Maybe Asher or anyone else has some insight into the following story. As Asher mentioned the experience of my dream is much in tune with a devoted Hindu, although I have never had any involvement with Hinduism nor have much knowledge about the religion itself.

When I moved to Oregon, into a small village, 9 years ago, greeting me upon my arrival in my new home was a hanged black wooden carving of what since then I learned is of the Hindu god Brahma, Vishnu, Durga Kali and Shiva. It is about 5 feet long and approximately 2 feet wide. I found it hanging within a room which is my office now.

This wooden carving is an absolute mystery to me and anyone else associated with me. My home previously belonged to a strict Polish Catholic, and having investigated all possibilities as to who could have hung this carving in my new home is unknown. The widow of the previous owner has absolutely no knowledge, nor the rest of his family, neighbors, friends, realtors, etc. No one has any idea how it got to be in my home. The energy around the carving is very good. It is an expensive piece of art because one can even see the cuticle on the fingers of Vishnu and the eyes look life like.

My son checked the wall in back of the carving and there was no outline found which is usually in back of paintings that have hung on a wall for awhile. This carving was deffinitely placed into my home just before I moved in. My friend Joy, a Buddhist, said that Vishnu is holding a treasure chest for me. All of this is an absolute puzzle. Thought I would share this mystery. No one has ever called me re the carving. So I live in harmony with it.

Hi MM--

The reason why I mention Aurobindo is because he does have an intricate psychology connected to his Yoga. He was particularily critical of traditional Hindu conceptions of the end of Yoga being moksha, or liberation. I have benefited from his writings, but he does have a colloquial style. I don't think Wilber really does justice to him, but then I don't think Wilber does justice to many writers.

Sounds like a neat experience, Freebird. I tend to see that some religious paths can offer us sustenence in secret, quite beyond our own cultural or religious understanding. Perhaps God sometimes streches the boundaries of our imagination (and even spiritual experience) to be more inclusive of other viewpoints. This seems to be my daily experience. And I don't really consider it an ambivalance on my part. I suppose that we each have unique jouneys.

I remember going to Marmora in hopes of communing with the Blessed Mother, only to stumble upon a strange carving of her, nestled quietly in the woods. Not many people would have seen this one as it was not part of the stations of the cross. It was an Indian carving of the Blessed Mother which I found particularily poignant, because of its intricate detail and some devotional and blissful quality that I never normally associate with the Blessed Mother. I was quite happy that I had stumbled into that in the woods surrounding the sacred site.

Here's another fun one, a friend and I were meditating together I go into a place where I sometimes go and it is filled with the compassion of the Blessed Mother. My friend stops the meditation and says that at that moment he had a vision on the Blessed Mother by the altar of our (at the time Guru). He said he had never seen her before. God only understands these mysteries.

I am so happy that the Blessed Mother appeared to Moslems, and Moslems saw her too. My aunt gave me a book written by a Sufi called "Mary." Moslems really extol her.

Yours Truly,
Asher

Great-full for your presence, Asher!

U2 Freebird!

"He seems to be a foremost 20th century philosopher, and as most of them have, attempts to "integrate" a bit more Darwinism into his scheme than
I would.

Since he spent many years in seclusion, he likely did pass through the Dark Night and has something reliable to transmit about this."

MM--

Aurobindo did talk about the Dark Night as a transitional stage in some of his letters. He details the dangers of it in a different way than John of the Cross. And, quite frankly, one can never be certain that it is the same state. I suspect that the Dark Night is more connected to Christianity (and Christ's human experience transmitted to his disciples) than it is to other paths and I would be reluctant to say that Sri Aurobindo went through such at stage.

I'm not sure if such transitional states are akin to a Christian dark night, or are these stages unique to Hinduism/yogic paths? Here's Aurobindo on a particular key transitional state in his schema:

"This is in fact an intermediary state, a zone of transition between the ordinary consciousness in mind and the true yoga knowledge. One may cross without hurt through it, perceiving at once or at an early stage its real nature and refusing to be detained by its half-lights and tempting but imperfect and often mixed and misleading experiences; one may go astray in it, follow false voices and mendacious guidance, and that ends in a spiritual disaster; or one may take up one�s abode in this intermediate zone, care to go no farther and build there some half-truth which one takes for the whole truth or become the instrument of the powers of these transitional planes, - that is what happens to many sadhaks and yogis."

Some of these temptations sound akin to the unconscious unloading positive and negative experiences. Although, I think a Christian like Father Keatings stresses the moral/spiritualizing effect more than Sri Aurobindo. Sri Aurobindo, stresses the dangers more than John of the Cross. Sri Aurobindo sees these as forces external to the psyche, something I have found problematic.

There is a danger, in other words, of seeing these forces as autonomous of the self. But I'm sure that Aurobindo would retort and say that the individual is composed of mental, vital, physical forces all in a playground of relative ignorance.

It is the heart, or psychic being which opens the doorway, according to Aurobindo, to integration. For Aurobindo the psychic being (really the deeper heart, as distinguished from sentimentality. The relational heart. The heart of devotion, self sacrifice, humility etc.) which can organize all the various factions into a divine "government".

I would suggest that in Aurobindo's path, the gradual coming to the fore of the psychic being in the darkness of what he calls the vital being is somewhat akin to St. John's description of the Dark Night, but not identical to it.

PS. I am not a disiciple nor have I ever been one of Sri Aurobindo, just to make this clear.

