mictlan

Having endured the dark night of the soul, it seems facetious to speak of it as if it were a stage or phase that can be measured or identified, with clean edges to its beginnings and endings, with known methods and practices for survival and transcendence, for all that is known is that there is such a thing as the dark night of the soul, which is not the same thing as depression, or grief, or even despair, and that sometimes it has been transcended. This knowledge is not particularly helpful or insightful, and is of no aid to someone for whom that night has just fallen.

But one of the things that is sometimes born of endurance and survival is an abiding sadness, and one of the roots of this sadness is the knowledge that there is no wisdom gained in it that can be passed on to someone else in their own need. That the thing is not a mindless cycle that repeats endlessly for every new sufferer, but is an adaptive, evolutionary species that mirrors our own, dogs our footsteps, climbs in our wake. The transcendence of which we speak itself takes many forms; for some surely there is an end to it, and for others there is only something like mastery, which is simply the end of endurance and the beginning of cybernetics: the art of the helmsman.

Still, it cannot be true that there is nothing useful we can say. It is most probably not in the form of teaching or advice or assistance, for these things are too tied to method and practice and not to mantra. Because it is mantra I'm looking for, something that isn't pompous or preachy or inane or unhelpful, something that can be said in voice and not writing (because many things that can be written without embarassment cannot actually be spoken with a straight face, because to speak them you have to look someone in the eye and hold them with your own two hands), but also something that is so simple that it stands a chance of being true for us all.

You may think of better ones, but placing more value as I do on raw obstinacy than abstract wisdom, I can only think of one such phrase:

Hold fast.

posted by: mictlantecuhtli at 14:02 | link | comments (5) |

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