Dark night of the soul

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Author	Topic: Dark night of the soul
iAmThat Knowflake Posts: 1255 From: third rock from the Sun Registered: Sep 2004	posted October 22, 2004 08:54 PM Interestingly, I think my soul had been thru one. How about yours? IP: Logged
LibraSparkle Knowflake Posts: 6034 From: Vancouver USA Registered: May 2004	posted October 22, 2004 10:46 PM Oh, surely. A book I read, The Journey Home, talks about this. Hard times... yet quite important, I believe. IP: Logged
LibraSparkle Knowflake Posts: 6034 From: Vancouver USA Registered: May 2004	posted October 22, 2004 10:47 PM hehe... Now I sound like Yoda IP: Logged
Heart&Soul Knowflake Posts: 82 From: Registered: Sep 2004	posted November 08, 2004 02:21 AM Oh, yes. I feel perhaps I am going through one Now. (?) Although, for the first time Ever, the darkness here feels very Light. A return. A surrender. Hope replaced with Faith. A moment endured to Flourish. What defines the Dark Night, do you think, I? Is it in the darkest pathway that light is so clearly Seen? IP: Logged
Heart&Soul Knowflake Posts: 82 From: Registered: Sep 2004	posted November 09, 2004 01:38 AM Curious, were you inspired to start this thread from St. John of the Cross' "Dark Night of the Soul"? I am reading it now. I just came across this verse which illuminated just what I was feeling of the Light. I must say this is a book I've had for quite a while, but had started and stopped before. And now it seems the timing was perfect for me to understand it better now. (strange how life works that way : It now remains to be said that, although this happy night brings darkness to the spirit, it does so only to give it light in everything; and that, although it humbles it and makes it miserable, it does so only to exalt it and to raise it up; and, although it impoverishes it and empties it of all natural affection and attachment, it does so only that it may enable it to stretch forward, divinely, and thus to have fruition and experience of all things, both above and below, yet to serve its unrestricted liberty of spirit in them all. For just as the elements, in order that they may have a part in all natural entities and compounds, must have no particular colour, odour or taste, so as to be able to combine with all tastes, odours and colours, just so must the spirit be simple, pure and detached from all kinds of natural affection, whether actual or habitual, to the end that it may be able freely to share in the breadth of spirit of the Divine Wisdom, wherein, through its purity, it has experience of all the sweetness of all things in a certain pre-eminently excellent way. And without this purgation it will be wholly unable to feel or experience the satisfaction of all this abundance of spiritual sweetness. For one single affection remaining in the spirit, or one particular thing to which, actually or habitually, it clings, suffices to hinder it from feeling or experiencing or communicating the delicacy and intimate sweetness of the spirit of love, which contains within itself all sweetness to a most eminent degree. IP: Logged
iAmThat Knowflake Posts: 1255 From: third rock from the Sun Registered: Sep 2004	posted November 09, 2004 11:38 PM Dear Heart And Soul, I am so sorry for replying so late. I got caught up with work. When I read your post I could sense the light that was glowing from you and I thought you would be at peace pretty soon. I haven't read about this in any book. But I went to a retreat and the teacher made a passing reference. That was much after my experience of the soul. When I experienced it was something like this: Inspite of my soul being filled with light, that day, I felt it was completely dark. I thought I was a good guy, but that day it felt I am being accused in a court full of people. The world is waiting for a judgement, but on that day, I felt I was being judged. There was no good memories of the past. Only the bad ones appeared one after the other. There was no urge to eat or live but only to surrender myself to the moment. Asking mother earth to swallow me. No urge to be clothed. Just lying naked on the carpet. I thank God it didn't last more than a week. Actually, in the next 24 hour when I woke, up. No let me correct that, Nature made me wake up. It was 5.30, the rays of Sun was coming itself towards mother earth. It came with such a force. I could hear nature greeting it. The birds chirping, the plants dancing. My whole body was reacting to that light. It wanted to live that day. It was so glad to see that day. I was so proud to be a part of creation. It was as if you were in darkness for 10000 years in a room and in that few minutes, everything had clarity. I could see the seen with more clarity and also the