanding.

How does one define life? 

Is it breath? Is it heartbeat? Is it consciousness?

While all these are manifestations of life, none of them, either by themselves or collectively, come close to explaining what life actually is. We have to live it to know it.

Plotters, pantsers, plantsers … whatever disguises we seek to cloak ourselves in, or whether we’ve long shed these limiting labels, we all write because of our love for writing and telling stories. Our willingness to trust what emerges and replay it word for word, as well as our fear-driven urges to confine and shape and determine what we can allow to exist in the form of the written word, both come from a desire to touch the wellspring of creative expression. 

We then have to ask ourselves a few questions. 

Do we really wish to discover what lies deep within that source? Are we brave enough? Are we humble enough to follow where it leads us? What will the darkness reveal?

Or do we only wish to see what we’ve always seen? Through the lenses of worldview that we’ve always worn? Will we permit ourselves to seek only the comfort of that which feels familiar and certain?

Only one path leads to the truth. The gateway to all understanding. The other is merely an illusion.