h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

St. John of the Cross wrote about spiritual growth as did many saints of the church. But he also wrote about 'la noche oscura'. He was not talking about evil or suffering, but about mystery and the unknown, about a liberation from our attachments that allows us to realize our true nature and gives us the freedom to love.

John also used the word 'tinieblas' to describe a different kind of darkness. In 'The Living Flame of Love', John says that in 'oscuras' things are hidden; while in 'tinieblas' one is blind. It is the blindness of 'tinieblas' that 'la noche oscura' seeks to heal.

I think that most people today would think of heartache, suffering and despair when they hear the phrase dark night of the soul. And while spiritual darkness can encompass those things as well as emptiness, disorientation and fear, we need the darkness in order to move forward.

I currently find myself in a dark place. My inclination is to try to banish this darkness and bring myself into the light. But this is not what I should be doing. I need to learn to embrace the darkness and to learn from it. I know that love and acceptance is present in the darkness if I am willing to accept it.

How do others of you approach times of spiritual crisis and doubt?

H

I agree with you Hypatia. Embrace it. Let go into it. Allow yourself to travel where it takes you.

In some ways this place is the most beautiful gift. Right now I am sure it probably doesn't feel like it. But here; in the quiet, in the velvety darkness is the still small voice, whispering. Listen.

If you need to go and be with that, for as long as it takes, we will still be here.

I have been in a twilight place for a long time. Stationary. Frustrated. I thought that when this phase listed I would move toward understanding, that I would have some new awareness. Instead I'm moving into the darkness. And the darkness deepens no matter what I do to lighten it.

If darknesss is a gift from God, then I am truly blessed. I have run out of questions. I am learning that mystery is the destination, rather than the point of departure. I have to learn not to search for answers. When they come, they are brief flashes of light, but then the light vanishes and my world is darker than before it came.

I found myself recently so physically exhausted that I literally needed help getting out of my chair and to bed. My spiritual exhaustion is equal to that. I am weary unto death as the old saying goes.

Momenta, you have been a great source of inspiration to me. But I feel like I'm taking from you and the others in our conversations and giving nothing in return. Everything I do - both in person taking care of my job and my husband and mother - and here onsite where I'm trying to keep up a good front, every single thing requires a great effort. I feel like I'm losing myself in the process.

A couple of thoughts about my state. In order to fill a vessel, you must first empty it. I hope that what is happening to me is that all of my preconceptions and attachments are being emptied out of me so there will be room for something better - room for love and grace and peace.

Second - the light is blinding and tells me nothing. My eyes can never adjust to the light. But the darkness is cool and gentle and hopefully revealing. It is a place for me to rest. The darkness is the holy unknowing.

Thanks for letting me talk about this.

H

If you need to keep talking do continue, as much as you wish. It does not drain or take from me at all. I don't feel you give nothing in return, you give yourself. What else do any of us have to give? I don't need or want instruction or explanation. I need to receive from the heart of others; and even here, in your darkness and weariness that is what you give: your genuine true self. Intellectual debate I can happily live without for an eternity.

I feel the answer you seek lies within your post. Lose yourself to find yourself; empty yourself to be filled. Unfortunately(?) this can be a process that takes the time it takes. It is about surrender, a letting go of intellectual constructs or the need to understand. It is a place I have visited on more than one occasion. Generally heralded by me falling of the edge of my own logic whichever way I turn. It used to take me an age to accept that I had to let go, but I think often the appearance of being in control can mean the very opposite.

Anyway, please carry on and know that you are not alone in the darkness despite appearances to the contrary.

I think I must have been a contemplative in a previous life, because I long for solitude and resent the fact that it isn't possible. Right now I am full of frustration and resentment and can't get past it.


I need to start keeping a journal. That would be a place for me to express my true feelings. This is far too public a forum. You would send for the men with the butterfly nets to haul me away.

H

Of course, though your ramblings might not be as mad as you think. However, support here as an when needed.