unseen. Well after that period, I was more aware of what I was doing. I felt more connected to friends and foes alike. Life is so short, to make most out of it. They say, with with one breath in full consciousness and full awareness we can ask the holy one to dwell inside us (Well you are part of Cosmos too. Put it this way, ask God to give you that Xray glasses, for a brief moment). God has many facets, that special, piece of him he would lend it to you, if you ask in faith. A inner voice consoles you and asks you to be patient. It reveals to you, your purpose here on earth. The trials and tribulations are not mine alone but of everyone I have met(friends and families) so far in my life. Well I hope I conveyed all I could. Ever since that day, I walk in the belief(not by sight) that one day I would walk in truth, and that day is coming soon. Well some would say, whats the point. There is no past nor future but eternal NOW alone. Constant yet changing. Well I could ask God to give me powers (special ones such as healing) Anything that would give joy to people in such terrible times we live in. Peace. IP: Logged
oldephebe Knowflake Posts: 35 From: philly pa USA Registered: Dec 2003	posted November 11, 2004 09:29 AM Geez i been away from this site for waaaaaaay to long. gotta catch up...sure dark night of the soul...and the dark itself seems to exhale a weeping grief into the cathedral of your soul...every breath almost shatters the old interstitial carraige...the old, the dark, the phantoms in a luminous dressage promenade endlessly at your bedside...sure... great iron claw at your heart...the calligraphy made by its serrated talons maketh my torso of the nights crucible... and now he ferociously mimes a smile..but it comes out brittle...stretched ghastly..taut..like skin over bone.. blech ------------------ trying not to appear spiritually barren IP: Logged
oldephebe Knowflake Posts: 35 From: philly pa USA Registered: Dec 2003	posted November 11, 2004 09:35 AM ...and the calligraphy of its serrated talons maketh my chest a map of the nights crucible ... there should be an icon of a black heart as well for us nihistic types... ------------------ trying not to appear spiritually barren IP: Logged
iAmThat Knowflake Posts: 1255 From: third rock from the Sun Registered: Sep 2004	posted November 11, 2004 03:59 PM Hi oldephebe, This is NJ. IP: Logged
TINK Knowflake Posts: 3846 From: New England Registered: Mar 2003	posted November 11, 2004 05:00 PM Hey look! It's oldephebe. How have you been? You were missed. But you came back just in time for the festivities. Randall ~ a good point was made. A black heart please? IP: Logged
aqua Knowflake Posts: 2805 From: dreamland Registered: Jan 2004	posted November 11, 2004 09:22 PM how do u define this? IP: Logged
sesame Moderator Posts: 1588 From: Oz Registered: Nov 2003	posted November 11, 2004 10:47 PM Has a anyone heard of the Standing Babas of India? Talk about your dark night... Dean. IP: Logged
iAmThat Knowflake Posts: 1255 From: third rock from the Sun Registered: Sep 2004	posted November 11, 2004 10:54 PM Hi Dean, Could you explain??? Are you talking of the ones standing on banks of Ganges where the energy is more? By the way I was conjecturing a new theory, everyone talks of only 3 religion(C,J,M). I was thinking why are we ignoring Hindu brahmins. Then I thought Abraham (A brahmin) Wonder if Abraham migrated from Indus region to Israel and then bore the 12 tribes? Just a thought? IP: Logged
sesame Moderator Posts: 1588 From: Oz Registered: Nov 2003	posted November 11, 2004 11:35 PM Well I started a new book which is absoultely awesome called "Shantaram". It is the real-life story of an Australian who travelled to India. He describes all the things he saw and experienced. I usually don't go for realistic books prefering to stay with the stars, but it's just too good. You should check it out. Anyhow, I just read a section where he talks of some people who take a vow to stand for the rest of their lives. After several years their legs become very large and they live in excruciating pain. I was reminded by oldephoebes posts that some people may live in pain to experience God. They apparantly have very clear radiant eyes that just emanate their holy pain. It's interesting. Dean. IP: Logged