Hello everyone.
I found this board on accident while searching for information about Barbara Dent, author of 'My only friend is darkness'. I recently finished the book which was very, very helpful to me. I was wondering if anyone can comment on the purification of relationships?
This has been the hardest for me to understand. Thankfully I have a wonderful spiritual director who has helped me tremendously, but I would like to hear other peoples experiences with this area of the Dark Nights.
I am a wife and mother of three children. The children are 8, 2 and almost 1. When my 2 year old was under 1 we were told he had a disease that was life threatening and could have left him having serious disabilitys. Thanks be to God, and St. John Maximovitch whom we prayed to, he is fine and doesn't have this disease, or was healed from it. But going through the experience, months of not knowing how the disease would affect him, and a couple of weeks in the hospitol, I can see how this changed my relationship with my children and how I see them.
During this I depended and turned to God completly. Realizing my children were really His children. That He has blessed me by letting me raise them and take care of them and it is my job to return them to Him. I had to let go. I had to say okay Lord my child is really yours, and you love him far more then I do, your will be done, thank you for giving your children to me, may your will be done in their lives no matter what it is, even if it means this disease takes my baby from me. During this time I didn't have any fear, only peace, knowing Gods will, even if I don't like it is the best thing one can hope for.
I think this was detachement for me. Seeing my relationship with my children through my relationship with God. Instead of only seeing me and my children and what I want and don't want to happen. My love for them has changed through this detachment, it has grown deeper and stronger then before. I have a hard time describing this, it is one of those things I know in my heart but can't put into words well.
My relationship with my husband has been more difficult for me. But I can see the detachment process happening and I am trying to submit my will to God in this area as well, though it is very hard. Part of the reason it is hard for me is I don't understand how my relationship should be with my husband, in what ways it should be different then now. I know for us to ever truly love others, with Christ's love, we must first completly attach our hearts to God and God alone, so He can then love through us, so Christ can dwell within us. But while this process is happening, which I know is a ongoing life-long process, I feel confused about feelings and changes I see happening. The fact that my husband and I are at diffrent levels of spiritual maturity right now, something that is new for us, makes things harder.
Anyways maybe others have something to say about the purification of relationships. Sorry if my writing is confusing, all of this is hard to put into words.

God bless,
Jessica

Jessica, that's a most compelling story. I thought you worded it very well.

The fact that my husband and I are at diffrent levels of spiritual maturity right now, something that is new for us, makes things harder.
Anyways maybe others have something to say about the purification of relationships.

Is it possible to show him what you've written here? That might facilitate a useful and open discussion. If he's at a different level, is it still a level appropriate to him? And if you're ahead of him spiritually, that can serve to put you into a position where your wisdom and quiet influence could be quite helpful to him.

Jessica,

Hi! I am genetically handicapped in the relations department. Please share your experience
as I have two left feet and am all thumbs. See what I mean, I mix metaphors and bungle even the simplest
communications. Sometimes when women teach me about relating, they tell me I'm dumb in such a very nice way...

The following article appears on my website, www.mountainrunnerdoc.com.

The Dark Night of the Soul:
Spiritual Crises and Breakthroughs in the Christian and Buddhist Traditions

by Peter Holleran


St. John of the Cross was described by Thomas Merton as �the greatest of all mystical theologians", and his writing stands at the pinnacle of the Christian mystic tradition. The Dark Night of the Soul, his best known work, is a peerless account of spiritual blindness and its eradication by divine grace. For St. John, the dark night is not just an occasional dry patch, but a major and lengthy transformational crisis.

"Into this dark night souls begin to enter when God draws them forth from the state of beginners - which is the state of those that meditate on the spiritual road - and begins to set them in the state of the progressives - which is that of those who are already contemplatives - to the end that, after passing through it, they may arrive at the state of the perfect, which is that of the Divine union of the soul with God."

According to St. John, the true Divine Light is dark to the soul (ego), so that when the divine influence is most potent one often feels as if he is losing ground. A great undoing is necessary to prepare the soul for union or identity with the divine or higher Self, since it is so thoroughly identified with the �Old Man�. This undoing he describes in terms of two �nights�, the night of sense and the night of spirit. The first is �bitter and terrible�, and makes performance of spiritual exercises useless and futile, for varying periods of time, while the second night is �horrible and awful�, undermining the individual at his roots. According to St. John, many may enter the first, but few the second, depending on the maturity of the soul and the grace of God. These great trials have parallels with psycho-therapeutic processes, and some have suggested reducing the experiences of the medieval mystics to such, yet St. John would argue that they extend far beyond psychology, essentially coming to prepared souls for the purpose of producing the purified disposition capable of feeling the sublime self-transcending touches of divine grace and realization. Yet while ultimately dealing with such lofty matters, the astute analysis and advice of St. John has meaning and usefulness for many who find themselves in an apparent quandary on the path.

Depending on ones approach to spiritual practise, grace or the apparent fruit of ones effort often manifests in the beginning with the gift of visions, positive emotions, interiorization of attention, and experiences of subtle energies. These are a glimpse of things to come and a form of incentive for the seeker to persevere in spiritual work. For St. John, the dark night generally only comes to those souls who have enjoyed many such "sweets," which were initial gifts to wean them from complete attachment to the world. In order for some to progress further, however, these experiences may fade, and true tests of will, determination, and patience will come to the aspirant, who may then feel as if he has been abandoned, whereas, in truth, this is not so. He is actually being brought to a new stage in which he is humbled, emptied of self-satisfaction, and prepared for a more permanent realization of his higher Self or Soul, wherein he will also be able to perceive things in a divine or universal manner, rather than a personal or egoic one, which he could not do otherwise as a beginner, due to his inherent ignorance. In other words, since the aspirant cannot help but unconsciously conceive of his goal in the form of a personal attainment, it is inevitable at some point that there may be a spiritual impasse. Much of this will depend on his personal karmas and/or relationship with an enlightened Teacher, and the form of practise that he engages. One contemporary mystic has suggested that perhaps no more than one in four will undergo a dark night similar to that which St. John has described. Of this experience Paul Brunton tells us:

�In that state there is also a work being done for him by Grace, but it is deep in the subconscious mind far beyond his sight and beyond his control....In that terrible darkness he will find himself absolutely alone, able to depend on nothing else than what he finds within his own innermost being. Without anyone to guide him and with none to companion him, he will have to learn an utter self-reliance..It is useless to complain of the terror of this experience for, from the first moment that he gave his allegiance to this quest, he unconsciously invited its onset. It had to come even though the day of its coming was yet far off." (1)

The German mystic Tauler, in one of his Sunday sermons, said:

�Think not that God will always be caressing his children, or shine upon their head, or kindle their hearts as He does at the first. He does so only to lure us to Himself, as the falconer lures the falcon with its gay hood...We must stir up and rouse ourselves and be content to leave off learning, and no more enjoy strong feeling and warmth, and must now serve the Lord with strenuous industry and at our own cost.� (2)

