Part 3: Dark Clarity: Divination and Spirit-Work During Exhaustion

People think clarity is a feeling, calm, focused, bright. And while that may be true from a Yang perspective, classical Daoist texts describe another kind of clarity as a counterpart:

• bright clarity (明, ming): sharp, directional, upward

• dark clarity (幽, you): diffused, subterranean, dreamlike

Most Western practitioners only know (and trust) the first. The the second is the one that appears when you’re in a Yin season, whether that is reflected through Winter, are in a liminal space, or are simply spent and exhausted. Yang is associated with knowledge; Yin is associated with knowing, or what is oracular and peripheral.