Heart&Soul Knowflake Posts: 82 From: Registered: Sep 2004	posted November 12, 2004 01:37 AM iAm and oldephebe, yes, exactly. and how is this for more? Rub my heart into the filth of revelations Smear my face into the mirror of solitude's bliss I know I know NO more, I beg of you! I know Away I go Far away I fly with this forsaken gift of Love still cherished never to understand why. With ghostly illusions to forever haunt my soul, I go Nothing left but this forsaken gift Nothing left but Life's frozen kiss. Especially what you said about judgement, iAm, I remember so vividly. Night after night of sleepless nights, rehashing the same words or events over and over. At times just begging and pleading for it to stop...that I couldn't bear to face up to it anymore. How much could a person endure?, I wondered. Would it ever end? So, yours was truly a night,iAm? Interesting. Mine lasted almost a year it seemed. The above for a year, can you imagine? From "Dark Night of the Soul": For how long a time the soul will be held in this fasting and penance of sense, cannot be said with any certainty; for all do not experience it after one manner, neither do all encounter the same temptations. For this is meted out by the will of God, in conformity with the greater or the smaller degree of imperfection which each soul has to purge away. In conformity, likewise, with the degree of love of union to which God is pleased to raise it, He will humble it with greater or less intensity or in greater or less time. Those who have the disposition and greater strength to suffer, he purges with greater intensity and more quickly. But those who are very weak are kept for a long time in this night, and these He purges very gently and with slight temptations. Habitually, too, He gives them refreshments of sense so that they may not fall away, and only after a long time do they attain to purity of perfection in this life, some of them never attaining to it all. Such are neither properly in the night nor properly out of it; for, although they make no progress, yet, in order that they may continue in humility and self-knowledge, God exercises them for certain periods and at certain times in those temptations and aridities; and at other times and seasons He assists them with consolations, lest they should grow faint and return to seek the consolations of the world. ********* I was given "refreshments of sense"....I had better days than others. Strange, though, I wouldn't classify my soul as weak now or before, but during, yes, during I suppose it was. What a beautiful vision it gives of that light coming to you at dawn, iAm. Surely that moment will be remembered vividly by you always. It seemed the Light didn't come to me in a specific moment of rememberance, but just suddenly there it was. It's hard to explain. It was gradual and yet beaming. Suddenly I felt a warmth of Love and Cherish fill me once again. Glowing, I felt. Everything so clear, just like you said. Where once I hoped and prayed so fervently, suddenly instead I just had Faith....that everything was beautiful before me and I was ready once again to walk on. The bad flooding memories stopped...I was purged. I realized how destructive and useless it was....I gave up control. Happy to just Let it Be. Whatever comes, comes. What doesn't wasn't meant to Be. Now is where it All begins and what matters. So simple it really is, why we fight it so fiercly I still don't understand. IP: Logged
iAmThat Knowflake Posts: 1255 From: third rock from the Sun Registered: Sep 2004	posted November 12, 2004 10:11 AM Dear Heart and Soul, Was nice reading of purging. Now that I am thinking about it heaven and hell are state of being and not physical places that God created for you The dark night of the soul , is the purification process (Hell process). I am glad I experienced it while being alive rather than carry with me after death. Dear Dean, Its always wonderful to be born in west and then travel east. Its like best of both worlds in a person. Its like rational meeting the hearfelt. Individuality meeting the Oneness. Talking of pain, why does it exist. When God created, everything he was glad. So what went wrong? I think, there will be an age when we can transform ourselves. Just like we need to differentiate darkness from light. God is making us experience pains and suffering so that we know that there is a Joy coming, which all would appreciate. There will be a new age coming, when the power to change things for good would be given to all. Different religion calls the age different. Christian says its resurrection. Hindus says it Dwapar yuga.[Well I am just speculating] PEACE. IP: Logged
Heart&Soul Knowflake Posts: 82 From: Registered: Sep 2004	posted November 12, 2004 01:46 PM I am glad and thankful for it too, iAm. IP: Logged
Scorpio_Rising Knowflake Posts: 14 From: Somewhere on the Astral Plane Registered: Oct 2004	posted December 01, 2004 01:09 AM Wonder if Abraham migrated from Indus region to Israel and then bore the 12 tribes? Just a thought? actually i heard from a source that jesus went to india and started to missionary. now when the babylonians invaded israel the 12 tribes wre split hence jews in russia, germany, balkans, etc. what makes us think that some tribes didnt migrate to india. i also heard the the ark of the covenant is supposedly in ethiopia. something like soloman sent the ark with the queen of sheba to hide it from invaders. dont know how true this is only time will tell IP: Logged