Evelyn Underhill, in the classic work Mysticism , offers an in-depth consideration of the process of the dark night. In one passage she writes:

�In Illumination, the soul, basking in the Uncreated Light, identified the Divine Nature with the divine light and sweetness which it enjoyed. Its consciousness of the transcendant was chiefly felt as an increase of personal vision and personal joy. Thus, in that apparently selfless state, the �I, the Me, and the Mine�, though spiritualized, still remains intact. The mortification of the senses was more than repaid by the rich and happy life which this mortification conferred upon the soul. But before the whole self can learn to love on those high levels where - its being utterly surrendered to the Infinite Will - it can be wholly transmuted in God, merged in the great life of the All, this dependence on personal joys must be done away. The spark of the soul must so invade every corner of character that the self can only say with St. Catherine of Genoa, �my me is God: nor do I know my selfhood except in God.� (3)

Madame Guyon similarly confessed:

�The soul, after many a redoubled death, expires at last in the arms of Love; but she is unable to perceive these arms...Then, reduced to Nought, there is found in her ashes a seed of immortality, which is preserved in these ashes and will germinate in its season. But she knows not this; and does not expect ever to see herself living again....and the soul which is reduced to the Nothing, ought to dwell therein; without wishing, since she is now but dust, to issue from this state, nor, as before, desiring to live again. She must remain as something which no longer exists: and this, in order that the Torrent may drown itself and lose itself in the Sea, never to find itself in its selfhood again; and that it may become one and the same thing with the Sea.� (4)

Augustine Baker tells us:

"For first He not only withdraws all comfortable observable infusions of light and grace, but also deprives her of a power to exercise any perceivable operations of her superior spirit, and of all comfortable reflections upon His love, plunging her into the depths of her inferior powers. Here, consequently, her former calmness of passions is quite lost, neither can she introvert herself; sinful motions and suggestions do violently assault her, and she finds great difficulty (if not greater) to surmount them as at the beginning of a spiritual course...If she would elevate her spirit, she sees nothing but clouds and darkness. She seeks God, and cannot find the least marks or footsteps of His Presence; something there is that hinders her from executing the sinful suggestions within her,but what that is she knows not, for to her thinking she has no spirit at all, and indeed, she is now in a region of all other most distant from spirit and spiritual operations - I mean, such as are perceptible." (5)

Underhill summarizes this process:

"The self, then, has got to learn to cease to be its "own center and circumference": to make that final surrender which is the price of final peace. In the Dark Night the starved and tortured spirit learns through an anguish which is "itself an orison" to accept lovelessness for the sake of Love, Nothingness for the sake of the All; dies without any sure promise of life, loses when it hardly hopes to find. It sees with amazement the most sure foundations of its transcendental life crumble beneath it, dwells in a darkness which seems to hold no promise of a dawn. This is what the German mystics call the "upper school of true resignation" or of "suffering love"; the last test of heroic detachment, of manliness, of spiritual courage." (6)

St. John is especially critical of those who wish to linger in a passive state of grace, enjoying the consolation of visions and other �sweets�; he asks readers to abandon the disposition of mere �babes� and to become grown men, capable of receptivity to the divine ego-less light which transcends all experiential phenomena.

The so-called dark night can perhaps be viewed as a somewhat inevitable ordeal that aspirants pass through in one form or another, due to the very nature of spiritual blindness, or egoic adaptation in all of its dimensions. No matter what the teacher says about the necessity of self-surrender and self-transcendance, the Way is conceived, consciously or unconsciously, as a �path� or �road� or �ladder� that the ego-self moves along from stage to stage. Real help is required to accomplish the true spiritual work which undermines this conception of a self-existing separate self. The guidance of a competent spirtual director is essential, according to St. John, although the real work is done by God, with the soul's fidelity and cooperation.

Thus one finds Job, who may be considered as an archtypal servant of the Lord, thrown into a condition of confusion, despair and anguish, where everything he did turned against him. The Koran refers to this as the �state of self-accusing�. His ordeal ended when he felt the human limits of the personality or ego and surrendered its sovereignty.

In the Zen tradition one hears of the state of the �great doubt� that burns like a ball of red-hot fire that one can neither swallow nor spit out. This �doubt� is a thought or feeling-sense of the struggle with self as it begins to become clear that you yourself , as you are , are the problem, but the problem itself (the activity of contraction or false identification, which is egoity) is not obvious as yet. When the insight arises to consciousness, the distress is released, the �doubt� vanishes, and one is then able to practice as one who has truly entered the path.

A Zen equivalent for the dark night is referred to as �descending into the cave of the blue dragon.� (7)

Master Hakuin said:

�I felt as if I were sitting in an ice cave ten thousand miles thick. I myself shall never forget the spiritual struggle I had in sheer darkness for years.� (8)

One must endure this process completely and allow oneself to be put to the test. Once one has been given hope and strength by an initial spiritual glimpse, he is then shown who the enemy is. And from that point on there is no way out but through. Half-hearted efforts will not create the inner alchemy that brings the ego to a liberating crisis.

�The greater the doubt, the greater the awakening; the smaller the doubt, the smaller the awakening; no doubt,
no awakening.� (9)

In The Conference of the Birds the Persian mystic Attar speaks of this as the �valley of detachment�. The Buddha describes his pre-enlightenment experience likewise in harrowing terms:

�Then Sariputta, I plunged into a fearsome forest thicket and dwelt therein. Such was the fearsome horror of that dread forest thicket that anyone whose passions were not stilled and entered there, the very hairs of his body would stand on end.� (10)

Eventually the process completes itself and the pilgrim emerges from his journey through the wilderness. In psychological language, the inflated ego is leveled by a confrontation with the shadow and a higher principle is introduced. Eventually the ego itself yields, after repeatedly being seen for what it is in its unconsoling nakedness. St. John reminds us that this entire ordeal of the dark night is of a divine design:

�O spiritual soul, when thou seest thy desire obscured, thy will arid and constrained, and thy faculties incapable of any interior act, be not grieved by this, but look upon it rather as a great good, for God is delivering thee from thyself.� (11)

