The Dark Nights of The Soul
I have been thinking a lot about the role of pain and suffering in our lives.
We live in a world that would rather run from feelings of discomfort than face them head on or worse, live inside them for a period of time. We have worked out ways where we can avoid seasons of what the ancient Mystics described as, 'the dark night of the soul'. To me these are times when we carry heavy burdens and are left with the emptiness of our own loneliness which can lead to fear, perhaps negative inner voices, maybe even an existential crisis which can threaten to derail us from our true selves. We make great efforts to set up a sense of security (for those of us living in the West, this is probably found in establishing our own ‘identity’ or 'sense of self' but for many in the rest of the world, this security may be found in just knowing you have enough food and money to survive) so that when it is shaken it can feel like the world is ending.
Either we face these pains or we deny them in order to convince ourselves they’re not real. Could it be we actually need these experiences of pain to teach us life’s most important lessons? To expose and evolve us into the people we’re truly destined to be?
Are we running from this confrontation with pain out of fear for how it will change us?I am coming to believe that change is exactly what we are here for. To grow, evolve and to become more and more human and divine at the same time. The human experience must involve pain and suffering purely because it is only in these moments that we are forced to stop and listen to our lives (or as CS Lewis put it, “We can ignore even pleasure. But pain insists upon being attended to”) and further, to endure and discover a strength within us that we could never have known were it not for these seasons of darkness.
It has been said that one must die to themselves, to find themselves. More and more I am beginning to understand this, but I also realize how in conflict this thinking is it to our culture which is built on a system of human beings establishing a very strong identity for themselves and holding on extremely tight to who you think you are. But then comes a moment where all of that us challenged and we are forced to reassess who we are entirely!
In these moments, a space opens up in us that is far bigger than any constructed idea of an identity can fill. A space opens for us to become a part of a story, a bleeding organism, a body of people who find their purpose in serving one another through their gifts and also through their pains. My pain and suffering has grown a new empathy in me. I think when you have truly suffered, you begin to look at a person differently when they share their own story. You look, and you see your brother or sisters pain. You really see it. You don’t just observe it from a distance and eventually be led to judge if you don’t understand where their pain comes from since it is outside your realm of experience. If you have not lived with pain in an honest way, you may even be very afraid of that persons suffering, it is a feeling you can’t find a reference point for. Often we are scared of the unknown and rush to define it quickly so that we remain unchallenged by what life is trying to teach us.I recently read a book called Letters to A Young Poet and connected deeply with this quote about feelings of sadness producing fear simply because they are unknown and the mind and body hasn’t yet developed a way to deal with it.
“It seems to me that almost all our sadnesses are moments of tension, which we feel as paralysis because we no longer hear our astonished emotions living. Because we are alone with the unfamiliar presence that has entered us; because everything we trust and are used to is for a moment taken away from us; because we stand in the midst of a transition where we cannot remain standing.
….But your solitude will be a support and a home for you, even in the midst of very unfamiliar circumstances, and from it you will find all your paths.”
This past year I have encountered a lot of unfamiliar feelings that I look back on now like teachers who were sent to somehow shape me with the invaluable lessons that only pain and suffering can teach. Through taking time to really sit inside these emotions, I’ve found within myself a hope and faith that can exist regardless of external circumstances. Although weak, this small flicker of light was enough to fuel an entire fire and eventually fan into flames far grander than I could have ever imagined. An invaluable joy and acceptance. I feel as though this hope was put through a time of testing in order to prove that it truly was enough to see me through. We all need these moments of witnessing our own strength to overcome. To realize that our pain and suffering are not in vain and they are not meaningless. How we respond and allow ourselves to be changed by times of pain are what truly make us human. These experiences shape the person we are to become. Through these seasons of darkness, I felt constant temptations to become victimized and feel powerless to the feelings of isolation and fear. There are moments when we are not sure wether we are strong enough to withstand the jolts and inner tornadoes that life can throw at us but my belief is that we only truly grow to understand each other and ourselves from spending periods in this unfamiliar (or perhaps very familiar for some people) space, in order to reaffirm what is important to us and perhaps be stripped of the obstacles in our way. Perhaps to lose ourselves in order to find ourselves.
“Man is originally characterized by his "search for meaning" rather than his "search for himself." The more he forgets himself—giving himself to a cause or another person—the more human he is. And the more he is immersed and absorbed in something or someone other than himself the more he really becomes himself.”
