Spiritually inclined people, myself included, tend to think that crisis is necessary for transformation. However, recent events here in the US and abroad, what with the detention of asylum seekers and the Christchurch massacre, are challenging the breeziness with which we once intoned that "darkness is medicine." It appears that if we want darkness to do its alchemical work on society, then we also have to accept that some people will experience suffering much more acutely than others, and that fact is hard to reconcile with the end goal of transformation.
Like many of you, I've sensed since childhood that something is fundamentally wrong with our world, and I've spent the majority of my life actively hoping for some grand crisis to knock our global consumerist culture out of its stupor. I was born in the 1990s, and watched as the initial shock of 9/11 gave way to the tedium of the War on Terror. Then there was the 2008 financial meltdown, but the central banks (barely) managed to squeak past that threat and keep the edifice chugging along. Then the Occupy protests petered out, the Eurozone debt crisis never materialized, and the Obama Administration turned out to be just as prone to neoliberal sentiments and surveillance state impulses as its predecessors.
Now, at least since 2016, the global ascent of strongmen and breakdown in diplomatic dialogue has brought an end to the blithe ennui of 2000-2015, but at a huge humanitarian cost that all of us here are aware of. So am I justified to wish for crisis? I'm sitting here, comfortably typing away at my computer, while children are locked in cages with the aid of my tax dollars. Vera de Chalambert wrote in her viral essay "Kali Takes America: I'm With Her":
"I think that this moment gives us an opportunity for reckoning only if instead of running for the light, we let ourselves go fully into the dark...We must not send suffering into exile — the fear, the heartbreak, the anger, the helplessness all are appropriate, all are welcome."
Yet even by allowing myself to feel anger and heartbreak at the current state of this nation (and thus let darkness perform her alchemical work), I am still doing so at the expense of someone's more profound suffering. Or perhaps the crisis has not hit rock bottom yet, and at some point soon we will all experience deep suffering, and only then will modern culture transform? Is anyone else struggling with these sorts of thoughts about crisis and transformation?
"Is anyone else struggling with these sorts of thoughts about crisis and transformation?" --Coyote
Thank you, Coyote, for a beautifully expressed, incredibly thoughtful post. And for the Vera de Chalambert essay.
As always, you've got me thinking. I see that suffering brings awakenings. But I don't welcome the suffering, especially not for others. I welcome the awakening. I don't want it darker, but I recognize when we are living in a way that is harmful to so many and to our fellow animals and the earth, that suffering may be the only way we wake up to what we are doing that needs to change.
The Vera de Chalambert's essay was really good, but I could never welcome the darkness.
I see it this way: First we find ourselves in darkness. Then instead of haranguing against God for our misfortune, we find the meaning in the suffering. We learn from the darkness.
On 12/12/12 I pulled a card for our world, and got the Hanged Man. It said we were entering a period of suffering in which we would not be able to change our predicament. We would have to live with it, like the Hanged Man, a person hanging upside down by the toes. We would have to surrender to our situation.
Two days later, the Newtown Massacre happened, and people all over the world were sobbing over this unbearable atrocity. I sensed it was just the start of what we'd go through. I somehow doubt that anyone would have welcomed such suffering, or that anyone welcomes the suffering we are now seeing at the border. Back in 2012, I had posted a brief article on 12/12/12/ about how surrender and pain causes transformation. But never in my wildest dreams would have welcomed the suffering that followed just two days later.
Finally and most important, I don't think it's other people's suffering that causes transformation. I think it's my own. My own suffering causes my own transformation.
Tell me more about your own struggle with darkness leading to light, suffering leading to transformation. I want to understand what you, and anyone else here might be grappling with in these concepts.
Thank you for your response, Jeanne. I went through a dark night of the soul that lasted from October 2016 to April 2017 that was precipitated by health problems but was aggravated by the political climate and the oppressive sense of fear in the collective. I especially remember the long nights of December and January, when I lied in bed awake until sunrise, kicking my feet and tossing and turning with hopelessness as I came to realize that my personal future and society's future would not progress the way I had previously imagined it would, and to me that felt like the end of the world.
As it turned out, that feeling of the world coming to an end was necessary for me to reboot my imagination and envision new modes of cultural change and living my own life. In the process, when hopelessness was my overriding state of mind, there were times when I turned to suicidal ideation, and I'm convinced interventions on the part of the universe prevented me from carrying out those ideations. But as the current epidemic of opioid abuse and suicide in the US shows, the universe is not going to intervene in every person's despair, and so I struggle with the ethics of wishing for crisis. In effect, aren't I wishing for the suffering and occasional death of other people?