Though it may seem that nothing good can ever come from the midst of such an impasse, the aspirant is in the center of the oldest, most sacred struggle. The ego must lay itself on the altar, in order for man to become identified with his Soul. The anguish at this stage comes from the ego seeing that this is the one thing it can never do by itself. Paul Brunton explains:

�The ego does not give itself up without undergoing extreme pain and extreme suffering. it is placed upon a cross whence it can never be resurrected again, if it is truly to be merged in the Overself. Inner crucifixion is therefore a terrible and tremendous actuality in the life of every attained mystic. His destiny may not call for outer martyrdom but it cannot prevent his inner martyrdom. Hence the Christ-self speaking through Jesus told his disciples, �If any man will come after me let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.� (12)

In graphic language St. John speaks of the lowest possible dregs of such experiences, in the second night, the night of the spirit, which, it must again be said, may only occur to a few, for their unique karmic reasons and higher purpose:

�The Divine assails the soul in order to renew it and thus make it Divine; and, stripping it of the habitual affections and attachments of the old man, to which it is very closely united, knit together and conformed, destroys and consumes its spritual substance, and absorbs it in deep and profound darkness. As a result of this, the soul feels itself to be perishing and melting away, in the presence and sight of its miseries, in a cruel spiritual death.� (13)

"The soul must needs be in all its parts reduced to a state of emptiness, poverty and abandonment and must be left dry and empty and in darkness. For the sensible part is purified in aridity, the faculties are purified in the emptiness of their perceptions, and the spirit is purified in thick darkness.....All of this God brings to pass by means of this dark contemplation; wherein the soul not only suffers this emptiness and the suspension of these natural supports and perceptions, which is a most afflictive suffering (as if a man were suspended or held in air so that he could not breath), but likewise He is purging the soul, annihilating it, emptying it or consuming in it (even as fire consumes the mouldiness and the rust of metal) all the affections and imperfect habits which it has contracted in its whole life. Since these are deeply rooted in the substance of the soul, it is wont to suffer great undoing and inward torment, besides the said poverty and emptiness, natural and spiritual...Here God greatly humbles the soul in order that he may afterwards greatly exalt it; and if he ordained not that, when these feelings arise within the soul, they should speedily be fulfilled, it would die in a very short space; but there are only occasional periods when it is conscious of their greatest intensity. At times, however, they are so keen that the soul seems to be seeing hell and perdition opened." (14)

"it is well for the soul to perform no operation touching spiritual things at this time and to have no pleasure in such things, because its faculties and desires are base, impure, and wholly natural; and thus, although these faculties be given the desire and interest in things supernatural and Divine, they could not receive them save after a base and natural manner, exactly in their own fashion...All these faculties and desires of the soul..come to be prepared and tempered in such a way as to be able to receive, feel and taste that which is Divine and supernatural after a sublime and lofty manner, which is impossible if the old man not die first of all." (15)

"And when the soul suffers the direct assault of this Divine Light, its pain, which results from its impurity, is immense; because, when this pure light assails the soul, in order to expel its impurity, the soul feels itself to be so impure and miserable that it believes God to be against it, and thinks that it has set itself up against God. This causes it sore grief and pain, because it now believes that God has cast it away...the soul now sees its impurities clearly (although darkly), and knows it is unworthy of God or of any creature. And what gives it the most pain is that it thinks that it will never be worthy and that its good things are all over for it. This is caused by the profound immersion of its spirit in the knowledge and realization of its evils and miseries, for this Divine and dark light now reveals them all to the eye, that it may see clearly how in its own strength it can never have aught else...When this Divine contemplation assails the soul with a certain force, in order to strengthen it and subdue it, it suffers such pain in its weakness that it nearly swoons away..for sense and spirit, as if beneath some immense and dark load, are in such great pain and agony that the soul would find advantage and relief in death." (16)

"It is clear that God grants the soul in this state the favor of purging it and healing it with this strong lye of bitter purgation, according to its spiritual and sensual part, of all the imperfect habits and affections which it had within itself with respect to temporal things and to natural, sensual and spiritual things, its inward faculties being darkened, and voided of all these, its spiritual and sensual affections being constrained and dried up, and its natural energies being attenuated and weakened with respect to all this (a condition which it could never attain of itself, as we shall shortly say). In this way God makes it to die to all that is not naturally God, so that, once it is stripped and denuded of its former self, he may clothe it anew." (17

"Wherefore the soul that God sets in this tempetuous and horrible night is deserving of great compassion...by reason of the dreadful pain which the soul is suffering, and of the great uncertainty which it has concerning the remedy for it, since it believes..that its evil will never end... It suffers great pain and grief, since there is added to all this (because of the solitude and abandonment caused in it by this dark night) the fact that it finds no consolation or support in any instruction nor in a spiritual master. For, although in many ways the director may show it good reason for being comforted because of the blessings which are contained in these afflictions, it cannot believe him. For it is so greatly absorbed and immersed in the realization of those evils wherein it sees its own miseries so clearly, that it thinks, as its director observes not that which it sees and feels, he is speaking in this manner because he understands it not; and so, instead of comfort, it rather receives fresh affliction, since it believes that its director's advice contains no remedy for its troubles. And, in truth, this is so; for, until the Lord shall have completely purged it after the manner that He wills, no means or remedy is of any service or profit for the relief of its affliction; the more so because the soul is as powerless in this case as one who has been imprisoned in a dark dungeon, and is bound hand and foot, and can neither move nor see, nor feel any favour whether from above or from below, until the spirit is humbled, softened, and purified, and grows so keen and delicate and pure that it can become one with the Spirit of God, according to the degree of union of love which His mercy is pleased to grant it." (18)

St. John says that this process is not one of unbroken suffering, however, but that there will generally be brief periods when the soul is restored to a more freer state of communion with the spirit than before, in which it is then convinced that its troubles are over, and it sees the value of what it has gone through, but these periods will not last, if it is to be a true dark night. As a sword is tempered by repeatedly being placed into the fire, so, too, will the soul be returned to even worse states of poverty and purgation, where it will be filled with "spiritual pain and anguish in all its deep affections and energies, to an extant surpassing all possibility of exaggeration...The spirit experiences pain and sighing so deep that they cause it vehement spiritual groans and cries, to which at times it gives vocal expression; when it has the necessary strength and power it dissolves into tears, although this relief comes but seldom." (19)