There are times on stage where I feel like I lose my sense of self altogether… the moment takes on a timeless quality, the space feels unbound and I feel a deep sensation of oneness with the sounds and people in the room. These are always the shows I enjoy the most, where I am abandoned and lacking in self-consciouness. True love casts out all fear. In these moments I experience a kind of unconditional love and transcendence that detaches me from thought or judgement, and plunges me into a state of purity.
“The basic project of art is always to make the world whole and comprehensible, to restore it to us in all its glory and its occasional nastiness, not through argument but through feeling, and then to close the gap between you and everything that is not you, and in this way pass from feeling to meaning. It's not something that committees can do. It's not a task achieved by groups or by movements. It's done by individuals, each person mediating in some way between a sense of history and an experience of the world.”
As I have encountered more pain in my life, music have become less about myself and more about service. Realizing the power music has to speak to the soul in a way that words can’t, I feel devoted to it. I am in awe of how music has the ability to connect us in such a mysterious and mystical truth. My pain is set free in these moments but also given a worth. I am reminded that we do not suffer in vain but that it is a reminder of what binds us as human beings, this daily decay of our bodies is a constant proof of our finiteness yet we have this ability to be transported beyond our finite existence. In these moments we glance a small window into the infinite and realize that it lives within us. The possibility is opened wide in these communal experiences of music or art that inspires us.
We glimpse an expansiveness within ourselves and a capacity for love that seems to go beyond the realm of our day to day experiences…. and further, this capacity is made possible through pain and suffering. As we sit in our pain, we find in us the ability to transcend it, to see a way out and therefore know that it is possible. During a recent yoga practice, I was introduced to this quote that has really stuck with me :
“For a seed to achieve its greatest expression, it must come completely undone. The shell cracks, its insides come out and everything changes. To someone who doesn't understand growth, it would look like complete destruction.”
Our destruction is our renewal. Our suffering can become our redemption. We can endure with hope and be shaped by our darker moments. Fear is only cast out by love. But love must be received and space must be created in order to receive. Suffering challenges our sense of self, moves us toward humility, a place where we can understand grace, the gift of love, not something to be earned and fought for, running from anything that stands in our way. There is purpose to the pain that we face, in whatever form it takes.
My time in Ethiopia taught me that pain is relative. It is not something to be compared and seen as different between simply because one seems more intense than the other. From the outside it may be so, but for that person, the pain could be just as potent and paralyzing as the others. It could be in the context of a women with HIV, struggling to support her 5 children and stay alive because of the lack of work and the stigma surrounding her illness, her life may have seen rape, murder, all kinds of injustices and yet she is still struggling to survive and faces fear everyday for her life. This kind of suffering seems incomparable to someone in my position or maybe your position. If we live in the West we have access to resources and wealth that most people could hardly dream of, we are not fearing for our lives and have far more than we need to eat and be entertained, yet we still face incredibly dark moments and suicide rates that continue to skyrocket. We have systems of denial and distraction that lead us to breakdowns and fears or addictions that boil down to the exact same set of emotions: fear… loneliness… confusion.. pain… suffering. My pain is relative to my realm of experience and my incredibly unique set of circumstances, just as yours are.
“To draw an analogy: a man's suffering is similar to the behavior of a gas. If a certain quantity of gas is pumped into an empty chamber, it will fill the chamber completely and evenly, no matter how big the chamber. Thus suffering completely fills the human soul and conscious mind, no matter whether the suffering is great or little. Therefore the "size" of human suffering is absolutely relative.”
The women I met in Ethiopia had faced things I can’t even comprehend yet I saw in them all experience the same emotional struggles that I have faced in my own ways. Heartbreak is everywhere and fear comes in many forms. Every single human being faces these things and I realized that this was ultimately what connected me with these women as we held hands at the women’s centre talking about the hardest moments in our lives. They told me stories of injustice, pain, loss, sickness and I was often brought to tears at just how hard life has been for them, but when it came time for me to share some hard moments in my life, I saw these women change from victims sitting in a circle to mothers all reaching out to me with equally tear-filled eyes as I told them (slightly embarrassingly) the story of how I left my homeland when I was 17 and missed my family often because I only get to see them once a year.
One could say this is a small in comparison and almost petty pain to compare with the things these woman have been through but to see them look upon me with such love and understanding was a moment I will never forget. They knew the bonds of family. It is everything to them. Although they had very tough lives, they did still have each other… their community and their children to love (although they feared they could not give them good lives). Their hearts broke at the thought of me being away from my family across oceans and they understood that we all share the same pains because they are relative to what we have known and experienced.