Jeanne, your interpretation of the hanged man brings some clarity to this issue. I think when I find myself desiring crisis, I'm actually picking up on the immensity of our predicament and the certainty that there will be collective suffering. But if suffering is certain, then I at least can hope that that suffering will lead to awakening. Like you, it's the awakening that I welcome. And I agree with your other point - it's my own suffering that causes my own transformation. Although I'm still learning more about myself in these dark days, I feel like I did a large chunk of the painful work of metamorphosis when I was depressed back in 2016-17. That puts me in a position to help others who still feel trapped by darkness and thus accelerate the societal paradigm shift we so desire. Not long ago I caught up with an older cousin of mine who lives halfway across the country and seems to be struggling with the same existential impotence I was dealing with three years ago. Although I haven't followed up on our conversation yet, I'm thinking I should check in with her and start putting theory into practice.
I have read your last post again and again. There is so much in it, I don't know where to begin other than to thank you for saying what I have felt throughout the last 2.5 years, although better than I could have said it. -- The shock, then despair, then hanging in there, then gaining strength, then helping others who are struggling.
I also have found joy -- in feeling so much love for others whose lives I wouldn't have known if it weren't for this crisis. This community of beautiful souls who I have needed all my life, and now we have a place to meet. And I've found joy in seeing nature with new eyes, now that climate science is beginning to show us how our earth is so interconnected and miraculous--even as it is decompensating before our eyes.
I'm glad you hung in there when things got unbearable. It must have taken courage to tell us how dark it got for you. I am grateful to you for that. I did not know how much pain you have suffered, and I see now and want to surround you with care and with gratitude for all that you bring to this community. You give with all of your heart, Coyote.
This is the most powerful time you could be here and I'm just so glad you are here.
I feel this thread that you started is perhaps the most important in the forum. But it is also the hardest.
And it will likely not get a lot of posts because it's hard to figure out what to do with all that has happened other than to hope it will end. But there is something important to do with all that has happened and where we are now.
It's just so hard to get to the core of it. I feel like I'm peeling back layers of consciousness and can't see the answer.
So instead of answers, I will pose a question to you, to myself, and to anyone reading this.
The question I want to ask now is how can we evolve in this situation?
Or, maybe we don't want it darker.
Maybe we want it lighter so we can actually see what the darkness has created . To see what has been hidden in the shadows, what has been allowed to grow under the cover of darkness. Just because it is too dark to see now, doesn't mean it hasn't been there playing havoc and slowly corrupting things. As the light is allowed to shine, it begins to extend to the darkest of corners and the truth is revealed. When the light of dawn spreads its' rays across the land, the weeds will be revealed along with the healthy fruit and vegetables. We are only able to weed the garden once the light shines to reveal the truth of the situation. Knowing the truth, however horrid it may seem , will allow for us to care properly for the garden, for ourselves, for our communities, for our world. The light will allow us to make sense of what has been fermenting in darkness, in absence of light. So perhaps we need more light to shine and reveal what has been hidden from our view so we can understand the reality of the situation. Then we can finally create something new that is filled with love, hope and joy.
The wound is the place where the light enters you.--Rumi
Sending love and appreciation for the vulnerable feelings shared in this discussion. I agree that the epidemic of opiate addiction, the rates of depression and more, are very much related to the crisis our world is in.
Perhaps my own history of healing from deep trauma has helped prepare me for these times. Like you, Coyote, I feel there were interventions on my behalf, a grace that pulled me out of despair and guided me toward healing and self-love (and therefore love for all). I'm thinking of a quote referenced in the book Jung and Tarot, which, if memory serves, is part of the discussion of the Temperance card: "Every soul has an angel which stands over it and whispers 'Grow, grow.'" I often wonder why some of us are resilient and others are not, and part of that may be the degree to which we are able to hear and follow that call to love and wholeness. But that call, those divine interventions, are offered to everyone. We aren't separate from the divine, much less one another, but some of us may be more firmly stuck in that illusion of separation than others. I don't know. I wish I knew so I could help those stuck in dark places.
