dark & light -- rumblings out of the blue

i've written a fair amount here about my struggle with "depression."  at times, in it's throes, i can be brutally dismissive about who i am, what i am, where i am: i am a broke down crank, a kook, unfit for human consumption, best kept quarantined, in exile, to simply wither and rot in my own funk.  at others, i cop a romantic, perhaps histrionic view: this woe is the mystic's "dark night of the soul" (supposing myself an actual mystic); or, i am but stuck on the inhalation phase of the tonglen loop (supposing myself capable of real empathy and compassion).  i have even examined the notion that i "collect" karma -- where others act without conscience or slough off griefs too hard to bear, i pick up the slack and take on burning through karma that is not, conventionally speaking, my own.  the ocean of sadness i sometimes find myself drowning in cannot be the sadness of "one" broken heart, alone.  can it be?   there are occasions when this ocean seems to have no shore, no edge, no bottom -- the sadness is "infinite," and there is no possible way that this is my grief, my heartache, alone.

i woke up this morning with a 30 year-old recollection of the cover of Hans Ulrich-Reiker's,  The Yoga of Light, in my mind -- here it is:




and recall reading back then the author's warning that "insanity" was a very real, potential outcome of entering upon the practice of yoga.  and with this groggy recollection, i  woke up wondering if the author, or similarly wise authorities, would include my tangle with depression or dark night as just this sort of outcome.

i do not foam at the mouth; hear voices; hallucinate; or labor under "delusions" (in a stictly medical, psychiatric sense).  i'm plagued by heartache -- stuck on heartache.  and, perhaps, the loosening or thinning of "egoic" boundaries -- yogic "progress," to be sure -- has genuinely put me in touch with others' suffering.  where my shit ends and others' shit begins -- blurred.  that i get stuck in it, and dwell upon it, is another issue.

still another bit of the histrionics, perhaps, is noting my capacity for grief and woe.  admittedly, in examining other suicides and the limits under which other psyches have cracked -- "that's it! i can take no more!" -- i will sometimes pish-posh the mole hill that toppled their cart, and aggrandize the mountains of shit, the valleys of woe, the deserts of despair, the oceans of pain i have crossed.  i have plainly been crushed, and beyond crushed, myself -- several suicide attempts and several more hospitalizations on my record.  (btw, mr. shakespeare, what is the nobler course?)  yet, i  "astound" myself, on occasion, pondering how much i've endured -- real or imagined; some cruel trick of my own defective mind, or whatever.  it's not a boast, just more testament to my folly.  and as quickly as i'm "impressed" by this dubious achievment, a billion other souls, whose struggles are, this very day, plainly more profound, will come into view.  and i'm obviously just a speck, once again.

is there a space in consciousness, a dump or landfill-like place, where all unhealed hurt is abandoned?  where ungrived griefs are hurled?  where unsoothed pain is pitched?  and all of it is left to rot?  and is all of that, yet unforgotten, still aching for resolution, for healing, for remembrance and attendance and release?  and think of all the billions, living and gone, and all the discarded, unhealed suffering this machine, this factory of hurt has cranked out over time . . .  how big the pit it has all been dumped into?  and what an adventure to fall into it . . .  is there such a literal place, or is this the construct of an obviously bothered mind?

am i a 'karmic furnace,' tending, somehow, to greive ungrieved griefs, burning through others' trashed and abandoned karma?  or am i just a nutcase, living, as i am, alone, in a small travel trailer, out in the toolies, at the end of a dirt road?  and wouldn't it be best if i just kept and confined all this "burning" to myself?



not so much of late, i've also written here about Enlightenment.  i am ever self-deprecating, especially on this score.  so, as we would rightly attend to the proferred wisdom of the sagest of sages with some scepticism, what to make of the commentary of a self-impunged kook prattling on about, of all things, a kind of holiest of holies?  what possible light might i shed from this murky, besotted backwater i swim in?

it's said that Enlightenment is not really attained or achieved, rather, it is always-already true about every born being, but is veiled or obscured.  it is Always-Already By-Grace-Given.  IT Is Done.  if we would but notice.

i have also dared to say before, there was an episode in my life when that veil dropped, and Terra Obscura was obscure no more.  "i" was OutShined by the Truth about Who We Really Are.  The Condition of all conditions was Obvious -- the Divine: everywhere, everywhen, everyone, everything, AND no-thing.  what the sages of Advaita Vedanta reveal; what the keepers of Dzogchen "point out" . . .  yep!  it's True!  "I AM THAT!"  my cup ran over.  satiation beyond satiation.  infinite LOVE!  freely, by Grace Given, cast in every direction, now, and now, and now, always and forever, no nook (no heart) untouched! 

in some respects, my life revolves around that episode (not some passing "peak experience," or in-and-up vault of heaven, but months of foreground/background shift; waking, sleeping, dreaming Awakenedness -- the Innate Great Perfection, plain as day).  before, there was intuition, longing, "remembrance" even.  there was gobbling up and spitting out, neti-neti fashion ("not this. not that."), of everything short of THAT.  since, my eyes have clouded over again, the veil returned.  and before, during, and since, it's like, only THAT will do.

maybe there is some "dark night" relevance to my struggle.  the recent publication of Ma Teresa's notes about her tussles with doubt and darkness have renewed my consideration of this possibility.  maybe this "pit" is the training ground for the genuinely compassionate Heart.  or maybe this is the idle fantasy of someone whose neural synapses are somehow defective and broken -- stuck on "ouch!" -- just the ramblings of a kook.




my puny speck of a struggle aside, there is some Really Big Magic in our midst.  isn't it obvious?!  yet, there is, relatively speaking, precious little clarity and wisdom loose upon the land . . . so many lies . . .  so many half-truths . . .  so much dross. . . so much confusion. . .  way too much ancient tribal hooey (sorry all you sons and daughters of Abraham) mascerading as Truth. . .  "well intended," much of it, to be fair.  but, oh so short -- "missing the mark."  hence, so much suffering -- so much needless, unnecessary suffering.

Heaven is not some fiction of an afterlife.  It's right here, always-already Real, right where we are, more splendid and enthralling than any after-death fantasy, closer than your own breath.

one more thing about Enlightenment: it's not an end, but just the beginning of Real Life and True Human culture.  if we keep our shit together enough and survive, Real Enlightenment can become common (is becoming more common already), and even become the basis of an everywhere-Understood, everywhere-Shared, Truly-Awakened Culture.


stick around!