No one can tell you your pain is less than another’s, it is a void that lives inside you and the intensity of depression and anxiety can be just as numbing and paralyzing to a persons life as the kinds of suffering I beared witness to while I was in Africa. We are all bound by love and we are all broken by it. Where one person is broken by famine, another is broken by infidelity…. one experiences the loss of a father, one experiences the loss of their identity in an existential crisis or acute panic attack. I feel a new empathy within myself as I come to understand this. A celebration of the pains we have all lived through rather than a need to run from them and design a life that blocks them out.
“The more you try to avoid suffering, the more you suffer, because smaller and more insignificant things begin to torture you, in proportion to your fear of being hurt. The one who does most to avoid suffering is, in the end, the one who suffers most.”
For a long time I had a fear of physical pain. It’s not uncommon to fear needles etc of course but I was very resistant to discomfort and I think this also bled into a fear of uncomfortable circumstances and difficulties in life. I’ve always had very high expectations for myself, standards I would often fight to attain in an obsessive way, perhaps to avoid a feeling of vulnerability, which may open a chance for pain and suffering to overtake. It is not uncommon to feel fear arise in unfamiliar circumstances but for me this could prove to be very hard when so much of my life is about stepping into unfamiliar territories - in fact my very spirit thrives in this space! - but alongside this joy of new situations, there can also be a resistance - fear can build into obstacles that ultimately need to be knocked down. Sometimes there’s only one way for that to happen. Through a season of pain and suffering where we are forced to reassess and stare our fears in the face… We either fall victim to them, or endure the ‘dark night’ and transcend it.
‘For the external self fears and recoils from what is beyond it and above it. It dreads the seeming emptiness and darkness of the interior self. The whole tragedy of “diversion” is precisely that it is a flight from all that is most real and immediate and genuine in ourselves. It is a flight from life and from experience—an attempt to put a veil of objects between the mind and its experience of itself. It is therefore a matter of great courage and spiritual energy to turn away from diversion and prepare to meet, face-to-face, that immediate experience of life which is intolerable to the exterior man. This is only possible when, by a gift of God we are able to see our inner selves not as a vacuum but as an infinite depth, not as emptiness but as fullness. This change of perspective is impossible as long as we are afraid of our own nothingness, as long as we are afraid of fear, afraid of poverty, afraid of boredom—as long as we run away from ourselves’
This year I got my first tattoo. While being highly symbolic for me, it was also a deeply spiritual act as I learned to sit inside a controlled form of pain and wait till it passed in a state of surrender. I felt the deep desire to mark this time of my life after returning from Ethiopia. This entering into a new relationship with pain, symbolized through a physical experience of pain. My fear of the unfamiliar was uprooted in this act and it gave birth to a radical acceptance. It was a deep act of devotion to myself and to the lessons I have learned from pain. I drew a design for my arm that would represent 3 things I want to be reminded of always. Joy, grace & pain. I drew 3 lines like roots along my veins marking how these experiences had now entered my bloodstream and the very flesh of who I am. To remind me that our experiences are ultimately gifts that can never be taken from us, memories to hold onto and perhaps they will become a compass for how we will live in light of them.
‘…….That is why the sadness passes: the new presence inside us, the presence that has been added, has entered our heart, has gone into its innermost chamber and is no longer even there, - is already in our bloodstream. And we don't know what it was. We could easily be made to believe that nothing happened, and yet we have changed, as a house that a guest has entered changes. We can't say who has come, perhaps we will never know, but many signs indicate that the future enters us in this way in order to be transformed in us, long before it happens. And that is why it is so important to be solitary and attentive when one is sad: because the seemingly uneventful and motionless moment when our future steps into us is so much closer to life than that other loud and accidental point of time when it happens to us as if from outside. The quieter we are, the more patient and open we are in our sadnesses, the more deeply and serenely the new presence can enter us, and the more we can make it our own, the more it becomes our fate.”
The first stem was inspired by the sacred markings I observed on the necks of women in Ethiopia, reflective of their devotion, but also their endurance and courage. I discovered a joy on this trip that was unlike any other I’d felt before - a new capacity for love - I think of all they taught me and the way my spirit danced during that time whenever I look at it.
The middle stem is a cross; also a symbol of suffering. In fact, literally an instrument of death in a historical sense, but to me, a symbol of hope that is only fully understood within the context of pain. Spirituality and faith is a path of seeking that will never cease for me, but along the way I have always found great courage in the symbol of the cross and what it says about our humanity and our ability to overcome. Ultimately it speaks of our connection to a love that is greater and living within all of us, perhaps only fully realized in the face of pain…. in the moments of our humility…. the moments when we forgive…. when we offer ourselves in service to another instead of trying to control them.
