It’s that time of year again, when we should be slowing down and going yin-side into the darkness, but are instead running around crazy-busy with yang-xiety. How did this happen?

Long ago, before the advent of electric lights, (let alone cell phones, computers, ipads, ipods, fax machines, and computer screens on gas pumps) the nights really were dark and scary. Our ancestors passed these longest, darkest nights sitting around the fire together, telling stories. They told stories of the tribe’s history, stories of hope, stories of transformation.  They knew they were passing through a dark time, but they also knew it was the pivot point for returning back to the light.

What are the stories we are telling today?

There is no doubt that we are at a dark time in our world.  Threats of terrorism, environmental destruction, climate destabilization, economic disparity or collapse, racism and police violence, rampant sexism trying to curtail women’s right to birth control, and people running for president with no experience in political office threatening to take us into World War III! Dark times indeed!

But it is always darkest before the dawn. For the darkness is what let’s us dream.

We are perched at the pivot point in this dark, the point where we turn things around.

The recent COP 21 climate conference in Paris shows a monumentally historic change of direction, in which 196 nations agreed to work together to combat climate change. Arguably, we need even more, but it steered the world in the right direction, and fostered a new level of cooperation. Economies that embrace green technologies are creating prosperity, holistic health programs are making us healthier, neuroscience is giving us new perspectives on how we think, people are doing yoga everywhere, and we are more globally connected than we have ever been at any time since humans walked on their hind legs.

Creation and destruction have always happened simultaneously, it’s just that now they are both happening faster.  As evolutionary philosopher Tom Atlee,has said, “The world is getting worse and worse and better and better, faster and faster.”

All this amounts to the most profoundly emergent period humanity has ever seen. We have only begun to see the barest light of this new dawn, scarcely able to imagine what is possible.

Despite the darkness around us, we are turning the corner.

So now is the time in your own life to align with these times and to let go of whatever no longer serves you. The more you release, the more you make room for the new. 

Take a deep breath and thank whatever has been there, the good and the bad, the lessons and the pain, and allow it to dissolve into the darkness. 

Take some time to sit in the darkness and simply let go. Let go into gravity, let go into your breath, let go into the unknown and enter the mystery.  See what emerges when you’re not making anything happen. See what guidance comes when your mind gets quiet.

Don’t miss this opportunity, because soon enough the days will get longer and the lights will get brighter. As Rumi says: Now is the time to seek the remedy of vision.