Welcome to what happened along my Sacred Path, the DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL. Literally, I doubt anyone who has been through it has the words, written or spoken, to accurately describe such a journey. If a description could be had, no one would have to experience it, because that would mean it’s a theory or something. As the saying goes, spiritual life is not a theory.
I list the books that impacted my life during this difficult period of my life. They are not chronically listed. The ones that had the greatest impact on my Soul will have an asterisk before the caption beneath each book.
*I listened to this audiobook dozens of times. It helped me survive more than any other single work. God is Good! Thank you, Caroline Myss, for helping save my life!
Kings die. "Abner is not far from any one of us. We share an Abner-nature that harbors sin’s stupidity, perversity, and twistedness. Let Abner preach to you. Let him tell you that it is possible to know the truth but not embrace the truth, to quote the truth but not submit to the truth, to hold the truth, and yet assault the truth. And so Abner joins all the other antichrists who strut around and say, ‘I will be king’ (1 Kings 1:5)."
— Dale Ralph Davis (2 Samuel: Out of Every Adversity)
A person need not be in recovery to find utility in this book. I have loved poetry since I was a young person. I learned that only 5% of Americans say they like poetry, but I doubt it’s true, because people like music with good lyrics.
A penetrating book that helped me strip away everything that I Am not. It took 3 1/2 years to read, because I was living/dying in every word of it. This and Spiritual Madness by Carolyn helped the most. I guess *‘A Grief Observed’ was 'up there’ too.
As Neitchzie reflected, a person should never shrink from staring into the abyss and finding it staring back. I left no moral argument for or against suicide unexamined. Wasn’t it Socrates that said that the unexamined life is not worth living? Ironically, by standing by his beliefs he committed himself to his own legal death. Didn’t Jesus do the same, in a manner? He could have run away or begged a metaphorical rich Hollywood Elitist to have his life spared. Jesus healed the ear of the soldier that came for him. What I’m pointing out here is that they had a choice, but allowed or chose death, which is arguably a form of suicide.
It is certainly a quiet place, this Dark Night business.
Sometimes I felt like I was God's Debris, humorously speaking and felt the spiritual sparkles of sprinkled satire falling from heaven with jovial irony.
*A Sacred Dance is Grief. This book gained within me a deep respect for Melody Beattie. I worked with her brother Charlie in sobriety and was in treatment with another of her brothers Jim as a young person. IMO, this book was better than Codependent No More, at least for me (I say that because Codependent No More was excellent). My years in MADD 'forced a journey', to be sure, as did the Dark Night. Judy Collins walked a similar road.
*My favorite C.S. Lewis book. It was wonderful to see someone who was purported as spiritually evolved in Christian Circles admit he questioned everything, even God, due to Grief. My favorite C.S. Lewis book.
“No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. I am not afraid, but the sensation is like being afraid. The same fluttering in the stomach, the same restlessness, the yawning. I keep on swallowing.
At other times it feels like being mildly drunk or concussed. There is a sort of invisible blanket between the world and me. I find it hard to take in what anyone says. Or perhaps, hard to want to take it in. It is so uninteresting. Yet I want the others to be about me. I dread the moments when the house is empty. If only they would talk to one another and not to me.”
I received this book when I first started speaking for MADD as a gift of grief.
For anyone who has experienced a significant loss, this wonderfully informative and accessible book is a guide to understanding and overcoming grief.
The death of someone close -- a family member, spouse, or partner -- can result in feelings of overwhelming grief. At the same time, society unrealistically expects people to recover from grief as quickly as possible. I Can't Stop Crying looks at grieving as a painful but necessary process. The authors emphasize the importance of giving permission to grieve and suggest steps for rebuilding life without the one who is gone. They also look at how such a loss affects relationships with family and friends, as well as lifestyle, work habits, and hopes for the future. The book includes an appendix with bereavement groups, resources, and other self-help organizations for grievers.
'Aint't it the truth' poetry.
