The Dark Night of the Soul

Finding a pound on the ground, a holy dollar of fortune, can light up your whole day and until you spend it you can feel you’re not penniless. And then walking around town you see things to spend it on: a coffee, a sandwich, a piece of fruit or some beggar holding his hand out, maybe a plastic cross or the pound shop that has hundreds of shelves with things that are only a pound.

You can feel well-off with a pound in your pocket, until hunger makes you spend it.

And then there’s the Jesus waters, another frail crust of being that takes you into the urban reaches of where you belong they say, but they say so many things, and all of them another radio show to turn up to or not. You can get a sandwich and cup of tea there, and then it’s back out on the road with you.

So what is this pain that comes from the dark night of the soul and why is it so hard to deal with?

For me it was as if I’d taken a drug that stripped away every ounce of joy until there was nothing left but a sorrow so deep I couldn’t help but weep for hours on end, and months later I was still crying puddles on my knees on the floor; but cry as I might into the small hours of the night where I’d walk and ask the universe why, what is this for and what had I’d done to deserve such pain for so long?

I didn’t perceive an answer no matter what, even that was taken, all I had was a huge hurt in my heart that made me squirm and that nothing could take away.

A time came when I knew I had to go into the hurt even if it killed me. So I did. I just laid down on the floor and concentrated all I was into where the pain was coming from. I was determined to follow it to the source and confront it for what it was, and if my heart burst while doing it then so be it.

Although it felt like a long way, it was no distance at all and I found myself there, totally alone, and from nowhere I was in the presence of something that no words can explain except the word: nothing. And yet it was everything and I felt the greatest joy; but as a grin spread over me I called out: stop, you’ll break the mask in jest, and yet it was taken seemingly as a command and away went the presence and though I called out for it to come back I found myself returning away from all I wanted to be with; one moment with that love is all it takes.

When I came back to the world and the pain that was waiting for me, I didn’t care for it anymore so I sold everything and disappeared and no one would understand why; how could I tell them, what could I possibly say? I was broken from it all with no way back and no care for it anyway.

The old way of life was finished but it took me a few years to really know it and while I was finding it out I travelled far and saw many things.

From time to time, I’d break down and cry out and afterwards find a message just for me: a feather on the wind, an asking given, something to let me know I was being looked after.

The way of the world is a dark promise that can eat you alive until you are so tired with a strange sorrow that breaks you open until there’s nothing left but your own heart that’s nearer to you than can ever be said.

I can’t say for sure that eventually you come out the other side of it; that you will have to find out for yourself. Maybe there is no other side to come out to, perhaps it is a losing of all the unreal, a journey within, a knowing, an awakening where you listen to your own heart above all else where on the one hand you are the observer and on the other you are the participant living in the life.

Each must find their own way in this and deal with it in their own unique way.