When I reflect on my my greatest musical ‘highs’ on stage, I don’t feel any ownership in those moments. I feel more like a vessel or as my friend Ruban Nielson put it : ‘like an antennae to god, simply downloading’. I want to remind myself of this everyday. Although the cross has been a symbol to support many inhumane and un-servicing acts throughout history, at it’s core it symbolizes hope and redemption. These days I hold little faith in the word ‘christian’ or the institutionalized ‘church' but I have a lot of faith in what the cross represents and my own experiences in coming to understand this. If we are destined to endure pain as christ did (though we all experience pain indifferent ways), we are perhaps also destined to posses a divinity that allows us a way to find meaning in suffering.
As someone who grew up with no religious or spiritual direction whatsoever, I have been drawn back time and time again to the profoundness of this message but also to the call of unconditional love that exists for everyone despite our circumstances and individual experiences. By seeking this core message I have been led to teachers like Thomas Merton and Father Laurence Freeman who sparked my explorations into the mystic writers of Buddhism, Judaism and Islam - this learning has led me into a far deeper engagement with faith and an excitement at the possibilities for real transcendence in life. To me, this cross symbolizes a love that lacks fear
... It’s a reality I want to move deeper into.... a place where there is no judgement... where pain is a chisel that carves away at the ego within man and all it’s delusions of grandeur. .. it carves to make space for a new understanding of myself as just one part in the whole.
To me, the cross also says we are connected vertically (both heaven and earth live within us) and connected horizontally (with each and every person surrounding us and our very planet itself).A symbol is only as good as the meaning it leads you to reflect upon. This is what I see.
“Only when we see ourselves in our true human context, as members of a race which is intended to be one organism and ‘one body,’ will we begin to understand the positive importance not only of the successes but of the failures and accidents in our lives. My successes are not my own. The way to them was prepared by others. The fruit of my labors is not my own: for I am preparing the way for the achievements of another. Nor are my failures my own. They may spring from failure of another, but they are also compensated for by another’s achievement. Therefore the meaning of my life is not to be looked for merely in the sum total of my own achievements. It is seen only in the complete integration of my achievements and failures with the achievements and failures of my own generation, and society, and time.”
The last stem is a simple depiction of ‘the dark night of the soul’. Blackness. Darkness. A mark to symbolize that place of pain. Next to it are the grace and joy but they don’t remove the scars that pain leaves with us. We are changed by it. We are broken by it. It doesn’t always heal fully, but alongside the hope we have found, it is made beautiful. We are messy and glorious human beings. Imperfection is in its own way, perfect. The order in nature is wild and seen sometimes as chaos to the eye that doesn’t understand. But the seasons pass and after the seed self-destructs, it gives birth.
“You must give birth to your images. They are the future waiting to be born. Fear not the strangeness you feel. The future must enter you long before it happens. Just wait for the birth, for the the hour of the new clarity.”
Limitation and imperfection are not things we’ve grown to love in our modern life. But yet we are all faced with it. I personally live in a world where I can present a highly manicured version of myself to the world and appear to be without limitation, able to achieve my goals and given permission to explore myself as an artist and make money doing it. Yet, we all know artists are perhaps the most tortured when it comes to insecurity and being highly flawed while under pressure to present a version of yourself to the world - a version which many people have now grown to love. We are now all able to filter a version of ourselves to the world. While setting up a standard of perfection (be it on social media or even in just in our minds), we naturally feel pressured to meet that standard. A standard that doesn’t even exist except in the space of our ideals and fantasies. Part of my journey has been in accepting the perfection that lies within our moments of humanity and weakness. The very fact that someone is limited and imperfect yet able to transcend and display beauty through their brokenness is what makes life so wildly fascinating and extraordinary.
'The world, my friend Govinda,is not imperfect or confined at a point somewhere along a gradual pathway towards perfection. No, it is perfect at every moment. Every sin already contains grace within it, all little children already have an old person in them, every infant has death within it, and all dying people have within them eternal life. It is not possible for any person to see in another how far along the way he is. In the bandit and dice player a Buddha is waiting, in the brahmin a bandit'
This year I met Stevie Wonder and stood right next to him while he sung for a crowd of people with flashing cameras on his 60th Birthday celebration. I had tears streaming down my cheeks as I watched a man completely surrendered to service and abandoned to his gift while being so ‘limited’ and ‘imperfect’ by our worldly standards. His eyes don’t work like everyone else’s, this is a major limitation and imperfection of the body (one might say) yet I felt in the presence of an angel when he sang. My focus was not even on the man himself, but on what flowed out of him and the ability to move beyond what the world see’s as a ‘hinderance’ and be used as a vessel for such incredible healing to the world. Beauty out of brokenness. An acceptance of oneself that leads to a transcendence!
