Embracing the Depths: Navigating the Generative Power of Darkness (Part II)
A dark image with a black background that has a smoky texture. In the foreground, there are two hands, palms facing upward and outward towards the face. The hands are covered in what looks like mud, with white skin visible beneath. Each wrist is adorned with a bracelet, one on each wrist.
There’s a kind of darkness that holds, and a kind that consumes. One swallows seeds so they can take root. The other strips the earth bare, leaving nothing but silence. We talk about darkness like it’s one thing, but it isn’t.
Some forms of darkness are generative—fertile ground for transformation, a space where the unseen takes shape. Others are hollowing, an erasure rather than an invitation. But it’s easy to mistake one for the other, to fear the depths that could hold us because we’ve only known the ones that have devoured.
For a long time, I thought all darkness was something to overcome. That healing meant moving toward light, emerging from shadow, making sense of what had been hidden. But then I met a different kind of darkness—one that didn’t ask me to escape, but to sink in and listen. A darkness that didn’t demand I prove my worth, but instead reminded me I was already whole. A force that brought harmony and balance when embodied.
This darkness wasn’t the absence of light; it wasn’t lack of or something to be feared. It was rich, full, alive. It held something ancient, something beyond language. It was the space where transformation happens—not through force, but through surrender. The kind of surrender that doesn’t mean giving up but giving in—letting myself be shaped by what I found there instead of trying to control it.
I started to recognize the difference between generative darkness and unconscious darkness. One nourishes. The other depletes. One invites depth, mystery, and creation; the other isolates, numbs, erodes. I had spent so much time avoiding the dark altogether that I hadn’t realized I was trapped in the wrong kind of it.
The Weight of Unseen Shadows
Before moving to Portland, I lived in a town two hours south, a place I moved to for work and to obtain my therapy license. From the moment I arrived, something felt off. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it at first, but there was an underlying darkness in that place, a heaviness that never lifted. Strangely, while I sensed this deeply, the people around me spoke about the town as if it was the best place they’d ever lived.
I wanted to believe them. I tried to see the town through their eyes, to settle into the rhythm of life there, to convince myself that the warmth on the surface wasn’t hiding something colder underneath. But the feeling never left me. It sat in my body, persistent and unshakable, even as I tried to ignore it.
This town has a certain reputation—one of inclusivity, progressive ideals, and an almost utopian sense of community. But beneath the surface, there was something deeply unsettling. Many people there, while outwardly friendly, were insular and cliquish. There was an entitlement in the air, a performative aspect to their so-called inclusivity that never truly welcomed outsiders. It was a place where smiling faces masked a refusal to acknowledge the real problems festering beneath the surface.
I recognized it because I had been there before—turning away from what was uncomfortable, convincing myself that avoidance was self-preservation. That if I didn’t look too closely, maybe the cracks wouldn’t spread. But unconscious darkness doesn’t work that way. What remains unseen doesn’t disappear—it festers.
Over time, I came to understand the true nature of this place’s darkness. It wasn’t just personal discomfort; it was the destructive kind of darkness that seeps into a community when people refuse to take accountability for their shadows. Behind the facade of love and light, there was an underbelly of harm—sexual abuse, racism, homophobia, transphobia—all known and yet never fully addressed. People whispered about these things, acknowledging them in passing, but no one truly owned them. Instead, they were swept under the rug, left to fester.
This is unconscious darkness. It is a darkness that consumes, that masquerades as something else, that harms without any intention of transformation. It is not a darkness that births new life but rather a void that feeds on others while pretending to be something else entirely.
Berlin Nights: Where Darkness Breathes
In late October of 2022, I took a solo trip to Berlin, Germany. It was here that I first encountered what I now recognize as generative darkness. Berlin holds an immense amount of darkness, but it doesn’t hide from it. Unlike the town I had lived in before, where darkness was suppressed and denied, Berlin embraces its history, its pain, its shadows, and allows them to fuel creation.
There, darkness wasn’t something to be feared or silenced—it was integrated, woven into the pulse of the city itself. The weight of history didn’t suffocate; it transformed, giving rise to something visceral and undeniable, a force that shaped rather than erased.