Scorpio_Rising Knowflake Posts: 14 From: Somewhere on the Astral Plane Registered: Oct 2004	posted December 01, 2004 01:12 AM so what exactly is A Dark Night of the Soul IP: Logged
oldephebe Knowflake Posts: 35 From: philly pa USA Registered: Dec 2003	posted July 07, 2005 02:34 PM The Following is something i contributed to another site in a rare moment of clarity. In my attempt to plait together the divergent streams of religion, philosphy and a soem neuro-linguistic programming via boiler plate psychology i came up with this. I hope it pastes ------------------ trying not to appear spiritually barren IP: Logged
oldephebe Knowflake Posts: 35 From: philly pa USA Registered: Dec 2003	posted July 07, 2005 02:39 PM standing_chest_deep_in_the_dark oldephebe ... oldephebe 6:20am EST today okay please don't post anything here yet, I'm going to fill this up with the this time not so random ruminations. I�m constructing a synthesis of the spiritual, philosophical and psychological, in essence giving my self a pep talk, or any one else who cruises by but for the next 48 hours please don�t post anything here. Eternal truths never wear out. They just need to be sifted through the aperture of the age. They can become our shade, shield, and shelter. Let me wrap myself in it's mantle..okay..so..I'll be back sometime after lunch today, maybe around three p.m. EST - so just totally ignore this blathe page for the next 24 - to 48 hours please - or just ignore it all together forever..It�s all good... ... oldephebe ... (taken from wisdom thought it was apropos(s)) crimson I want to cut out the Best Years of My Life and go straight to being wise and experienced, elderly. I would be calm and wrinkled, I would know exactly what I thought and wanted and would have patience. I would know about many many beautiful and painful THINGS. But I suppose all of that is achieved by living so long. You can't just skip to it. ... oldephebe but sometimes we can attain wisdom without standing in it's searing rain, without waiting until all our potential is exanguinated by years of folly. this knowledge is there for us, it is waiting for us..the true knowledge of ourselves and our origins, our truer natures, and it is just waiting for us to come back home to envelope us in its loving embrace..More to come.. (copied here from self_mutilation) that was very moving, it's none of my business but I�m glad you're learning to cherish yourself, honor your own uniqueness - out of the love of and from another you have found a measure of self-acceptance - this is the gold you've garnered from within, a sense of self-worth - living on the edge of a scream tears a person down, rends the spirit, 'till the things we say to ourselves become a self-fulfilling prophecy - and yet some will say who am I or anyone to speak upon someone strapped in tightly to their subjective emotional state. On the other hand, as a cognitive psychologist would say. We can slowly through disciplined incremental inculcation sculpt by gradations how the mind processes the emotional significance of stimuli - or lack thereof. and uses this information (yes, yes unconsciously displace or ameliorate those triggers, and add some new ones. a really rigorous renovation..)and uses this new inculcation to control or suggest or inform behaviors appropriate to the emotional meaning of the stimuli. that is if the cognitive psychologist had a strong spiritual tether. But i think you get the drift.. has the meaning been irretrievably obfuscated in that little clinical tangent those scars endow you, or anyone bearing striations on their skin or in their soul - with more than you think. our scars can be the path to another�s (or our own) healing. More on this later. forgive me for being intrusive how did your recital go - the ah quartet thingy. Were you able to find a decent viola? later. Now for those of you weary, I mean really weary of my marble dense and indulgent and circuitous sprawl I apologize and yet sneer at once at my more truculent critics. and ah there's the rub, the meaning of the stimuli, what is an appropriate response to the "meaning" of the stimuli, I was trying to be so clever, or sound pedantic that I totally overlooked that pesky variable in the whole emotional equation - not really a Freudian or a jungian..Don�t know much about either one..Just be frank and blank... heh heh heh... and now i'm coming perilously close to defiling these sacred streams unhinged, ferret et al have poured aspects of their beings into. okay so what meaning do we attribute to emotional