"And to this is added the remembrance of times of prosperity now past; for as a rule souls that enter this night have had many consolations from God, and have rendered Him many services, and it causes them the greater grief to see that they are far removed from that happiness, and unable to enter into it."(20)

It is a curious thing, however, that after experiencing the heavy hand of the Lord for some time, the soul actually feels cast adrift when it is absent:

"But in the midst of these dark and loving afflictions the soul feels within itself a certain companionship and strength, which bears it company and so greatly stengthens it that, if this burden of grievous darkness be taken away, it often feels itself to be alone, empty, and weak. The cause of this is that, as the strength and efficacy of the soul were derived and comunicated passively from the dark fire of love which assailed it, it follows that, when that fire ceases to assail it, the darkness and power and heat of love cease in the soul." (21)

Once again, St. John offers this hope and consolation:

"Therefore, O spiritual soul, when thy seest thy desire obscured, thy affections arid and constrained, and thy faculties bereft of their capacity for any interior exercise, be not afflicted by this, but rather consider it a great happiness, since God is freeing thee from thyself and taking the matter from thy hands. For with those hands, however well they may serve thee, thou wouldst never labour so effectively, so perfectly, and so securely..as now, when God takes thy hand and guides thee in the darkness, as though thou wert blind, to an end and by a way which thou knowest not." (22)

Lest one think that the saint is exaggerating, or suffered unnecessarily due to starting spiritual life with a wrong foundation of understanding, which might have been avoided had he been trained in an �awareness� school such as Vippassana Buddhism, or Advaita Vedanta, let us think again. Stripping away the cultural and religious limitations of his tradition, it remains highly likely that the process he describes, in one form or another, is unavoidable at some point on the path. This is because our ignorance is so thick that we cannot help but conceive of the goal as some �thing� that will be �personally� attained. We confuse the personality with the ego and the ego (subtler and spiritualized) with the Self or Soul. This delusion will generally not go down without a struggle - even if we understand this fact - although the ordeal can be quickened considerably by association with a true master or sage, if one is fortunate enough to find one. Then much of the drama associated with one's egoic mental and imaginative preconceptions, a limitation in many mystics, for instance, may be seen through or bypassed. Still, the goal is great, and so is the sacred ordeal.

The life of Zen Master Bankei Yotaku (1622-1693), considered by D.T.Suzuki to have been one of the greatest of all Zen Masters, illustrates the depths of liberating despair that often lead up to an awakening. Further, we will see that, contrary to many popular notions, such an awakening is often the beginning of true practice, and not the end.

Bankei was very devoted to his mother, and once confessed to her that more than anything else it was his desire to communicate the Truth to her which motivated his pursuit of Enlightenment. His childhood schooling consisted of little more than rote memorization of a Confucian classic entitled The Great Learning. Bankei was struck by the opening words of the book: �The way of Great Learning lies in illuminating the Bright Virtue.� He searched and searched but could find no one to satisfactorily explain this verse to him. His family, his teacher, and the local priest confessed their ignorance, and one day, his great heart-need unsatisfied, Bankei simply left school. He was obsessed with finding out what �Bright Virtue� meant, and he knew at the very least that he would find no answers there. His action, however, would never be acceptable to his elder brother, the head of the household, and knowing this Bankei decided to kill himself. His method of achieving this was to eat a handful of �poisonous� spiders, but to his great disappointment he did not die. When he refused to attend school his brother expelled him from the house, and at the age of eleven Bankei began a life of wandering, meditating and visiting spiritual teachers in search of the Bright Virtue.

For fourteen years he moved about, practising harsh austerities and paying scant attention to the needs of food and shelter. At one point he decided to find the answer within himself, and he built a tiny hut for meditation, leaving only a small hole through which food could be brought to him. He sat until the flesh on his buttocks was flayed and his health broke down. The wall of his hut was marked by gobs of thick black phlegm he would be spit up. Finally, Bankei realized that he was dying, and in his despair he experienced a fundamental breakthrough:

�The master, frustrated in his attempts to resolve the feeling of doubt which weighed so heavily on his mind, became deeply disheartened. Signs of serious illness appeared. He began to cough up bloody bits of sputem. He grew steadily worse, until death seemed imminent. He said to himself, �Everyone has to die. I�m not concerned about that. My regret is dying with the great matter I�ve been struggling with all these years, since I was a small boy, still unresolved.� His eyes flushed with hot tears. His breast heaved violently. It seemed his ribs would burst. Then, just at that moment, enlightenment came to him - like a bottom falling out of a bucket. Immediately, his health began to return, but still he was unable to express what he had realized. Then, one day, in the early hours of the morning, the scent of plum blossoms carried to him in the morning air reached his nostrils. At that instant, all attachments and obstacles were swept from his mind once and for all. The doubts that had been plaguing him ceased to exist.� (23) Bankei�s satoris represented a profound transcendance of unconscious identification with the ego, and the realization of consciousness or Mind as the substrate of all experience, that became the basis for his further practise. It was the Buddhist �seed of enlightenment�, not the final achievement, but which nevertheless wiped doubt and uncertainty from his mind.

�For about thirty years I wandered searching for the real Tao everywhere.. But at this moment, seeing the plum blossoms, I am suddenly enlightened, and have no more doubts.� (24)

Bankei had a deepening of his realization three years later under the guidance of a Chinese priest, who confirmed that he had indeed penetrated to the Self-essence but still needed to clarify the �matter beyond�, �discriminating wisdom�, or "the practise after Enlightenment".

Master Po Shan similarly discoursed:

�Therefore the proverb says, after enlightenment one should visit the Zen Masters.� The sages of the past demonstrated the wisdom of this when, after their enlightenment, they visited the Zen Masters and improved themselves greatly. One who clings to his realization and is unwilling to visit the Masters, who can pull out his nails and spikes, is a man who cheats himself.� (25)

Garma C.C. Chang brings to our awareness the recognized distinction made in Zen and Ch�an Buddhism between the awakening to prajna-truth (or the immediate awakening to transcendental wisdom or selflessness) and Cheng-teng-cheuh (sabyaksambodhi), which is the final, perfect, complete enlightenment of Buddhahood.

