Dark Night of the Soul – I AM, therefore I AM.



Human experience follows a limited set of archetypes. One of the best-known models of this set is laid out in the 22 Major Arcana of the Tarot. Card XVI, The Tower, represents the archetype of the Dark Night of the Soul.

I just passed through a Dark Night of the Soul experience, and am still very much in the process of learning from it, seeking and assimilating the wisdom to be gained. I am grateful to several individuals in particular for helping me pull through. One of them is a public figure, rapper KRS-ONE. His lecture Hip Hop Beyond Entertainment was instrumental in bringing about the personal epiphany that brought this most recent Dark Night experience of mine to a definitive close.

KRS-ONE re-minded me (re-HEARTed is more like it) of the primal significance of the realization that I AM. That's where our true power comes from, the power to truly end slavery – to end the entire idea, the very consciousness behind slavery. To paraphrase the hip hop philosopher, as long as you're looking outside yourself for validation, you are FREED – not FREE. Freedom – self-actualization – is what gives someone the ability to take a worthless rag, tie it around their head, walk around in public like that rag is worth ten thousand bucks, and end up having other people actually pay ten thousand bucks to have one just like it.

And that's pretty much what hip hop did. It came out of seemingly hopeless circumstances: war overseas, fatherless families, an epidemic of heroin, substandard education, and a cycle of poverty. That generation, in order to survive in a world where it was effectively excluded from the mainstream of society, had to self-create its own identity outside the mainstream. If they'd waited for permission to have a culture, or to join the wider, established culture, they'd still be waiting. Except they'd probably be dead. It was Do or die, so the ones who refused to die... Did. Lacking instruments, they made their own music with what they did have. Lacking approved venues for their visual art, they used the surfaces that were there, whether they had permission or not; hence, graffiti. Their solution to the impossibility of their situation was to reject the reality of their parents' generation and replace it with their own reality, one that they could understand and that reflected their own values. Hip hop didn't need approval, it approved itself... and flourished. By the same token, FREE human beings don't need to earn the right to exist, they have that right intrinsically, because they exist. I AM, therefore I AM.

What value do you place on yourself? Are you worth more if you own more real estate or have a bigger bank account? Are you more human because you have a family and other people who care about you? If you don't value your soul, does it have worth? Are you less than completely you if you lack the university degree or the job you want? Does your self-worth depend on someone else's say-so? And who is responsible for you? Do you want somebody to protect you from your own choices, or are you willing to face the consequences without blinking? If you say you're going to do something, and then don't hold yourself to it, what was the point? Your existence either means something, or it doesn't. If it doesn't, then you might as well not exist. And would you choose that, really? Because it is a choice. You may not have to earn your right to exist, but you sure as hell ought to claim it. Because if you don't own your life, someone else will.

Me, I'm still working on getting this through to myself. It's been four and a half years since the first time I consciously came to this realization. That time I ended up losing my nerve, sliding back. I reckon it's a case of “not being ready 'till you're ready.” But I think the point's been driven just a liiiittle closer to home this time. If it takes another Dark Night before I'm really ready, then so be it. But I'm not throwing away this chance.

Thank you, God, and thank me, God.

Espavo, Namasté, and peace out.

4 comments:

    There is a fine balance in the concept I call 'the verbal accuracy'. It consists of two parts, the intention and the weight of words. Former is the motivating force behind an attempt to shape the words into an arrow. The intention is often thwarted by the words themselves. They are heavy with meaning of their own. They are like a wreight train pushing down the trails. And the trails themselves are an embodiment of pre-destination. The goal achieved might be entirely different from the one the intention strived to reach.

    Verbal skill like yours... I don't know if you have ever pondered these concepts. For myself it has always been a true hazard. The intention withers away or attains an useless shape. Beautiful, yes, but with no meaning else than bolstering a sense of creation in me.
    With intention bright as the stars, with verbal skill honed to perfection, a balance might be found. To allow the arrow fly straight and true.

     

    Ohhhh those dark nights . . . I've had ones that last for a little more than a year. They're transformative but they soooo sooo suck. At some point though it was time to take what I learned and apply it to my connections to other people.

    Since "dark nights" run in my family I know I need chemical assistance to get out of the hole or I just stay there. Once I'm out I look down the hole and say . . . Wow, why did I stay there so long?

    One life to live. Like the soap opera. Might as well be happy, given the choice :-)

     

    Timo - Since I am pretty much a native anglophone thanks to my background, I find it actually much easier to express myself with verbal precision in English than in Finnish. I hadn't really thought about it so much consciously. Your poetic contemplations on this and other topics are always fresh and interesting to read, partly because of the novelty of the form and content ("I never thought of it that way before / never thought of it in those terms"), but also because the strong intention behind the words is so palpable. Really, the intention is what counts most. If it's strong enough, it will overcome any language barriers. Your command of English may not be technically perfect, but it's how you use the skill you do have that continually delights and astonishes me.

    HPS - Your situation with the chemical assistance actually helped me get over my almost categorical rejection of psych meds on the basis of just two failed trials. Now I'm just waiting for an appointment with the psychiatrist. I'm not willing to compromise myself by taking the wrong pill, but at least I'm open to the possibility that there's a right pill for whatever it is that I have. There is reason to suspect a chemical imbalance due to genetics in my case.

    It's amazing how different the perspectives are from inside the hole and from outside it. Almost like being two different people. The challenge, like you say, is making the shift from the perspective in which that shift looks impossible.

    Happiness really is a choice. But sometimes we're just too blinded to see that.

     

    Hi again,

    Zoloft stopped my mindgrinding/obsessiveness and suicidal ideation in no time flat. But it killed my affect entirely (couldn't feel anything), and killed my sex drive. I'd only take it again as a temporary fix in a crisis.

    On the other hand, Wellbutrin works so well with so many people I wonder if it might just be a miracle drug.