stimuli? Right. And that is what informs the appropriate emotional response. Thank you for completing that facilely constructed syllogism. When we learn the Truth about ourselves. that tends to ameliorate to an extant the normal range of potential emotional responses..Ah available. there is a personalized methodology that can be constructed to guide, to keep (me) grounded in the Real...Sure the path is packed with mine fields a plenty...What else is new, and all the agendas, we wear our hearts out loud sometimes - so folks know just which buttons or threads to pull...Some of this I'm writing merely for me, it's not like I�m oracular or imparting anything new, but that's just it the crux and the critical...There is a knowledge that is so basic and simple and pure, we've been weaned on the poison of this world, and the venom in our own hearts for far too long...Spiritual enema "ya'll" ugh hate that word...But still. I don't think any of us were created to be miserable. I think we all devoutly desire to be happy, genuinely so...To stand tall against the gale. and not undermine our very essence by pursuing "happiness" or an idea of "happiness" that slowly grinds our bones to dust...laying the seeds in our bodies. to scream out in pain months, years or decades down the road. I probably should have put this and the prior post on ah somewhere else.. Sometimes i feel the worlds ache so acutely. there is another way for us to be, even with our sensitivities. That�s something that can't be scoured out of our spirit. but our sensitivity can be the avenue of our souls ascension or it's obeisance to the abyss.. What have i said in all of these musings..? does any over arching idea crystallize into a holy halo of ahh's please be patient with me blatherdom..lord knows i've tested your patience enough already but i'm slowly growing into it's clarity or vice versa, maybe most of what i will share in subsequent posts will seem like the spiritual equivalent of pap..corn mush for the newly spiritually indoctrinated, well if so. then at least maybe i'll get something out of it and if one other soul spins out his/her own leitmotif and is validated in his own eyes by her own soul then well yeah..Pretty awesome.. ... oldephebe It all comes down to learning to trust the mind of "God" or whatever you choose to call your higher power, the source of Light and Love. This trust is manifested in our lives by a certain not constrained circumspection. Out of Life are these behaviors learned, adopted, weaved into our strata. Sure, we will always have those moments where we'll howl, with the path of tears etched deeply into the plain of our sorrow stricken faces. And out of melancholy I will say "The ground has been broken, its mouth has been shaped, this is no mere gash in the earth. This hollow is my grave. It awaits its tenant.� Right. We can come out of the shadow of Deaths Winged embrace, veiling our yes our face from the radiance of God's countenance. It shines into and upon us even while we stand chest deep in the Dark. Okay hurricane Isabel is really starting to churn so i'll resume this tomorrow. I will not respond to any comments on this blathe until Saturday. So please don't put anything here until then. I'm still working out this thing.. Later. ... ... oldephebe God�s thoughts toward man, that primeval wisdom, a Love that can reach us in our blackest hours. From the first breaths of eternity the vessel of His love for us was shaped, being prepared for us. I choose to identify that vessel as Jesus Christ. Others may ascribe a different nominative nomenclature, a fulcrum of Faith to It. The God thought crystallized into the corporeal, the God thought made audible. This wisdom can reach into the labyrinth of woe, and bitterness, our tenancy in Hell's heart. To be our shelter shade and shield. Whether you are walking upon the crest of a cloud or riding the rapids of despair hurtling to the bottom of a bitter well. "and His name shall be called Immanuel. meaning God with us.." I think that's from Isaiah. This is the knowledge that grounds us. A life stretched taught toiling in these fields alone. yearning for the cup of Grace it does not even know how to request. The spirit has forgotten so long apart from Love. This is the cup of Grace to drink amidst the shattered vase of my vows. The porcelain plate of your potential. We are all destined to look upon death (not just the literal corporeal manifestation. the cessation of life, but also the depredation a life under goes during its stay here. This is what some call the cessation of hope. and "Here is my potential in pieces like a plate hurled against the wall shattered into pieces..See how I languish in a life's disarray.." Yeah I get that. The greatest minds in History etched upon the scrolls of