Black & White Crystals ~ Night and Day by Rev. Carol A. Ingle AKA Raven

[Dept of PMM Artists & things]

Black & White Crystals ~ Night and Day

From ghoulies and ghosties
And long-leggedy beasties
And things that go bump in the night,
Good Lord, deliver us!
-- Traditional Scottish Prayer

The fear of night and darkness may be one of the oldest human fears, and goes far beyond the sensible caution sighted people practice when physical visibility is reduced. This fear emphasizes that light and dark, so well married in art, suffer a condition of divorce in human consciousness.

Humans fear not only the night, but also nocturnal creatures: owls, bats, cats (especially black ones). On a deeper level, this translates to a fear of all that cannot be seen and logically understood.

•We may fear the physical aspects of night and darkness and all hidden mental, intuitive processes.
•We resist what we consider dark: negative emotions, challenges that look like disasters, things we don't want, the absence of things we do want.
•We may feel despair during those periods when it seems the light has abandoned us.

This month's Rainbow Reflections goes into more detail about the importance of the contrast of light and dark in our lives. Here I explores the practical aspects of blending our experiences of light and dark to bring balance into our lives.

I remember a mother bringing her little boy into my crystal store. She started explaining in very logical and rational terms the emotional conditions for which the child needed a crystal (mostly various kinds of anxieties).

As she was speaking, the boy cruised the crystal shelves and picked up a rhodochrosite. He came back to his mother's side and tried to show the crystal to her, but she was too busy listing his problems.

"So," she asked, "could you recommend a crystal for him?"

"I don't think I need to," I said. "He's picked the right one."

She finally looked down at him. "But how did he do that? He can't even read the signs and keywords for the stones."

Very rational people are suspicious of intuition, psychic phenomena, and sometimes strong emotions, because they can't be explained through a scientific, cause-and-effect approach. They use "facts" and what they consider reality to ground them, not daring to trust that they can also find grounding and protection in the natural, intuitive rhythms of physical existence, in the perfect balance of light and dark that shapes the material world.

To a lesser extent, lack of trust may occur when physical existence seems to be seriously disappointing or betraying us. When that happens, getting together with a pair of light and dark crystals can help to restore balance.

Methods for Rebalance

1. Holding Crystals

One effective way is to hold a clear crystal (not necessarily quartz) in one hand and a dark stone in the other. (Some sources suggest holding a dark stone in your non-dominant hand, a clear one in your dominant hand. I tend to do the opposite.)

Sit or lie down. I recommend picking up the dark crystal first, for grounding purposes. Feel its energy. radiating from your hand through your body.

For example, hold a hematite. Feel its energy, and if you would like to, envision it forming a psychic shield that protects you emotionally.

Once you feel grounded and protected, pick up a danburite with your other hand and focus on its energy. Feel soft white light surrounding you. Briefly think about the issue that has you feeling unbalanced. Then envision everything in your life that's positive, that gives you encouragement and joy. Allow yourself to believe that this temporarily unbalancing development will find a way of fitting into the harmony of your life.

Sit as long as you can or want to (ideally, ten to fifteen minutes), and feel the energy of these two crystals blending, creating a pattern of balance and harmony.

2. Chakra Balancing

A variant of the above would be to place the dark stone at the base of your feet and the clear stone on or near the crown of your head. Again, you may wish to position the dark stone first for grounding purposes, then the clear stone. Then follow the steps above.

3. Gem Essences

See an article on gem essences for instructions on making gem essences. Combine either the pairs listed below or any dark/light stone combination that appeals to you.

In addition to the hematite/danburite combination, I've found two others to be valuable.

Obsidian and Clear Quartz

Obsidian is probably the most challenging stone used in crystal work. This form of volcanic glass has has been used by many native cultures to make knives. Emotionally and spiritually, it cuts to the heart of the matter, revealing what one may be trying to ignore.

You might be feeling that it's unfair that someone else got a promotion you wanted. Working with obsidian might bring to the surface what your role in this development was. Maybe you didn't want to work the extra hours the new position would have entailed. Perhaps you didn't want the responsibility. Maybe not getting the promotion makes you realize you'd prefer another career entirely.

These recognitions can be painful, for, although obsidian brings energy blockages to the surface, it doesn't dissolve them. Clear quartz, however, can help in the dissolving process. It can help you to release whatever blame you might be piling on yourself or feelings of failure. It can help to clear a path to your awareness that no matter how the circumstances of the physical world may temporarily unbalance you, in essence you are a manifestation of pure light. The more you can open yourself to this light, the greater your ability to consciously make choices that enhance your life.

Black Tourmaline and Clear Calcite

These stones are both members of large crystal families. The general properties of tourmaline include the ability to break up energy blockages that cause stress and confusion, thus enabling calmness and clarity.

Mentally, this can help us move beyond limited ways of thinking in order to embrace a greatly expanded concept of reality. Tourmaline teaches that we are light beings in physical form and helps us to experience the physical and spiritual worlds as one.

Black tourmaline has the particular ability to repel negative energy. This can mean energy we experience as coming from outside of ourselves or to inner emotions, such as anger, resentment, or jealousy. This crystal can have a general effect of creating a general state of calm and stability, an ideal form of grounding.

Once grounded in this dimension, people find it easier to explore others, and that is the role of clear calcite. When we become open to the possibility that the realm of spirit is just as real as the physical plane, our world becomes even larger.

The calcites in general help to remove the blockages that prevent us from making the transition to new ways of being.

Clear calcite helps us to experience the spiritual plane as directly connected to the physical. The ability to infuse spiritual understanding into physical reality may give us an expanded awareness of the challenges we face, especially the challenges we've more or less given up on, the patterns of thought and behavior which are so seamless that we don't know how to unravel them.

I especially recommend gazing at clear calcite, turning it in your hands. If you have chosen to work with a calcite sphere, its seamless form will express the ultimate in connection. Gazing at a calcite sphere will probably also give you the opportunity to experience the healing and illuminating energies of rainbows.

Probably the optimal way to combine meditation with black tourmaline and clear calcite is to sit with a black tourmaline at your feet (some people also like to move it through the aura to create protection) and hold your calcite (in whatever form) in your hands. Gaze at the calcite and imagine that those problems that look so difficult on the physical plane are being solved right now in nonphysical reality.

Merkabah Meditations

I have just begun using these for left/right brain balancing, and so far I've been working exclusively with smoky quartz (both wearing and meditating with it). I believe my next step will be to meditate with a smoky merkabah in one hand and a clear merkabah in the other. Other experiments may follow.

Use Your Intuition

In your crystal balancing act, you might also find yourself drawn to a dark blue crystal, such as sodalite or azurite, or a dark red stone like red jasper.

Feel free to use your imagination and intuition in combining dark and light crystals.

http://www.rainbowcrystal.com/crystal/blackandwhite.html