�A great deal of work is needed to cultivate this vast and bottomless Prajna-mind before it will blossom fully. It takes a long time, before perfection is reached, to remove the dualistic, selfish, and deeply rooted habitual thoughts arising from the passions. This is very clearly shown in many Zen stories, and in the following Zen proverb, for example: �The truth should be understood through sudden Enlightenment, but the fact (the complete realization) must be cultivated step by step.� (26) The Lankavatara Sutra speaks not only of a fundamental "turnabout in the deep seat of understanding", but of the "inconceivable transformation death of the Bodhisattva's individual will-control", the latter serving to balance and temper the enthusiastic claims of many self-professed non-dualists.

In the Sufi tradition reference is given to the difference between a state and a station. A station is relatively permanent and cannot be lost while a state is incomplete and temporary. The difference is that between the first awakening to the heart and fully grown union with it.

It might be useful to examine and correct several popular notions concerning Zen Buddhism. It is sometimes assumed that Zen is chiefly a mental exercise (paradoxical and non-rational, as evidenced by the koan practise) leading to awakened insight, without requiring a long course of discipline and self-purification as is recommended and even demanded in yoga and other systems. This is an error made all too well by fans of Advaita Vedanta as well, who talk of the non-dual Self without creating the preparatory conditions for its actual realization. Whereas the practise of a wide range of disciplines as well as meditation sitting in some form has been the basic Zen practise from the beginning, and is the necessary prerequisite for the fruitful use of the koan.

Koans are a form of �riddle� sometimes used by Zen Masters to break the fixation of mind of their students. They are solved not by giving the right answer but by transcending the conceptual mind in the process of contemplation of the paradox the koan represents. A classic koan is �what is the sound of one hand clapping?�, or "what was your original face before you were born?" Then one might be told to meditate on the koan for twenty hours a day until he �solves� it. The beginning student comes to the Master with a clever answer and typically gets a whack from his staff or a cuff on the ear. In some cases, the disciple may get a blow even before he speaks:

"Master Tokusan was a much more severe kind of Zen Master. Once a monk came to see him and, according to the Buddhist manner, made a bow to the Master before asking a question. However, before he had finished bowing, Tokusan gave him a blow of his stick. The monk did not know what it was all about, and said, "I have just bowed to you and have not asked you any question yet. Why have you struck me?" "It is no use to wait till you start talking," was the reply Tokusan gave him. In such a strict denial of words we are to see how earnestly Zen insists on the experience itself." (27)

The mere contemplation of the koan is an intense discipline and could go on for years. It is similar to Vedantic enquiry in its ability to concentrate the mind and also undermine one's dualistic thinking processes. Thus it is a complement to and even a form of meditation. Half-hearted or superficial mental efforts will not produce the desired result. Interestingly, the disciple often gets his worst beating when he is close to penetrating the knot of self represented by the koan. This is because the seriousness of the endeavor, its spiritual life and death nature, self-evident to the Master, is now becoming apparent to his feeling. The energy of the Great Doubt has built up within his being to a critical degree. This often manifests as the anguish and despair evoked by devotees like Bankei or Ramakrishna in the maturing stages prior to insight or a fundamental breakthrough. One reaches, according to Zen teachings, a stage where the self-knot literally becomes, as previously mentioned, the �great doubt�, burning like a �ball of red-hot fire that can be neither swallowed nor spit out.� Every �answer� one comes up with for the koan is rejected, which, of course, is as it should be, for short of satori no one passes his interview with the Master. Without a life of discipline, purification, meditation (concentration/contemplation), and study, however, it is highly unlikely for the �great doubt� to arise or for a koan to be of much use. Our unconscious tendencies or vasanas will keep us preoccupied with the world and the ego to such an extent that insight will have difficulty arising. Further, our life of "sleep" will not be interrupted sufficiently to allow the insight that does manage to arise to become stable realization.

Once true and profound insight or self-knowledge is gained, although a highly significant development, one must still go on to practise with that insight. This is partly because it is in the feeling nature where the deepest contractions of ego reside, and they must be unraveled - at least sufficiently for the soul's purposes. There are many warnings in the Zen tradition, moreover, that there are grades of satori, and that one must press on until he has had a great Satori from which there is no backsliding, and which generally must be approved by a master. Hakuin, perhaps the greatest of the Rinzai teachers, had his first experience of satori after meditating on the koan �Mu� for four years:

�He shouted: �Why, the world is not something to be avoided, nor is Nirvana something to be sought after!� This realization he presented to the Abbot and some fellow disciples but they did not give their unqualified assent to it. He however burned with absolute conviction, and thought to himself that surely for centuries no one had known such a joy as was his. He was then twenty-four. In his autobiographical writings, Hakuin warns Zen students with peculiar earnestness against this pride of assurance.� (28)

After this he endured three years of merciless hammering by the Master Shoju, who �utterly smashed his self-satisfaction.� He had another satori, which he classified as a �great satori�, and which his teacher confirmed by saying, �You are through.� Nevertheless, Shoju admonished him not to be content with such a small thing but to perform the �practise after satori.� It was not until more than ten years later, and much meditation under extremely austere conditions, that Hakuin penetrated to the depths of the Lotus Sutra, and gained a most fundamental awakening:

�The meaning of the ordinary life of his teacher Shoju was revealed, and he saw that he had been mistaken over his great satori realizations. This time there was no great reaction in the body-mind instrument.� (29)

Paul Brunton similarly writes:

�The glimpse, because it is situated between the mental conditions which exist before and afterwards, necessarily involves striking - even dramatic - contrast with their ordinariness. It seems to open onto the ultimate light-bathed height of human existence. But this experience necessarily provokes a human reaction to it, which is incorporated into the glimpse itself, becomes part of it. The permanent and truly ultimate enlightenment is pure, free from any admixture of reaction, since it is calm, balanced, and informed.� (30)

