the dark night of the soul
7/24
"The Dark Night of the Soul is the night in which all images die and all belonging is severed; the abyss where Nothingness dwells. When the voice speaks from the realm of such relentless Un-doing, it is a voice in which wilderness has come alive.
This is a limbo of desolation and despair, reminiscent of Shakespeare's phrase: "With what I must enjoy contented least". Endurance is all; now there is nothing else. A time of bleakness can also be a time of pruning. Sometimes when our minds are dispersed and scattered, this pruning cuts away all false branching where our passion and energy were leaking out. While it is painful to experience and endure this, a new focus and clarity emerge. This light that was hard won offers the greatest illumination. A gift wrestled from bleakness will often confer a sense of sureness and grounding of the self, a strengthening proportionate to the travail of its birth. The severity of Nothingness can lead to beauty. Where life has gone stale, transfiguration occurs. The ruthless winter clearance of spirit quietly leads to springtime of possibility. Perhaps Nothingness is the secret source from which all beginning springs.
There are times of malaise, when life moves into the stillness of quiet death. Though you function externally, something is silently dying inside you, something you can no longer save. You are not able to name what you are losing, but you sense that it's departure cannot be halted. Those who know you well can hear behind the words the deadened voice, the monotone of unremedied sadness. Your lost voice cannot be quieted. It becomes audible despite your best efforts to mask it...The adventure of voice into silence and silence into voice: this is the privilege and the burden of the poet."
John O'Donohue
Beauty: The Invisible Embrace
"The Dark Night of the Soul is the night in which all images die and all belonging is severed; the abyss where Nothingness dwells. When the voice speaks from the realm of such relentless Un-doing, it is a voice in which wilderness has come alive.
This is a limbo of desolation and despair, reminiscent of Shakespeare's phrase: "With what I must enjoy contented least". Endurance is all; now there is nothing else. A time of bleakness can also be a time of pruning. Sometimes when our minds are dispersed and scattered, this pruning cuts away all false branching where our passion and energy were leaking out. While it is painful to experience and endure this, a new focus and clarity emerge. This light that was hard won offers the greatest illumination. A gift wrestled from bleakness will often confer a sense of sureness and grounding of the self, a strengthening proportionate to the travail of its birth. The severity of Nothingness can lead to beauty. Where life has gone stale, transfiguration occurs. The ruthless winter clearance of spirit quietly leads to springtime of possibility. Perhaps Nothingness is the secret source from which all beginning springs.
There are times of malaise, when life moves into the stillness of quiet death. Though you function externally, something is silently dying inside you, something you can no longer save. You are not able to name what you are losing, but you sense that it's departure cannot be halted. Those who know you well can hear behind the words the deadened voice, the monotone of unremedied sadness. Your lost voice cannot be quieted. It becomes audible despite your best efforts to mask it...The adventure of voice into silence and silence into voice: this is the privilege and the burden of the poet."
John O'Donohue
Beauty: The Invisible Embrace
