Dec 2010
When the tears of a
lost relationship, or any significant loss at all, exposes the ancient edge of
existence, the place of unanswerable questions, we know the edge of
meaning/meaninglessness has been reached. It is like teetering on the last rock
before the yawning black abyss. We look down and feel engulfed in the
inexplicable. What is the meaning of life? Where do we go from here?
I know this edge very
well, and know when my clients are there too. This is the edge of existence as
we know it; the familiar is no more.
What now? We cannot
go back, and going forward is stepping off the edge into the unknown. I cannot
write, “unknown vastness” for I do not know its size, or if it even can be
measured. It’s “possibility,” it’s “potential,” yes, but how, why, what?
When the edge is known,
and I suspect we have all experienced this at various times, we can certainly draw
back, grab a beer, turn up the radio, or follow each excruciating filament of
our own fear to apprehend the nature of our own despair and see what
possibilities arise. This is a
scary place. Is this apprehension a stepping off into space? Yes, I believe it
is.
Some people have
faith, some have trust, some have other philosophical beliefs or religious
stories about this walking into abyss. For myself, this is the time not to take
refuge in ideas, nor engage in fabricating happy endings before the work is
actually done. It is too easy to
imagine the fulfilment of a hero’s journey, but such imaginings have a hollow
ring, like when you tap a plastic version of a grail cup. The actual work must
take place, and I value working with people as they begin or continue that
profound work.
The trouble with our
over enriched cultural environs is that we know much about happy endings, and
heroic journeys, and mythical places, but don’t well know the hard work that is
required for even for the stories to exist. It is ultimately ineffective to half-heartedly do a bit of
this abyss apprehension work, keeping in mind all the while a vision of finding
the grail. No, the work is in facing full on the gaping horrifying mouth of the
abyss: going in there, terror-filled, and not knowing what next. Grail quests
are mere stories; the unknowing is real.
I have seen among my
clients those who have short circuited the actual work. A tell-tale sign is a tendency to verbalize a fantasy
place, or to draw a happy fantasy situation where opposites are miraculously
cojoined – all the while demonstrating an out-of-sortness with their immediate
experience of being here, now and in relationship with me. The journey, or dark
night of the soul, or leaping the
abyss cannot be fabricated.
The risk, as I write
this, is that the language and imagery of the Grail quest and that of St. John
of the Cross’ “dark night of the soul,” or even the “abyss” will be substituted
for what actual encounters of the edge a person has. This is an existential
place essential unique for each person who finds themselves there, when the
familiar veils of life are
wrenched down.
The fear of falling
is great and it is natural to want to cling to anything, anybody, any activity
that is around, and yet, such are distractions to the work of
apprehension. St John of the Cross,
Spanish mystic and monk of the 16th century, writes of detaching
oneself from the things of the world, but he also writes that doing this aligns
oneself closer to God. I suggest, instead, to take the psychic plunge (not physically) without
religious or ideological support and enter into unknowing; experience that and
see what happens for you. There is potential, possibility, excitement,
discovery, a new way of being (or not at all); there is the unknown.