Time concur with these sentiments, with its underlying ethos. Again in my life these teachings have reached down and pulled me out of Hell, heaved my soul out of havoc. So then begins the journey, the enterprise of inculcating our spirits, mind souls with a ballast that constitutes another set of metaphysical triggers, a new mode of mind "As a man thinketh in his heart so is he.." I believe that's Proverbs, I could be wrong though. (Where appropriate I will subsequently ascribe the words in quote to a general source. quotes not followed by a source is just me trying to personalize my own thoughts.) I will try not to make every thing a permutation of platitudinous of banalities here. The writings of philosophers, poets, mystics and scholar Kings, prophets from different faiths all convene to bring us to some of the truths set forth in Scripture. Bible, Koran, some of the teachings of philosopher Kings, the benevolence of various Buddhist Diaspora. and so on. There is help for the soul of man. Let the acolyte, the wayist, the student who would not just listen, not just hear, one who would be taught..let us write these things in flame upon the tablets of our heart. And my soul will say "Here is the new inculcation, out of the rags of my ruin, out of the stigma and shame my family has bequeathed to me..I will think a new thing. Old as the first breaths outside of Time. This is my true inheritance, a divinely inspired methodology to break the intractable, habitual lapses into irretrievable despair, negative or destructive thought processes that hammer our souls into the coffin." The evil that we practice upon our own minds, or that we allow our minds to practice upon our hearts is far more insidious than any instantiation of evil we perceive, or experience as being practiced upon us. (Most of the time) I believe most of us want to be happy.Not the deliriously overt happiness of the indefagitably ebullient; that really tends to send me scurrying. You don't need to ascend the highest peak in India, waiting for your sword from the stone moment. to be fed out of these streams to attain a sense of self worth, or a spiritual ballast. We want to be blunted from the bruising wind of this world and not spend our time writhing on the floor every time we experience profound pain..so Christians tend to believe that their lives should be exempt from feeling anguish, or emptiness. Nice fantasy. But still don't you get tired of drinking the last dregs of your dying breaths? I know I do. How can a soul be sustained upon that? Let those dregs drizzle down the drain. Even Odysseus says there is no shame in fleeing ruin. that's all for now later, ... ... oldephebe The first verse of Psalm one speaks about the path that leads to blessedness A consecration of a life to more than just a rigorous codification of conduct that constitutes most peoples idea of piety. So here I am again come to spatter you with my chatter. "Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked or stand in the way of sinners or sit in the seat of mockers " It also goes on to say and I'm paraphrasing and reading this with the eyes of my heart turned toward the New Testament - that the heart that delights in the Law of the Lord (which really is the law of love when you distill it down. and upon those loving words of guidance he meditates upon them in the height of abundance or out of the depths of famine. "He is like a tree planted by streams of water which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither.. Whatever he does prospers..(this is not necessarily a circumstantial state. it refers to the person who lives out of his/her spirit in good and bad times will always reap the reward of walking in the wisdom of the spirit, too many Charlatans mislead earnest, and devoted people into basing their faith upon material gains. This is acutely abhorrent. These are the emblems of a life lived in the light of His wisdom, not out of the well of envy, or gamesmanship..the heart not stirred to stoop to the Darkness of another. Again most people entrusted with the sacred duty of inculcating, teaching the way of the Cross, guiding earnest yearning souls shape the Bible into this bludgeoning implement. These are not the harsh dictates of an unloving task master. The Psalmist is really delineating the defining attributes of a life lived out of these living streams of life. a life lived out of these consecrations bears a certain fruit, and out of this treasure of life my spirit is fed, held together. ... ... oldephebe So we are all strapped in to our subjective states of consciousness right? Somewhere in all of us, from some ineffable heretofore unreachable place is this yearning. We all want to hear the words "Welcome home. Your search is over. I love you.." Such things