In the Zen tradition there is mention of the �Zen illness� or the �stink of enlightenment�, which arises after a first satori. Further practise is required for the complete breakdown of the conceit of self until the entire being is transformed. This will take as long as it takes, which sacred texts suggest may be many lifetimes of practise. Harada Roshi, in his comments on the enlightenment of one of his female disciples, Yaeko Iwasaki, spoke further of the Zen sickness:

�An ancient Zen saying has it that to become attached to one�s own enlightenment is as much a sickness as to exhibit a maddeningly active ego. Indeed, the profounder the enlightenment, the worse the illness. In her case I think it would have taken two or three months for the most obvious symptoms to disappear, two or three years for the less obvious, and seven or eight years for the most insidious...My own sickness lasted almost ten years. Ha!� (31)

The depths of despair that Bankei experienced are common to many ripening aspirants at various stages or moments of the way. The Buddha spoke of an ocean of tears to be crossed on the journey from self to Overself, before the hard crust of ego dissolves and the heart awakens. The great Tibetan Guru Marpa once lamented that if he could have plunged his favorite disciple Milarepa into utter depair a ninth time he could have saved him years of suffering and the need for a future rebirth to eradicate all of his impurities. Even selfless servant of the poor Mother Teresa of Calcutta, through recently released private papers, confessed to five decades of feeling abandoned by God. "I am told God lives in me - and yet the reality of darkness and coldness and emptiness is so great that nothing touches my soul..I want God with all the power of my soul - and yet between us there is a terrible separation...Heaven from every side is closed....I feel just that terrible pain of loss, of God not wanting me, of God not being God, of God not really existing."

So this type of experience and ordeal, while not exactly something to be sought after, can be more or less expected at some point. The poet Goethe expressed his thoughts on this matter in the following verse:

�He who never spent the midnight hours, weeping and waiting for the morrow, he knows ye not, ye heavenly powers.�

The insufficiency of ego, it seems, is most fundamentally shown when, after many lifetimes of self-development, it then attempts to do what is seemingly impossible (transcend itself), and that is when the real anguish (as well as resignation, patience, and humility) comes. Out of this dead end proceeds awakening, as �man�s extremity is God�s opportunity�. The proclamation of Zen, in fact, is that �satori falls upon us unexpectedly when we have exhausted all the resources of our being.� (32)


(1) The Notebooks of Paul Brunton, Vol. 12, �The Reverential Life,� 5.238, and Vol. 15, "The Dark Night of the Soul, 3.70 (Burdett, N.Y.: Larson Publications, 1988)
(2) Sermon for the 4th Sunday in Lent (Winkworth�s translation, p. 280) Cited in: Evelyn Underhill, Mysticism (New York: New American Library, 1974), p. 396.
(3) Underhill, op. cit.
(4) Les Torrents, pt. i. cap. viii. Cited in: Underhil, op. cit.
(5) Ibid (6) Ibid, p. 397 (7) John Daido Loori, Mountain Records of Zen Talks (Boston: Shambhala, 1988), p. 21
(8) Ibid
(9) Chang Chen-Chi, The Practise of Zen (London: Rider & Co., 1960), p. 78
(10) Majjhima Nikaya, I, 166
(11) The Dark Night of the Soul, in Mystic Doctrine, an abridgement by C.H. (London: Sheed & Ward, 1948), p. 83-106
(12) The Notebooks of Paul Brunton, op. cit., 4.5
(13) E. Allison Peers, trans. The Dark Night of the Soul (Garden City, New York: Image/Doubleday, 1959), p. 104
(14) Ibid, p. 106-107
(15) Ibid, p. 152
(16) Ibid, p. 102-103
(17) Ibid, p. 145-146
(18) Ibid, p. 110-111
(19) Ibid, p. 125
(20) Ibid, p. 108
(21) Ibid, p. 135-136
(22) Ibid, p. 153-154
(23) Norman Waddell, trans., The Unborn: The Life and Teachings of Zen Master Bankei 1622-1693 (San Francisco, CA: North Point Press, 1984), book jacket
(24) Ryuji Akao, Bankei zenji zenshu (Complete records of Zen Master Bankei (Tokyo: Daizo Shuppan, 1976), Ryakuroku, p. 349 (quoted in Waddell, op. cit)
(25) Garma C.C. Chang, The Practise of Zen (New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc., 1959 (1970), p. 104
(26) Ibid, p. 162-163
(27) Abbot Zenkei Shibayama, A Flower Does Not Talk (Rutland, Vermont, The Charles E. Tuttle Company, Inc., 1970 p. 25)
(28) Trevor Leggett, A Second Zen Reader (Rutland, Vermont: Charles E. Tuttle Company, 1988), pp. 130-131
(29) Ibid, p. 132
(30) The Notebooks of Paul Brunton, op. cit., Vol. 16, 2.27
(31) Philip Kapleau, Three Pillars of Zen (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Press/Doubleday, revised and expanded edition, 1980), p. 302
(32)Hubert Benoit, Zen and the Psychology of Transformation: The Supreme Doctrine, 1955, 1990, p. 115

Welcome peterhol. That's quite a lengthy post and would go far beyond "fair use" policy, which I see you try to honor on your site as well. Is there a link to this article that could be posted instead?

http://www.carmelite.org.uk/mteditorial.html

Here's an excerpt from the second article:

PERSON OR PERSONA?

"God made us in order to be in communion with us, and it is in baptism that he initiates mutual relationship. If God is drawing me into intimate friendship with him, then he desires the ultimate meeting between the real person that I am and the real God that he is. All the vicissitudes of our prayer life are centred on the uncovering of one or other of these realities. It is not enough for God to relate to us at the level of our unconscious masks and roles; neither will he allow us to be satisfied with knowing him through image and concept, however lofty and refined. He will lead us further and deeper until, humbly in touch with ourselves in the truth of our own being, we are able at last to bear encounter with him in the very truth of his Being.

