The Dark illuninates

by Kayla Drake (United States of America)

I didn't expect to find Belize

There in the darkness I found what I least expected: myself, with roots extended back into the past, the collective experience of a people long gone possessing me as the water rushed past me. The Mayans had a myth of a great tree of life, branches extending up into the divine ancestral realm, roots penetrating the dark depths of the underworld. Roots whose eery tapering shape formed the stalactites that adorn the high ceilings of sacred caverns. This particular cave is to this day viewed by the locals as a portal to the underworld, known as Xibalba. This realm is home to the dead, and thus is reigned over by a series of demons with strikingly grotesque names. The pus demon and the scabby demon are among them. I shuddered as I considered the darkness that engulfed me. All too often we are afraid not of the dark itself but what could be lurking in it. So when our local guide stopped us and implored that we turn off our headlamps and refrain from any noise, people shifted uneasily and glanced at each other before reluctantly clicking off their lights, no one wanting to be the first. We had trudged and swam for miles into this cave, over charging waterfalls and through narrow tunnels. The water pushing against us was an unforgiving cold that made you forget the feeling of warmth. Against the current we struggled over slick rock formations and maneuvered carefully around whirlpools that threatened to carry one ever down into darkness. Despite some close calls, we had made it this far unscathed. But some feared that this would be the end of them. A darkness so complete that you become convinced utterly of your dissolution into the water and float away with the current that penetrates you. A darkness so complete that all except mind melts away. At several points during that exceptionally long few minutes, I felt the urge to call out. Was anyone else still there? Or was I suddenly alone in the cave? All awareness of other faded into the dark, as I delved into a contemplative state. The rush of the water was no longer deafening, in fact it was barely noticeable. All that could be heard was the din of my thoughts. There in the dark of a time long gone, I felt what it is to be human. I felt the mortality. Images of the symbolic lifestyle of a past era. To be human is to wonder at the mysteries of life: death, rebirth, afterlife, darkness and light, good and evil. The myths that once arose to answer these questions still mark what it is to be human. By understanding these we understand who we are and what eternally has mattered to us. In a world full of lights we've forgotten what it's like to be in the dark. The questions and fears that are so natural to us in childhood are swept away with the flip of a switch. We thus send these fears to the back of our mind, but they are a fundamental part of us. In the cave I felt that lost sense of fear. In a dark like that, rationality goes out the window. It shows us just how fragile the human is. The Mayans’ tree of life was just one of many attempts to symbolically and meaningfully exist in the world among all these human fears and questions. There in the primordial dark, the myths I had studied became clear at long last. A voice uttered in the depths of my mind, calling me to return to my roots. In that moment, without modern comforts, I was more human, more myself than ever.