» How to be with our Dark Night of the Soul «
These times are intense hey! Everything is unsettled, every aspect of life is being shaken up and we are empty of certainties. Whether it is helpful or not, I’ve been framing this time as our collective Dark Night of the Soul, that mythic journey we undertake in order to strip ourselves of all illusions.
Individually I think we’ve all been here hey. And there’s something to knowing we came through the burning, we found new footing, we shifted our attention and awareness to the degree that was needed in order to expand. Giving birth is like that; marriage break-ups, miscarriages, addiction, being witness to someone dying is like that; requiring a combination of strength and resolve, dancing with surrender and grace. Most of us can recognise these dance moves, we each have had our own unique story that served to teach us those dance steps.
And perhaps along the way we found allies. Mystic ones like Kali - the Dark Mother who comes from the periphery, from the exiled parts of our psyche, to inform the Self what we haven’t been willing to hear.
I love what Walt Whitman wrote in Ode to Death...
Dark Mother always gliding near with soft feet / Have none chanted for you / A chant of fullest welcome / Then I chant it for you / I glorify you above all / I bring you a song / That when you must indeed come / You come unfalteringly.
Whitman has somehow learned that to call in these allies is indeed a great gesture.
I am a fan of Vera De Chalambert - a scholar and devotee of Kali the Dark Mother. Kali, she says, will see to it that we are broken; “Nothing can save us from disappointment, despair, depression, disease” she writes, “There is no hope for us. But that is not a hopeless condition.”
Isn’t that a great paradox!
Vera goes on to say that - like Whitman - when we can allow ourselves to glorify in the Dark Mother’s dance, a tenderness can arise. Perhaps in the depth of rage and hatred for the moment, we may also feel a Sympathy for the murderer behind bars. We discover; What is in me is in you. And in that; “we can meet our brokenness together. We can be a refuge”.
Being light and love can’t exclude these dark places that Kali takes us to. Why?
I’ll let Rilke answer that:
I don’t have much knowledge yet in grief - / so this massive darkness makes me small. / You be the master: make yourself fierce, break in: / then your great transforming will happen to me, / and my great grief cry will happen to you.
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