issue out of the imperishable part of our selves. See by what measure a woman or man will shape a life.."The height of impiety.." or the humble gentle way. When we neglect our spirits to the mean and narrow, the avaristic, these depleting things. we are starved of the essence wherein our proto-spirits before the encumbrances of this sack of flesh. We fall within ourselves by negation and neglect. A great teacher once said (and I'm paraphrasing here) omissions make way for commissions, and once in its inertia, its gathered force. these ineluctable and imperceptible gradations the heart hardens, calcifies. this is true in any relationship that is neglected. I equate the term ungodly to the state of being unsettled, to aim at no certain end, to walk only moored to ones appetites, fears. All angst without an anchor. Does any one expect you to just one day intrepidly embark upon this expedition into enlightenment? How apt are we to turn180 degrees with the swiftness of a sneeze? I mean just out of nowhere to abdicate every thing you know whether good or bad and say.."That's it today I'm a new man!" And this time it's gonna stick, no inevitable recidivism here no sir!" Well there are some spiritual encounters that have that kind of profundity, that call unto us out of our depths. the experience of being bathed in white light emanating out of the Eternal. Real change comes about for most people not out of flagellating our flesh for every lapse and impiety.. Real consecration comes out of a kind of discipline, but not the fastidious and fevered Teutonic brand..No. It comes out of an affection, a reverence born of seeing the fruit in ones own life. "I've tried these truths, and they have carried me out of darkness, through tragedy, ..these trails of tears have led me to triumph, seared somethin' strong in me. through an intimate acquaintance." ... .. oldephebe If I asked you "What is your idea of happiness? How would you define it?" What if I told you that it was possible despite ones emotional orientation, despite ones susceptibility to a seemingly infinite sub-set of interrelated triggers, despite having something skewed in the neural chemical soup. You can say to the deepest corners of your being, "I will be well, I will stay that way. Upon this testament is built a new architecture of coping. No more will I be shackle by "persistent painful emotions" A self-negating mysticism, the conditioning of our souls to negative self-talk. A great Christian counselor who reached out to me many years ago. who at the time may have thought her words and ceaseless guidance over the course of years never reached me. She said this negative self-talk and subsequent conditioning of our minds needs an equally or more powerful counter point. When you let go of one thing so powerful and constant in your life you have to replace it with something. She called it mis-belief therapy. It was developed by William Backus and Marie Chaplan, two psycho-therapists esteemed by colleagues. Misbelief therapy is the consistent injecting of the truth into our value systems, life-ethos, expectations, our sometimes lofty or rudderless (i.e. immature) moral and emotional assumptions. I believe all major faiths and cosmologies each concur on this one thing: it is the truth that not only sets man/woman free..The Truth makes you free. That is a performative utterance. a radical interior transformation takes place when one is exposed to the truth and accepts its authority. I am not a psychiatrist, or a theologian, or a counselor. However I have had countless friendships with emotionally damaged people, victims of incest, rape, verbal and physical abuse, and the whole litany of depredations the human soul endures. I also have several people some related by blood and others through a special emotional bond who have been ravaged almost irrevocably by the horrible things said and done to them. My heart is broken every time I come across a broken life. We treat the tiny little precious people our children horribly. We slash with our tongues at our siblings, friends, wives, scalding even absolute strangers with our malicious stares. up and out of a soul steeped in venom bred of misery and insecurity. This doesn't have to be our natural state, perpetually in pain, or perpetually causing pain. We can invest our being with a living truth..dynamic..Resilient. Let every thought be infused with the truth, let us hold every thought captive to the truth, the truth we tell ourselves about what is really happening to us at any time in any place. We can be restored. I believe it as fervently as I believe the breath flowing in and out of my lungs..it is a source of life, in my own life over the course of many tragedies and deprivations, degradations, depredations the underlying