As for your important question, Jeanne, how do we evolve through this? My own growth and development has mostly been a matter of surrender. Life is growth and evolution. Some of us get stuck and stand in the way, cling to our comforts and security against the flow of change. Some harden against the feelings that make them vulnerable. Softening my heart and letting go have been the most helpful for me--not to say that I am not accountable for myself, but that I am living as an expression of something larger. Part of my prayer ritual each morning is to set an intention to open myself to my life as an expression of loving, grateful service. What that amounts to and how it all plays out isn't really up to me as an individual--rather like the "let go and let god" sentiment. I hope this makes sense! For me, the active work is mindful awareness and trying to avoid a kind of rigid, clinging self-protection and to engage whole-heartedly and mindfully with whatever I do. (Decades of being a Buddhist coming through this perspective.) I fall short much of the time, but the more I practice and pray for support, the more peace and love I feel and can share with others. ❤️
We are only able to weed the garden once the light shines to reveal the truth of the situation.--Lovendures
The wound is the place where the light enters you.--Rumi (from Herondreams)
"Every soul has an angel which stands over it and whispers 'Grow, grow.'" -- Herondreams. (quote from Jung & Tarot)
Your wisdom is like a soothing balm. And you inspire me.
Still I keep asking myself, how do I move forward when I cannot change what needs changing in this broken world?
I hear a whispered response: Start by changing yourself, Jeanne. So I'm back to that question of how do I evolve?
I hear Mary Oliver's words, "You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves." (Wild Geese)
It's not the final answer, but perhaps it's one path through the dark. To me, she's saying, do things that give you true joy and become aware of what true joy is for you and what it is not.
This is such an individual thing because we are all in different places on the path. Perhaps we all have jobs to do and true joy comes when we are doing them, when we discover what Oliver wrote is our "place in the family of things."
Or does true joy come when I connect with someone and discover their inner light? Or when I help someone? When I contribute to something I believe in? When I do something creative? When I discover beauty in someone or something? When I feel gratitude? All questions. Trying to find a path through the dark.
And what is not true joy; what causes pain? Got to figure that out too. When I hurt someone. When I think too about a dark future with no way to navigate it because I'm not there yet.
There are days when the only way I can navigate is to literally focus on putting one foot in front of the other. Sometimes I can see what the day will be, sometimes I press forward blindly. I do my best to stay mindful and take each thing as it comes. I'm not always successful, but then (so far) there's a next day, and I press forward again.
I am also a person who suffered severe trauma, beginning in childhood, on multiple fronts. I had suicidal thoughts by the age of 8. I know now that this changed my brain and how it works. It still makes me angry, because it was unnecessary and mostly preventable, but then I remember that those of us who persevere despite trauma are the ones who evolve (@jeanne-mayell), the ones who become more insightful and intuitive, the ones who want to protect what needs protecting. I have found over the years that my closest relationships tend to be with people who have also suffered some kind of severe trauma. There's some kind of unwritten/unsaid understanding that people without trauma can't conceive of. I'm not saying that if you haven't had trauma you're not a good person I'm just saying that if the trauma doesn't kill you, it really does make you stronger in some ways. If nothing else, it definitely steels you against the darkness. Some of us are more cynical or pessimistic, but when things go well, I know I for one am so pleasantly surprised that I feel real joy. The silver lining of low expectations...lol...
Love your words and thoughts here, Jeanne. ❤️ ❤️ ❤️ After I wrote my post I walked my dog and thought about adding "Wild Geese" into the conversation so I was thrilled to see you already went there! That poem and others by her have been such a balm for me.
It is the example of Mary Oliver herself that helps me understand. After the 2016 election, I wrestled with the idea of what is my responsibility and how I might better serve the world. It seemed imperative to get more involved in politics and social justice work, and I leaned into the perspective that nature writers like Mary Oliver were somehow shirking a duty while the rest of the world is burning around them. But that's not true: Mary Oliver followed her calling and shared the gifts that were given to her with the rest of us, and her words give strength, meaning, and inspiration to many people. Even if your work does not get the exposure of someone like Mary Oliver, it sends ripples out into the world. And this work is fundamentally expressing what is yours to offer, be it small acts of kindness, works of art, or creating a forum like this for people to support one another. It is our judging mind that wants to assign value to things and determine concrete, cause & effect outcomes, etc. but reality is so much more expansive than that and we can't see it.
Jeanne, when you wrote that post about being vegan I was thinking of my teacher who loves shopping on amazon. You got me thinking about his choice to shop there and I asked why he didn’t have an issue with it. He gave me a good explanation which I won’t go into except that it helped me see- but I asked: so how do we make a difference in the world? His response was ‘recycle and be kind.’ Like Mary Oliver I don’t think it’s about doing gymnastics and suffering unnecessarily but to be mindful in our eating (like native Americans and Buddhists as well as others), to offer smiles, to be kind, to recognize our personal gifts and then use that as a vehicle to offer solace for those who are hurting. I’m an elementary teacher and that’s my medium- you offer so much to this community. I’m not saying anything we here on this forum don’t know but it bears repeating that it’s far simpler than we think. When we stay in the light, when our thoughts adhere to the beauty in the world then that’s what we manifest.