“Darkness” refers to understanding.
Night is a time of blackness, not darkness.
Darkest Before Dawn
'It is always darkest before dawn” is talking less about the physical dawning of the Sun and more about spiritual, mental and emotional dawning.When you are seeking understanding you are seeking to come out of Darkness into the Marvelous Light of Understanding.
Simply put, the process of understanding requires working with more information than you currently are accessing and/or it requires processing more information than you are used to processing. By necessity then, you start with a certain level of understanding, then, as a result of the process of gaining understanding, you move from considering one possible understanding to simultaneously considering several possible understandings.
By necessity then, because you have untied your thinking to one way and allowed it to move around the Ecosystem of Logic, you move downward into darkness into a place where you can't tell which understanding is going to finally come out of this process.
By necessity then, because understanding has moved to its darkest point, it must now begin to move upward into Light – that is, if you do not abandon the process.
Understanding always, always comes, even if it is not the one you started out seeking.
The understanding you started out seeking will come if you keep going through the process to understand that which is being put right in front of your awareness that you must first understand. (UC#745) So yes it is and no it isn't always darkest before dawn.
Blackest Before Dawn
“It is always blackest before dawn” must now be brought back to the physical level.It is a slow, but steady process that leads to the blackest part of night. Likewise, it is a slow, but steady process that leads to the brightest part of day. So yes it is and no it isn't always blackest before dawn.
Using The Metaphor Of Birds
The Sun projects multiple forms of Light in all angles, not just straight up or down and not just from the front.Most, if not all, non-human creations know Light is increasing before the Sun of Day breaks above the horizon.
Several hours before dawn, many daytime creatures are up and about. They have been awakened by the Sun. As the Sun is moving upwards after reaching its lowest point, it reaches a point where enough Angles Of Light can be detected above the horizon. Humans, who are more calibrated to Artificial Light than Natural Light are no longer awakened by the Sun's magnetic-electrical energy. Those humans need an Artificial Alarm Clock. On the other hand, there is no such thing as an actual bird who is an “early bird.” All birds wake up right when they are supposed to and before a lot of humans do.
Summarizing
It is both the Darkest and the Lightest and the Blackest and the Brightest, just when understanding and Light are about to turn the corner and head the other way. First of all, yes, at some point during every day it is always the brightest it is going to be before dusk.Second of all, yes, at some point during every night, it is always the blackest it is going to be before dawn.
Third of all, yes, at some point, you will always understand as much as you're going to understand, before you have to go back through the entire process, down the path into deeper, darker murkiness before you can come back out on the other side where understanding is again increasing.
Fourth of all, yes, at some point you will always be the farthest you will ever be away from understanding something before you eventually make a breakthrough into much greater understanding.
Now to summarize from a different perspective:
The saying: “It is always darkest before dawn,” is only true to the degree, you do not perceive the process of moving from Darkness into Light.
There are degrees of Understanding and degrees of Light and degrees within those degrees.If your context and definitions for what “Understanding,” “Light,” “Darkness,” and “Blackness” are, limits the definitions to only mean the full manifestation of those terms, then it just might be darkest and blackest before dawn; however, if your context and definitions take into account the same basic process that allows you to physically grow through stages, then no, it is not always darkest or blackest before dawn. Note: On any given night and day, the influence of Moon, Stars, Clouds, Rain, other weather events, your position in relation to Earth and Earth's position in relation to Sun, can cause the blackest and brightest moments, that humans perceive, to occur at times other than Midnight and Midday. In other words, as you are seeking understanding, pieces of illumination can come from several places and perspectives, other than one source. Also, that which obscures understanding in bits and bytes can come in many forms from many places. You must always remember: you are seeking a Universal understanding, not just an Earth-based or human-based understanding. Universal understanding is the difference between humans who are simply doing and human beings.
