Wisdom is often born in the shadows, frequently more visible in the darkness than in the light. The stadium lights of knowledge that seek to eliminate natural cycles of night and day, death and rebirth, sorrow and joy do not cast shadows – they provide only the steady glare of illumination. We must move into darker places if we are to find the wisdom we so desperately need. We rarely go there willingly, though every life contains its own cycles of grief and celebration. To meet wisdom in these dark places we must be willing and able to hold all of what life gives us, to exclude nothing of ourselves or the world, to tell ourselves the truth. Wisdom will stretch us far beyond where we thought we could or wanted to go. She will show us what we cannot change or control, reveal what is hard to know about ourselves and the world, and tear at the illusions of what we think we know, until we are surrounded by the vastness of the mystery.
Emerging From The Dark Night 