Known as the techno capital of the world, Berlin’s club scene thrives in the depths of the night. But these clubs are not simply places for escapism. They are spaces where darkness is owned, transformed, and made alive. Art, music, and movement all emerge from this deep, embodied darkness. The city doesn’t pretend to be something it’s not. It doesn’t mask its shadows in performative light. Instead, it acknowledges them, creating space for true transformation.
Berlin is different. There, darkness is alive—charged with something raw and electric. You can feel it in the bass thudding through the walls of a club at 4 a.m., in the sweat-slick bodies moving as one, in the way the night folds around you like a cocoon rather than a void. Here, darkness wasn’t a force that hollowed me out—it was something that filled me, something that called me deeper into myself.
The city holds space for contradiction: the strange and the sacred, the grotesque and the beautiful. And the people—there’s a way they see you, really see you, with curiosity rather than caution. They’re not trying to extract anything from you or define you too quickly. They want to know who you are. Community exists, even for those who don’t belong.
When I first arrived in Berlin, it was the first time in my life that I felt 100% completely like myself. There were no inhibitions, no conditioning pressing down on me—just a profound sense of belonging that I had never known before.
I had always thought home was a place, a location marked by familiarity. But Berlin showed me that home could also be a feeling, an internal resonance that hums through your bones when you’re finally somewhere that doesn’t ask you to be anything other than what you are.
That feeling of home was so starkly different from what I had experienced when I moved to the town I mentioned above. The moment I arrived there, my body immediately knew: I don’t belong here. I don’t like it. But in Berlin, a city in a different country, surrounded by a culture not my own, I felt more at home than I ever had anywhere else. It was the kind of belonging that didn't need explanation—it just was.
When Darkness Guides
In late April of 2023, I returned to Berlin. The experience of my first trip had lingered in my bones—the feeling of generative darkness refusing to fade. I had to go back. I was drawn to it, compelled by the energy, the aliveness that existed in the depths of the night.
And when I returned, that sense was only deepened. It wasn’t just the city’s palpable connection to its history and shadows—it was the way that darkness fueled everything, turning even the most somber parts of life into something transformative. It became clear to me that what I had encountered wasn’t merely an experience. It was a different kind of darkness—a generative one.
That second trip affirmed everything I had felt the first time. The darkness I encountered in Berlin didn’t push me away, didn’t feel suffocating. It called me in, invited me to sink deeper. And as I began to reflect on what I had learned, the contrast between the two types of darkness became undeniable. The generative darkness I had experienced in Berlin wasn’t something to escape—it was something to engage with, to let it shape and guide me.
When I returned from Berlin, I knew something had shifted within me. I knew that if I wanted to continue developing this relationship with generative darkness, I had to make a significant change in my life. The place I was living, with its dense, heavy energy, felt more aligned with unconscious darkness—the kind that left you drained and yearning for escape. I realized that if I wanted to grow, I needed to step out of that space. The decision to move became inevitable. Within a year, I did just that. The clarity of the experience in Berlin made it undeniable: to cultivate generative darkness, I had to leave the environment that thrived on denial and suppression.
The Call to Berlin: A Descent Within a Descent
When I originally felt called to Berlin in 2022, I was already deep in my own descent. I had just experienced a significant loss—a death that shifted everything. I was already in the underworld, navigating a darkness that felt all-consuming. When Berlin called, I didn’t fully understand why, only that I had to go.
Looking back, I see that I needed that experience of generative darkness to give me a deeper understanding of my own underworld. I didn’t just think about these concepts—I lived them. I embodied them. Berlin wasn’t an escape from the darkness I was in; it was an initiation into something deeper. It showed me what was possible within the darkness. It was profound in ways that are hard to articulate.
This experience wasn’t just about grief or loss—it was about how darkness can be a space of transformation. It was about meeting myself there, about realizing that the underworld isn’t just a place of suffering but also of revelation. That descent was necessary for me to begin to understand the work I am meant to do.
Embodied Rebellion: Where Darkness Finds Form
During my second trip to Berlin, something profound started to take shape inside me. For so long, my life’s work had felt nebulous—like it existed somewhere in the ethers, just out of reach. It was always present, always calling me, but it felt vaporous, Piscean—something I could sense but not quite grasp.
