The Dark Matter is called Lack.
As the bounds of scientific inquiry get pushed further and further we have learned of something called Dark Matter. A mysterious structural web of what gives shape to the Universe. Like black holes, its existence is unseen, unknown by experience, but implied by measurements and instrumentation.
The Mystery within each one of us is an equal, and perplexing universe.
In the eyes of a newborn child we can see the reflection of this mystery as an intact universe of wonder, wholeness and implicit trust. That is the program we are born with, a trust that in response to a cry of hunger a breast will be offered and that when we are soiled, we will be cleaned and made comfortable once again. What we cannot do for ourselves the world will provide. We will be met and cared for with the right kind of attention.
For many this implicit trust was broken. Where care was needed, there was neglect or indifference. Often safety was ruptured through violence or abuse. Trust gave way to protection, and to the imperfect strategies of the personality that created their own indirect ways of getting what was needed, whether that was love, care, recognition or safety.
That which is not received as nature intended, creates its own imprint, like the old photo negatives out of which an image was printed. The imprint it’s own form of emptiness, a belief held at the core about what we did not get, and therefore did not deserve. The emptiness becomes a gravitational field called lack, that draws to itself all forms of experience as if something, anything will fill the void.
The fog of this emptiness holds our hurts. For some of us the good stuff that we never got enough of, for others, the hurtful things that came too often. The dark matter of this emptiness, this lack, is made invisible, papered over by distraction, by consumption, by all the things we do in our culture to keep busy and avoid what we feel.
The Sufi teacher H A Almass says that this feeling of lack makes a different shaped hole in each of us. There is the “I’m not good enough” hole, the “I’m not attractive enough” hole, the “I will never be successful enough” hole. The variety and permutations of these lack holes is endless, and like the proverbial fish in the Hudson River, this polluted water we swim in is largely unnoticed, it is ubiquitous. One characteristic of a hole is its empty bottom, and it is the cruel efficiency of capitalism that it has crafted a message and a product that promises to fill each and every hole. Of course anyone who has experienced a hole knows that things fall out the empty bottom. And so the feeling of lack can only be filled momentarily by entertainment, food, sex, status, busyness ,or the host of other addictions that litter the landscape of our culture. Yet that does not stop us from trying.
The Native peoples of North America, and the Buddhists of Asia came up with the same metaphor to describe the energy of lack. The Hungry ghost. The image is one of a person with a long, narrow, constricted neck leading to a large extended belly that can never be adequately filled. It is an image of constant craving.
The Swiss psychoanalyst and father of depth psychology Carl Jung, spoke of enlightenment as a process by which each of us brings what is hidden in the dark shadows of our unconscious into the light of our awareness. What Jung is calling us to, is our own individual voyage of discovery. Moreover, for Jung, these categories such as “light” and “dark” are not fixed as absolutes, but changeable as we find ways to bring more of our conscious attention to our inner world in a process of self-discovery and integration. It is our own attention, our own care for what has lay hidden within our own experience that is the key ingredient in the alchemy of change. It alone transforms the dark matter of lack.
To do this we must follow the feeling of lack back to it’s source. Back to the hurt, back to the place where we lost contact with our implicit trust and here we must bring to ourselves the kindness that was missing.
This is how we become more fully human , by changing orientation, looking in a new direction, and no longer looking outside of ourselves for the experience that will make us feel better inside. As the Hopi Elders said “We are the ones we have been waiting for” Another word for this kind of attention, this kindness, is compassion. Here we can see the hurt, our own suffering, that lies beneath the emptiness of lack and hold it in our own arms. For many of us the practice of compassion, especially towards ourselves, means learning a new skill. Being with what is difficult and often painful, and not turning away is a skill not well practiced in our culture. And yet It is a skill that bears rich fruit. For it is this compassion, the kindness we bring to ourselves, and all of our experience, that is the true nectar that fills the empty hole of lack. This is the alchemy of change that Jung was pointing to. The dark matter becomes lit up from within, not pushed aside, and it is transformed as we bring to ourselves the love and kindness that was missing from our experience of the past.