Inevitably, in the early stages of a serious spiritual life, we adopt a certain pose before God. We present, quite unconsciously, what we believe is expected or acceptable, just as we do before other people. We also direct our prayer towards an idea of God formed out of our experience of life, modelled perhaps on a parent or other authority figure, or influenced by school or church teaching. Growing familiarity with the Christ of scripture, together with God's own communication of himself in prayer at the level we are able to receive it, will gradually inform and deepen our concept of who God is; but it still remains a concept, coloured by unconscious projections and expectations.

Then something very disturbing happens. God begins to demonstrate that he is not interested in befriending a persona, however devout or delightful! He wants to engage with the person we really are. As he takes deeper possession of our being, he reaches concealed places within us, bringing to conscious level the darkness, pain and insecurity we would prefer to keep hidden. We do not need to have been profoundly damaged by life to carry a fair amount of negativity towards ourselves or to operate from behind barriers - and those we erect to keep others at a safe distance separate us from God as well."

peterhol,

Welcome! Namaste! Thank you for your life! Enjoying
your website immensely. How do you like this one?

http://www.innerexplorations.com/ -mm <*))))><

quote:

Then something very disturbing happens. God begins to demonstrate that he is not interested in befriending a persona, however devout or delightful!

Wow. That sounds pretty good. And that means we are always being drawn to the real us, not what some religion has planted in our minds as to what the real us should be. And surely not the idea that some friend has for us either. And especially not even our own idea of ourselves. And to find this real self takes, I think, a real amount of bravery, imagination, and willingness not to put human limits on God. And that ultimately means, I think, being willing and able to piss off people around us if need be, if this is unavoidable, in order to follow God�s calling. And following God�s calling can be filled with love. It can be filled with sexuality of many expressions. It can be filled with creativity and service. And I think you can be sure it will be filled with imagination and exploration. This world surely, as the author, I think, suggests, is meant to draw us into an intimate friendship with God. And surely the world, and not just prayer, is a vehicle meant to help do so or we might has well have all been born in heaven.

So, who wants to be real first? I guess the place to start, as this article suggests, is with God, and then we can work from there, right?

Peace to all of you this fine day.

I'm not sure we can be real without God -- contact with God, that is. Although authenticity is the cornerstone of the Lonergan/Helminiak approach I like so much, it seems there's only so much we are capable of knowing about ourselves through the practice of awareness and honesty. Seeing ourselves as God sees us (which is a revelation and, hence, a grace) is always a bit unsettling and yet freeing at the same time. In my experience, God does so gently, and often with a sense of humor, enabling us to come to a deeper experience of authenticity in the light of this grace.

Although authenticity is the cornerstone of the Lonergan/Helminiak approach I like so much, it seems there's only so much we are capable of knowing about ourselves through the practice of awareness and honesty. Seeing ourselves as God sees us (which is a revelation and, hence, a grace) is always a bit unsettling and yet freeing at the same time. In my experience, God does so gently, and often with a sense of humor, enabling us to come to a deeper experience of authenticity in the light of this grace.

I�d like to whole-heartedly agree to that from a somewhat mystical approach. Sometimes I feel thoughts and ideas are pumped into my head from afar. Hey, I�d like to take credit for it, but I can�t. So I totally and 100% agree that we can immerse ourselves in all the psychology we want, and although that can be part of the process, I think it�s clearly a part of a larger process. I think one is much better off seeing psychology and other pursuits as within the context of something larger, even if that something larger cannot be grasped as clearly.

And so by praying, I feel I get little "jolts" of authenticity presented to me. I�m opened up just a bit. I find myself most when I let go of myself. And I think that probably jibes quite well with Christian beliefs. I have found myself in the past "stuck" in Buddhism, or "stuck" in psychology or "stuck" in the pursuit of self-esteem. The list could go on and on, including getting stuck in addiction. What I mean to be unstuck in is love. There is power in that. There is power in prayer, although that "power" is love, not a power I�m likely to be able to wield for my own uses, per se.

My dark night started at birth, had a break at 21 and then came back and then lasted til this very year.

I was born harelipped and thus have gone thru several surgeries and such, which were very painful and made me feel tons of fear. Apart from that I was shy and it didnt make things easier, I was bullied in school and had very very very few friends.

Suffering from low self esteem and self hate and so on, was very hard when one is teenaged and wants to be like everyone else in some things (not all tho). I also felt very alone, like there was no one like me, I felt so alone and sad and had so much pain inside. It was terrible.

The dark night left me for a while when I met my husband in 2001 and we got married, it was great ( and still is,we are still married) and I had a wonderful time. Then suddenly the dark night returned, full force again this time.

I thought my pain was over, I was finally going to have some good time in my life and feel good about myself when my husband married me and we were going to start a family and be happy ever after. Oh boy was I wrong! We are very happy, but, it cost us a great deal to get to where we are now.

My husband had all kinds of trouble with his exwife and we had hell to get rid of it all. She had lied to him when they were married about paying bills and putting all the bills in his name, in fact, it was all a lie and when he came to marry me we suddenly got a huge bill from all the last year of their marriage and we had to pay it because it was in his name. We have now done so so at least that problem was solved in its due time.

As if that wasnt enough problems to deal with in a new relationship and committment of marriage we also got dealt another blow, which was twofold, both were on my list, which means I am the one that had the problems in my self, but, it was for both me and my husband to deal with them. The first problem which surfaced was regarding our intimate life, which caused us to know that we will not be having any children at any time. The other one was developing panic disoder after many years of having had troubles with things and not understanding it.

Finally I did understand that the problems I had lived with at my youth and childhood were in fact panic attacks and then the other thing with not having any kids..It was very very sad and I spent a long time in sadness and feeling worthless and useless.

God had begun taking me out of the night when my husband came into my life and taught me that there was a man out there that found me interesting and attracting to him. He finished off pulling me out of the darkness by sending my my twin brother and angel, my guardian.

Meeting my husband had opened up new possibilities for my faith and new inspiration and meeting my brother confirmed my faith in so many ways, on personal level as well as spiritual and it has been the greatest gift from God to have both of them in my life, they are the men that I love the most in all the world.

Now I am no longer in darkness.

What kept me alive in the dark time was knowing that God was there, that no matter how hard I tried giving up faith and living as atheist my heart couldnt say no to God.