“Finally I am coming to the conclusion that my highest ambition is to be what I already am. That I will never fulfill my obligation to surpass myself unless I first accept myself, and if I accept myself fully in the right way, I will already have surpassed myself.”
After a small accident in high school I broke my right arm and it never healed fully, as a result I can’t extend my right arm like my left arm. It is stunted before it fully extends and instead locks in an awkward position. It is of no major importance except that it reminds me of the odd and stranger parts of my body. This is where my three lines of my remembrance are. I can look there everyday and accept my body with all of its quirks. The parts that don’t do everything they’re supposed to. The imperfections that in a way are quite perfect and make me unique. I feel I am letting go of the need to strive for some perfect ideal and acknowledging the beauty in brokenness. The ability to move past pain or limitation and be used for great good in the world, despite our scars. Maybe even, because of them.
“It is therefore of supreme importance that we consent to live not for ourselves but for others. When we do this we will be able first of all to face and accept our own limitations. As long as we secretly adore ourselves, our own deficiencies will remain to torture us with an apparent defilement. But if we live for others, we will gradually discover that no expects us to be 'as gods'. We will see that we are human, like everyone else, that we all have weaknesses and deficiencies, and that these limitations of ours play a most important part in all our lives. It is because of them that we need others and others need us. We are not all weak in the same spots, and so we supplement and complete one another, each one making up in himself for the lack in another.”
Remembrance is a discipline. I’ve found it so important to keep reminding myself of what I have learnt along this journey and although the stumbling never stops, to get up and continue failing better each time is far better than to stop growing altogether. Knowing that I am evolving as I surrender to all that pain has to teach me. I’ve decided to not let memories of painful moments veer me away from them, but to remind me of my ability to overcome. We all have the ability to experience great joy and even when it is denied us we can think back to the times when we were strong and summon this courage to face it again. Maybe this time, with less fear and more love.
“When you remember me, it means you have carried something of who I am with you, that I have left some mark of who I am on who you are. It means that you can summon me back to your mind even though countless years and miles may stand between us. It means that if we meet again, you will know me. It means that even after I die, you can still see my face and hear my voice and speak to me in your heart.”
Can we even make friends with the darkness? Maybe not. But can we live there and perhaps find solace in the emptiness? This is hard when our world is designed around more things to fill the void. When we are faced with our own loneliness it can be very scary and unfamiliar, but these days I have come to think these are perhaps our most spiritual moments. The emptiness is created within us so that it can be filled, and what joy there is to find fullness of life within its utter simplicity.
The tree does not sit and reflect on itself, it simply is. It serves its purpose and is nourished by its connection to the living earth. It lives in a harmony receiving all that it needs to grow from the nutrients that are given. It is pruned to make for better growth, all that it does not need is cut off. In the winter is is stripped bare and in the spring it reaps a harvest. It gives birth again. Perhaps in our states of darkness we can remember the tree’s in their various seasons and trust that they too experience stages of emptiness. But they are not forgotten by the earth.
“So you mustn't be frightened, dear Mr. Kappus, if a sadness rises in front of you, larger than any you have ever seen; if an anxiety - like light and cloud-shadows, moves over your hands and everything you do. You must realize that something is happening to you, that life has not forgotten you, that it holds you in the palm of its hand and will not let you fall.”
Listen to your life. Share what you hear. Let it grow and never stagnate. Remember your pain and don’t be afraid to face it again. But this time, perhaps with a new understanding. Pain is there to teach you something and although we are never able to control the things that happen to us (life IS uncertainty after all) we are able to influence the situation. Maybe in the words we speak to ourselves, maybe in the reminders we look to, maybe in the messages that affirm our strength to overcome, maybe in reaching out or letting go, maybe on our knees in prayer, maybe in simply waiting for the season to pass, maybe by actively facing the fear - something I have done this year - proving that I don’t have to feel victim to the dark spaces I can find myself in. We each have a different path to take in overcoming, but I write this only to share some of what I have learnt and to honour the gift we have to help each other in times of need.
If you read no other book this year, just try to read this, ‘Man’s Search For Meaning’ by Viktor E Frankl. I’ll end with a quote of his because I think it sums everything up very well. Be lifted.
“For what then matters is to bear witness to the uniquely human potential at its best, which is to transform a personal tragedy into a triumph, to turn one’s predicament into a human achievement.”