ethos of this eternal truth has been my tether, my tutor to life, it has unfailingly resuscitated my broken soul/life many times. The scourge of schizophrenia which often starts out as a slowly crippling neurosis has struck down too many lives in my life, more than I care to acknowledge. Some people are imbued with a natural strength, so maybe these words aren't for you. Others are not so blessed being differently constituted. Earlier I wrote that the ache of this world wears me down..I can feel it sometimes, feel the pain throbbing out of an inconsolable hurt..Maybe I'm writing these words just for me..maybe in a week or so I'll lapse back into the choking desolation that has colored most of my blathes here. but every time the wisdom, the love of myself, the love of my God calls me out. I'm not holier than you, or anyone, but this is what has held me all these years. This is the penultimate paragraph of this introduction. The next time I visit these blue pages I will begin to get into the meat, the practical therapeutic modes of thinking that are necessary to arm ourselves against neurosis and defeatist thinking, the words that we can say to ourselves to help quiet that unreachable ache. Can anything scour out all sorrow, all hurtful emotions? Of course not but by watching what we tell ourselves about the conscious experience of these emotions can produce a powerful transformation. ... ... oldephebe - Give me a few days..I haven't had the time to consider these things. or maybe I haven't been in the most positive frame of mind. So this discourse will resume in a few days. or maybe sooner, but i just don't want to sit down and start typing randomly..not about something this serious to me. if it matters to anyone, post here if you want. I probably won't respond to anything until this thing is done. moreover, being the scattered brained type of guy i am..i can't say for certain how long this thing might be..it's kind of a pep talk to myself and what not.. ... ... ... Did you finally drown in there? Oldephebe, I think you are a deeply flawed, lonely guy who in your verbiage "promenades pathetically for attention." And no, I didn't even bother to read your bag full of fluff blathe. .. Perhaps those are some aspects of my personhood..maybe when I respond to the gyrations of my ego, the needy bleeding bottom of me. But I'm learning not to be afraid of the silences. How about if we both agree to "Let's learn to let God live in the silences." ... No not holier that thou...more like more flawed, more dependant than thou. so that's where i must abide even when ocean's bottom floor black knits a shawl over my soul. I must abide in this verity..that i am not the things i say to myself, or even the shades of contempt glistening in others eyes..furrowed brows have a tendency to drag me down, so i must abide in this verity that the grace of god, the perfected grace, heart of Christ is where i will abide.. ... Doar wow! ... oE wow yourself be well doar ... Heres how to stop the pain slashing through you "The Truth shall make you free" Love yourself. . IP: Logged
juniperb Knowflake Posts: 6857 From: Blue Star Kachina Registered: Mar 2002	posted July 07, 2005 02:42 PM oldephebe, I feel Blessed you`ve wandered back this way! Now off for a nice read Blessings, ------------------ If having a soul means being able to feel love and loyalty and gratitude, then animals are better off than a lot of humans. ~James Herriot IP: Logged
oldephebe Knowflake Posts: 35 From: philly pa USA Registered: Dec 2003	posted July 08, 2005 02:50 AM Ahhhh. Juniper. The lovely song that is your soul blesses me as well. My apologies for the self-indulgent circuitousness and inordinate length of my previous post. I still wih there was an emoticon that adequetly conveyed me somehow awkwardly allowing myself being drawn into a firm but chaste embrace of whatever fancy word there is for goodwill or peace or whatever cogent metaphorical carraige i could put it in and that i will of course at some later time conjure or at least note as it wends its way up through the strata of my sub-conscious... ... ------------------ trying not to appear spiritually barren IP: Logged
TINK Knowflake Posts: 3846 From: New England Registered: Mar 2003	posted July 08, 2005 10:16 PM Oldephebe! How the hell have you been? Oy! That was quite the ride there. But a good and worthy one. (as always) Stand tall against the gale. Amen. IP: Logged
iAmThat Knowflake Posts: 1255 From: third rock from the Sun Registered: Sep 2004	posted July 09, 2005 11:10 AM Dear OldPhoebe, That was an incredible post. I would like to hear more from you. I complement you for the number of words you have in your Vocabulary Are you a Sufi? Love. IAT IP: Logged

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