Life Forces a Journey is a unique collection of poetry that expresses the raw, moving emotions of the author as she struggles with what life presents her. From death and depression to hope and healing, Disch chronicles a journey that is at once difficult and restoring. Within its pages, readers will find accessible, authentic, straight-from-the-soul poetry that has helped Disch heal from her own pain, and may prove useful to others as well.
We can fill our coffins with the rocks they have thrown, (we can write poetry). or we can build our castles with the sticks and the stones.
Another book I got when I first joined MADD, gifted by Sharon Berg who became a dear friend and still is. She was the MADD Victim Advocate for Ramsey/Washington County in Minnesota. I was VP of the Chapter before they changed the policy and made it taboo to allow “Offenders” be in leadership roles. Reminds me of, “I wouldn’t be a member of a club that would have me as a member.” My Path is Sacred. All parts of it. I’m not ‘offended.’
Waking up is a motherfucker.
Figured I better read it before the month expired.
For a Kierkegaard book, it's an easy read. Most of his books are not easy to read IMO.
"In eternity it will be asked whether you may not have damaged a good thing, in order that you also might judge with them that did not know how to judge, but who possessed the crowd's strength, which in the temporal sense is significant, but to which eternity is wholly indifferent."
— Søren Kierkegaard (Purity of Heart is to Will One Thing: Spiritual Preparation for the Office of Confession)
“A loved one suffered from Bi-Polar and this helped me understand 'me' in ways I didn't quite grasp. Thought I bought it to understand 'others'. Ironic & inspirational.
During this difficult period of my life and every difficulty preceding it, I chose to FEEL ALL OF MY FEELINGS. I was not depressed. The Dark Night might have depression accompany it, but they are two different things. Testing the entire depth and breadth of one's soul means missing nothing.
In the book An Unquiet Mind, I asked questions of myself and contemplated those trials and tribulations of those whom I knew suffered from Bi-Polar. Here's a couple of quotes from that book:
"Which of my feelings are real? Which of the me's is me? The wild, impulsive, chaotic, energetic, and crazy one? Or the shy, withdrawn, desperate, suicidal, doomed, and tired one? Probably a bit of both, hopefully, much that is neither."
"If I can't feel, if I can't move, if I can't think, and I can't care, then what conceivable point is there in living?" — Kay Redfield Jamison (An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness)
One finds out who one's friends are when the stuff hits the fan. Poetic irony.
*This brought beauty and peace to suffering for me. The beautiful Mystery of Grief.
Transforming Grief, indeed.
I threw away 8-10 years of journals. Hundreds of pounds of writing. What a moron. It's about the only regret I have in life.
*A fantastic, brilliant mind was Teresa. A hard read for me, but nuggets of gold were therein.
"Union is as if in a room there were two large windows through which the light streamed in it enters in different places but it all becomes one. " — Teresa of Ávila (Interior Castle)
Here’s a quote: The Interior Castle is about what we are at our deepest places. Here's a quote not from her book, but from someone else who sums it up well, indirectly: “Knowledge of what you love somehow comes to you; you don’t have to read nor analyze nor study. If you love a thing enough, knowledge of it seeps into you, with particulars more real than any chart can furnish.” — Jessamyn West
“If a poem hasn't ripped apart your soul; you haven't experienced poetry.” Edgar Allan Poe
This poem, Phoenix, was written about The (my) Dark Night of the Soul. It took three & 1/2 years to write. For the first 2 1/2 years, I wanted to kill myself every day, all day. The last year I only wanted to kill myself 2 or 3 times a day, generally. The original title of the poem was BROKEN, but after 3 1/2 years, I renamed it PHOENIX and added the last Stanza.
While going through the Dark Night of the Soul, I learned that different depths of grief have different tastes on the back of the tongue (tears have taste). I don't care if it sounds crazy, but it's true. I would have NEVER guessed this in a hundred years, but the experience is a Great Master. (Photography by Rose-Lynn Fisher http://rose-lynnfisher.com/tears.html...)
“Always go with the choice that scares you the most, because that's the one that is going to require the most from you.” ― Caroline Myss