This earthly journey of mine takes a metaphorical measure from land and sea. It isn’t marked by day and night, but is always visible to the inner eye. If I look back over it from the perspective of decades though, it is striped by shadow and light. The light bands are those of life in the upper air, joyous and free, when each day is an invitation to be and to do.
But the dark bands mark months and even years when the invitation is beyond reach. Each day is a struggle when, as the late Milton Acorn wrote, I “drag my days like a sled over gravel.” Nothing is glad or unfettered; there is only resistance to thought and action. It is life in the underworld, when my body shares surface life as an imposter, returning smiles and greetings, walking briskly, keeping up routine.
I never notice when the light begins to fade, the slope eases off the level. It’s a slow process, entering those dark bands, so slow that I’m in deep long before I realize it. Then comes the question, “How long, O Lord, how long?”
What is the purpose of this time in the underworld? I used to wonder how it was possible that time spent in eternity, in mystical union with God, didn’t give me permanent immunity from the blindness hiding those slow descents. Those were the days when I knew very little about the mystical aspect of human existence:
~ what it was,
~ why it happened,
~ who was exposed to it,
~ how it was caused.
For me, answering those questions was a haphazard effort for the better part of fifty years. The mystical barely registers in the secular world except through the frequently bizarre notions of popular media. Most church establishments are uneasy about mystical states beyond the bounds of liturgy and history. It’s safe to talk about the experiences of historical saints, not so much those of the person in the pew today. Some traditions reject the mystical outright or downplay it. (In Pentecostal and similar traditions there is a high tolerance for communal ecstatic experiences, which have more to do with biology than metaphysics.)
At university I met serious people for whom mystics and mysticism were subjects for rational study. This was something of a shock. Despite my own exposure to mystical states, my intention was to uncover the psychological and possibly biological causes for the mystical states that had personally affected me. In time, I learned that theology, the sciences and philosophy were all necessary resources to help me understand the mystical.
The dark bands on my journey map were one piece of a puzzle. As a child and young adult they likely qualified as full-blown depression. Over the years, as I came to understand my personality better, I learned how to alter its more negative aspects for the better. The dark bands were still a feature of my life map, but they weren’t so heavy. The effect was more akin to dysthymia or chronic depression.
One fruitful avenue of discovery revealed the connections among mental illness, mystical states, artistic tendencies and right brain activity. This isn’t to say that a mystical state is a symptom of mental illness or that mental illness causes mystical states. Nor does it say that artists and mystics are mentally ill by definition. It says only that right brain activity is markedly involved in all three.
The latest dark band on my journey map began several years ago after a long period of light. I had hoped never to see one again. Yet it was different than the ones before. In it there were glimpses of light touching my mind, reminders of life in the upper world. I could know in thought there was goodness up there and the possibility of return to it. In the latter stages of darkness the light touched my heart also, and that was the beginning of departure. Those little breaths of light were love come down, a promise and the key to freedom.
Life in the underworld is like an extended Lent. It is full of grief and guilt and woundedness. There is a seeming absence of light and love. The mind knows they are up there; indeed the eyes can see them all around, but the heart remains untouched. The heart is pinned to the board of fear that truth will die and goodness be defeated, despite every hope to the contrary.
In a strange way, grief is made flat and shadowless. During this last dark band I lost both a parent and a child, more intense griefs than the perpetual sorrow within and around me. But like a white creature appearing suddenly in snowfall, it is difficult to tell where one ends and the other begins.
When the breaths of light come, I can begin to understand the inherent selfishness of my condition. It isn’t God who has withdrawn from me, but I from him. It isn’t friends and family who are distant from me, but I who have removed myself from them, nursing my pain like Gollum his precious. The underworld may be a dreary place, but it has become a known place, more familiar than the world above.
When the heart is not functioning, action informed by reason is the only path out of the depths. Reaching out to others becomes imperative, even if it seems false in the absence of feeling. Being aware of blessings must be deliberate and intentional, despite the absence of joy. Always a forward movement must be maintained, even in the absence of momentum. From experience I know that light must come, surely tomorrow if not the day after.