When I read this I thought of your remark about receiving from the heart of others.

As a bee--without harming
the blossom,
its color
its fragrance--
takes its nectar & flies away:
so should the sage
go through a village.


-Dhammapada, 4, translated by Thanissaro Bhikkhu.

Right now I am wondering if we are intended to come through this phase. Perhaps we are just intended to experience life without always trying to lasso the infinite. But that leads those people who run from personal responsibility to justify their selfishness, thoughtlessness and cruelty.

There must be a middle ground out there, and by golly I'm going to find it.

H

Good on you! I'm sure you will. Lassoing the infinite is an interesting idea, but a somewhat unrealistic perhaps.

Middle ground, it's what it's all about in a way, yet not also of course. Perhaps a ground which incorporates all. I can really appreciate your wish to be a contemplative, it is something which has attracted me over the years, yet somehow that disengagement, that being an observer of the human race is lacking. Not for all, but for me at least.

To find that path where one is not all in or all out though; easier said than done. I'm getting there, still have the tendency to rush in or run away, but the urge becomes less strong; I seem to be able to hold myself much steadier these days.

Perhaps as you imply it is a constant state, a steady progress and increasing awareness. I don't think the blinding flash can bring one to anything lasting.

Anyway, I'm probably not helping, wittering on. Still here though.

i was skipping through the woods when i saw little red riding hood looking rather lost. being rather more of the elf than the imp, i had a closer look. turns out she was holding the map upside down. Upsy daisy! and she's on her way

hypatia,

sigh... letting go - it's such a pain sometimes. let me tell you a little story about myself, although i'm afraid it will reveal a few things about who i am that might colour perceptions of me too early.

i fell in love with this girl once. no, she wasn't a girl, but quite a woman. but there was enough of a girl in her nevertheless. never mind the reasons why, but this love of mine was rather asexual - more spiritual, more interested in laughing and bursting forth together than in anything else. there was a common platform of ideas, indeed the only one i had found till then with anybody else. there was a deep hunger for the same ideals, the same fears, the same loves. sometimes too much sameness. but i am digressing. the point is not whether we ever made into anything (we didn't), or whether we stayed as close in ideas - we didn't; ideas made the bond and ideas broke it. the point is what happened when i found i was in love.

i had never wanted to fall in love with her - we were too similar to be anything other than soulmates, i thought. now this woman, let's call her A, had this **** of a father who would do his absolute best to suppress her and her ideas - quite the loving father all right, but not one who knew anything at all about her, and trampled all over ideas in the process. these people were very traditional, and A, being quite a rebel (almost as much as me), suffered greatly under all this.

i had wanted to leave her alone; i'd wanted to see her grow and burst forth into the world, all by herself; i'd not wanted to interfere at all - help if asked, but i didn't want to change her in any way. and then i found myself wanting the exact opposite - her pain, which i'd always known (too well), now became something i couldn't take. i couldn't bear to leave her at the mercy of a world which i knew hated her. and i didn't want her to go through life missing certain things that i knew she wouldn't probably see if i didn't tell her. (i never got to tell her about those things, but that's not the point, either)

and then she didn't want me to either - it was her game and she wanted to play it all by herself. what could i do? i had to let go, throw up my hands into the air, and leave the results to chance or fate whatever. but i didn't like it - i wanted to break my distance, to rush in and grab her and run away, all the while kicking and screaming that she didn't want to be taken. but she had expressed a wish to be left alone, and i knew what a wish meant to each of us, and it would not have done at all to act against it. no it would not have done at all. but it still hurt.

what could i do? i kept away, just as she asked. because something in me always held me back when i wanted to jump into the fray - some realization deep inside that she was so important and so beautiful that i wanted to *be* her, and therefore that she was inviolate.