But in April 2023, something shifted. It was like the pieces finally started clicking into place, and Embodied Rebellion began to emerge in a tangible way. Looking back, the timing was undeniable. As Saturn entered Pisces, grounding the ungraspable, and Pluto touched Aquarius, heralding transformation, I felt those shifts mirrored within me. Something that had always existed was finally taking form.
It was in the deep of the night, in the liminal hours where time seemed to dissolve, that Embodied Rebellion first began to take shape. In a darkened club called Sisyphos, surrounded by hundreds of bodies moving in sync to the pulse of the music, something was being etched into my being—something I didn’t yet have words for.
The bass thumped through my body, dissolving the boundaries between self and sound, and for the first time, I felt like I was the music. It was a communion with darkness, not as something to fear, but as something generative, something alive. The clubs in Berlin, and Berlin itself, became the forge where Embodied Rebellion emerged. I didn’t yet know its name, but I could feel it.
Berlin, in its own way, was a midwife for this process. The descent I had undergone, the deep relationship with darkness I had cultivated, was preparing me for this. I didn’t just think my way into Embodied Rebellion—I lived it. It was shaped through my body, through grief, through contrast, through the spaces that held me in Berlin.
Darkness has always been familiar to me, but this was different. It didn’t isolate or consume—it held, generated, and vibrated with life. On those dance floors, something clicked—something that felt like remembering. The movement, the surrender, the pulse of sound—it wove itself into me. I didn’t yet have the words for it, but I knew it was real. And long after the music stopped, it remained.
The Spectrum of Darkness
Darkness is not a monolith. It is not simply good or bad, nor is it a binary of unconscious and generative states. Nothing in life is binary—everything exists on a spectrum, in multidimensional layers. Darkness is no exception. My exploration isn’t about moralizing it, but about witnessing it, understanding its role in transformation, liberation, and balance.
For me, contrast has always been my way of knowing. Dissonance is often my first teacher. I come to understand things through contrast—first through resistance, a sense of not liking something, then later through its counterpoint, the deep resonance of truth. In that contrast, the full picture emerges. This pattern has shown up repeatedly in my life, guiding me toward an embodied understanding of the forces at play beyond simple intellectual grasp.
Living in that former Oregon town, I was immersed in an unconscious darkness. I had to live it, breathe it, feel its weight in my body before I could truly understand it. Then, as if guided by something beyond logic, I felt called to Berlin in 2022. At the time, I didn’t know why—only that something was waiting for me there. In hindsight, I see it clearly. Berlin revealed another kind of darkness—conscious, generative, alive with creative force. That contrast was necessary. It gave language to something I had only been feeling.
I’m still figuring this all out. I don’t claim to be an expert, but I do know that our relationship with darkness matters. When darkness remains unconscious, it manifests as harm, both personally and collectively. But when we engage with it intentionally, when we integrate it into our awareness, our culture, and our bodies, we create the possibility for greater harmony. This is not the only thing humanity needs to evolve, but it is one of many vital pieces.
This is my piece.
Just as we often speak of lightworkers—those who carry and transmit light—I believe there are also dark workers on this planet. There are people who are meant to understand darkness, who know how to navigate the underworld, who are called to guide others through descent and transformation.
This is the direction I feel pulled toward. In my next piece, I want to explore this idea of the dark worker—what it means, how it shows up, and why it is needed now more than ever.
As part of this series, I’ll be offering reflective questions at the end of each post—an invitation to pause, turn inward, and engage with these themes in your own way.
What kind of darkness have you experienced in your life? Is there a distinction between darkness that feels generative (a source of growth or creativity) and darkness that feels depleting or suffocating? Reflect on a time when you navigated both types of darkness. How did each shape your journey?
When you experience darkness, do you feel more inclined to isolate, numb, or shut down? How does your body react to moments of deep emotion or challenge? What might it look like to embrace vulnerability and lean into the discomfort rather than retreating?
How can you create space for both light and darkness in your life? Think about the ways in which you may try to separate or reject certain aspects of yourself or your experiences. What would it feel like to embrace the fullness of who you are, including the contradictions, messiness, and imperfections?
Generating from the unseen,
AW🖤
P.S. If you enjoyed this post and know of someone who may too, please share.
