We all know deep down inside somewhere that outer wars only reflect an inner war. The dark things we try to deny still seek to find us and wish for us to face them, after all life is not perfect, shit happens and we have to deal with it or give up, go mad or take our lives.
The Jungian writer Robert Johnson reminds us using the myth of Faust that it is at the darkest time that the Easter music is heard this speaks of a resurrection or redemption of some kind.. In that myth so loved by Jung Faust makes a pact with the devil to find any pleasure or happiness he can but in the end he drives a beautiful young woman mad. In this I see the lesson that we cannot deny the soft feminine side of us that suffers and is vulnerable.. In people gone bad they had to deny this part of themselves and cannot make the encounter with it, in refusing their own shadow as well as the mistakes they can do, even the hurts they can effect they also do not get to mature through the depressive position.. They may turn to drugs and the abort the journey of individuation.
The truth is that the soul in us calls to us from deep within the inner war, during times of great suffering, confusion and conflict. A lot of people around me lately are saying that the Ukraine is far from innocent and deserves what is happening to them. To be honest I am not well educated due to my father derailing my education and I lack the energy to read on much that is political as my interests lie in different directions so I do not know..
I also know that peace and absence of conflict is by no means bliss, there is a time to fight so we can differentiate ourselves, but there is also a time to let down our guard and let love in and try to see that even with his or her dark side and our own our brother or sister is a lot like us.. Do we really know what they endured? Can we judge?
Yes we need to discriminate and set boundaries for health at other times we need to let them go.. God knows living is not easy but we cannot hope that we will go through this life without facing some kind of suffering, nor forget that that suffering may be the very thing that in the end leads us to grow and emerge as a stronger less ego-centrially focused person.
Naively at times we think we can relieve another’s suffering, but really it is up to them to struggle through it in order to grow.. Lately I am seeing trying to rescue others to make myself feel less uncomfortable has been a pathway leading me directly into the gates of hell and actually involves a hell of a lot of projection of my own inner helplessness. I cry over it a lot but then at times I also remember what a pure state of bliss it was before incarnating to be part of a celestial whole state where there was not this suffering, but the truth is this is earthly life, a place of trials, heavy burdens, deep and painfully unrequited longings and sacrifices we must make purely to survive.
Maybe as my therapist told me this week I have for past years been in deep retreat in a cave of my being made to keep out a hostile world. I do not know.. I prefer Marion Woodman’s view that a time of inner work force us into a cocoon rather than a cave in which old parts of us must break down and transform, patterns that are not only our but woven into us by our epigenetic ‘fate’. When we emerge and then fly free as the butterfly we will have transcended not through avoidance but through a deeply painful inner process of healing and change impossible to fully name or find words for.
Lately I only know that I feel the best when my heart is full of love, when I see out places of peace, but that hate and anger also have a very powerful role to play in showing me what really, truly and deeply does grate upon or damage my spirit..
Emerging From The Dark Night 