i never became a part of her life, for other reasons besides, and how we stand now is not important. what's important (to me) is that i let go, and probably saved her a lot of trouble. what's important is that i made a choice not to be a part of the picture, and now the picture is embedded too deeply in me to excise fully. i will never know what would have happened if we were involved more deeply. i will never know what happens to her now. but it doesn't matter. i saw something incredibly beautiful, and it has stuck with me since, and it has changed me.

i really don't know why i wrote this: perhaps i empathise with you and want to help. but i think the point i was trying to make is this:

There's this arabic word - 'Maktub' (that's mak-tuub, phonetically, a as in father, soft t). it means 'It is written'. That's a beautiful way of asking oneself to let go; what is written i might never know, but it is written, so why worry needlessly on that account? why even worry that you worry, if you do? It is perhaps written that you will worry. No matter. Maktub.

The night is dark, but it is also cold or warm or windy or still. it tells that you are alive and can feel - so what if it is only pain? Live the night, and you will live the day too.

-- db

db, you are who you are. Who you are is more beautiful for the sharing of any aspect unknown, under the surface. I feel such a connection with those who can be truly honest, as both you and Hypatia are here; for which of us has not felt pain, or a feeling of being lost or confused?

This might sound absurd, maybe not, but this thread opens my own heart more too. To myself as much as anything else.

Letting go is a strange thing, a mysterious one, because often in truly letting go I at least have discovered that what I thought I was letting go of resided in me even more strongly than before. Not in the desire for anything, but in the knowldge that the connection, the love, or whatever that I had sought so strenuously outside myself was inside me all along. That nothing and no one could take that from me. My love, my divinity and spirituality, mine. To love another is a gift, whether or not they are with us;for love, as you so clearly put it db, is not possession. My knowledge of this too is hard won. Very. It would not serve any purpose to share my story here, the point is already made. I was made more by my longing for love, for closeness to my own spirit, never less; whatever the external outcome.

See Hypatia, even sharing your distress and confusion, your emptiness, is giving.

I hope I haven't trodden carelessly on sacred ground here.

Having said I’m not going to share anything myself, I find I have the need to. I hope you don’t mind Hyp, this is somehow your space, but on considering where to put this there was nowhere else that felt right.

I find myself at a point of pain, or perhaps it is an opening or a breaking of a shell I didn’t even know was there. It all relates to my own Achilles heel, which is close relationships. I haven’t had one in the physical for quite a while now, I needed some space from all that, to find a new and better way of being. However, online over the past year and some I seem to have been led forward, by the divine, and myself also I am sure, through some fairly rocky and scary mountain paths, strange exalted places, mysterious ones; you get the picture. I have not only remained unharmed, I have learnt some extraordinary lessons I could have done with learning years ago, got to know some amazing people, somehow been protected from any true harm, cared for and caring. I have been slowly opening to parts of me unknown, both beautiful and longed for and absurd and misguided.

Today there is a breaking feeling. It hurts, yet I know too that it is needed. I don’t really know why it is happening. There are minor things, details, but nothing of any magnitude. It must be me, timing, right buttons pressed in the right way. I am surrendering.

I don’t know what else to say. Ouch perhaps.

There are times when things do need to end. Or at least transform. Thanks to both of you for sharing.

And sometimes an ending, though filled with pain, is also cathartic. It allows up to move forward.

I want to continue this but am totally exhausted right now. I would like to share another thought from John of the Cross. He was talking about a relationship with God and how we are always seeking a way to grow closer to the divine.

He says that we are already surrounded by the divine and thus have no need to find God or to draw close to God. Rather we need to develop an awareness of what we already possess. Then he said it is like a stone buried in the earth. It does not have to seek the earth. It is completely surrounded by earth and is a part of the earth. But it is possible for it to sink further, to go toward the center. We possess God and are possessed by God as the stone posses the earth and is possessed by the earth. The stone can move tot he center but cannot leave the earth. We can refuse to ackowledge a diving presence surrounding us, but we cannot abandon or be abandoned by God.

H