It’s interesting to notice how we might cling to what has kept us comfortable throughout our lives with fervor.

It could be a belief system, how we like to perceive ourselves, a rigid view of the world, or an attachment to a person or substance that holds us down in a place we’d like to think we know well. It isn’t so much this outer influence, but our mind’s unwillingness to move with the moment that comes to define us when we get stuck in such abodes, and that is something to take note of.

Freedom doesn’t seem to be in line with this sort of life.

If what remains clenched or unmoved, festers, then this way of living might become incongruent with the freshness of life that comes to meet us moment after moment. It could take a real kind of courage to step away from our comforts to enter into the stream of presence.

Letting go of a metaphorical small raft or leaving a confined space that we may have redecorated several times with different versions of who we think we are, is not an easy business. This is inconceivable for a brain that often wants to conceive of something. With this is mind, darkness—when we are pressed down against reality and cannot hold onto what we know—is a chance to leave it all behind and step into something large.

Being courageous enough to allow our versions of ourselves to fall apart during a tragedy or an apparent impasse, presents us with a wonderful opportunity to find out what is truly important to us. On the cold ground, where everything is viscous and real, we might discover that breathing in, holding someone’s hand, digesting the cool rays of a full moon, or sitting with the moment is enough to sustain us on our journey through life. It is here, with our feet firmly planted in the earth that we realize the most commonplace occurrences represent an unending series of miracles.

Embrace darkness and the unknown it springs from because they represent a time for the deepest kind of inner transformation. Instead of running around in search for what we know again—an opinion, a bottle of alcohol, a seething reaction, or a fight, turning toward and embracing darkness can reveal an unfathomable intimacy with reality—not the one we make up and spin in our heads, but the one that pervades infinity.