"Who will manage your dark house?"
If you have ever experienced what has been described by some mystics as "the dark night of the soul" you have probably not forgotten it. If similar to my experience back in the early 1970s, you experienced a deep dark feeling of isolation, separation from the "divine", extreme loneliness, what seemed like an interminably depressed state, and you felt you may well be psychotic, you will easily recognize what I am writing about. After a number of years (about five) in and out of various levels of this existential misery I reached what turned out to be the culminating event. I had been in deep meditation for three full days of utter and complete surrender waiting on what I believed at the time to be "God" to show me the light and tell me what "His" will for my life was. On the third day, a voice which I first mistook for "God's" and now know to be the voice of my soul consultant OmniMind (OM) asked me, "Who will manage your dark house?"
Assuming OM was referring to the darkest interior of my mind, my deep personal unconscious, which Sigmund Freud had called "the cesspool of the mind," I naively answered, "That's up to you. What is your will for me?" Seeming to ignore my answer OM again asked, "Who will manage your dark house?" "I answered, "You, it can only be you." Again, insistent, the voice of OM queried, "Who will manage your dark house?" Finally (I'm sometimes a slow learner), it dawned on me what answer OM wanted and I responded, "I will manage my dark house but I will need your help." Presto! The dawn came and the longest and most arduous dark night of my soul came to an end. Ineffable feelings of great relief, deep peace, limitless love, and great joy permeated my being!
Little did I consciously know at the time that OM's introduction of the term "dark house" into my lexicon signified a very meaningful synchronicity. Just recently, I discovered in Wikipedia (2008) that dark house (sometimes 'progressive dark house') is the name used by some people to describe certain kinds of music characterized by deep penetrating low tempo beats (~130 BPM) and the use of words and sounds that create a foreboding atmosphere. Usually tribal, dark house mood is almost always melancholic and somewhat dreamy. At more intense levels, dark house may contain screeching, moaning, or electronic pulses to emulate sounds found in horror movies.
So more specifically, OM was gently but clearly involving me, as if I were a colleague, in a decision to participate -- not by fiat or directive ex cathedra -- but participate with It-Her-Him in the managing of my own inner dark house experiences. Finally with a wonderfully warm feeling of joy and confidence 'I got it' and answered, "I will manage my dark house with your help."
OM agreed and promised It-She-He would always be in and around me, just as ocean water is in and around the fish swimming immersed within it. From that moment on I have never felt forsaken or alone, not to mention depressed, for the dark night of my soul was over. I knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that as an ageless constituent soul living within our all-pervading omnipresent Source It-She-He and I are one and inseparable. Why hadn't I been conscious of that fact before? It's a long story but I'll try to shorten it some for this blog.
NOTE: I don't mean to alarm you but I feel a need to reassure you that I believe you have a U.S. Constitution First Amendment right to believe as you want. I am writing this blog only to share with you two options (there are undoubtedly more) for managing your own dark house in a healthful manner. My intent is not an attempt to persuade you to forsake your religious faith no matter what it is. If at any point you feel uncomfortable I suggest you stop reading.
By the way, if you would like to read this blog in larger font please see the attachment by the same title. RWJ
For starters, I was raised in an extreme right wing conservative religious atmosphere which preached their absolutist dogma that their masculine deity controlled everything, micromanaging every detail of our lives. It was sinful to deviate in any way from their deity's commandments and those who lived a life of sin lived in darkness and upon biological death would be cast into an eternal lake of fire.
To a naive young lad growing up immersed in that toxic environment and being groomed to become a Pentecostal Assemblies of God minister it was scary stuff and out of sheer fear I did everything I could to follow the commandments and emulate the life of Jesus of Nazareth and avoid condemnation by his Father "God". (For those readers unfamiliar with my background, if interested, you may want to take a look at my SIA blog "Notes on Why I Transcended Christianity, Johnston 2007).
But here, my soul consultant OM, hypothetically a representative of our timeless, infinite Mystery Source, was telling me that if I wanted It-She-He would participate with me in managing my life by a very different set of principles from those by which I was raised. Those principles are summed up in this statement: 'When consciously one with transparent timeless awareness my every response to every situation is an option for health or for ill individually, socially and ecosystemically.' There would be no other working definition of "right and wrong". Intent to feel, think, and act healthfully is "right", while the opposite is "wrong". After considerable thought and reflection I consented to experiment with those moral and ethical principles.
Rather than follow external unilaterally imposed channeled teachings, such as the Mosiac Ten Commandments, OM encouraged me to write many manuscripts with Its-Her-His participative consulting assistance, examples of which are the following shiftinaction.com blogs: My Integral Noetic Allegory About Our Origin and Purpose on Earth (2006); My Ten Commitments (2006) and My One Great Shift? (2007).
Clearly, a 'working hypothesis' underlying OM's and my writings were that our timeless Source values the dark as much as the light, definitely contrary to my early religious training including four-plus intense years of theological school. There the white light of Jesus of Nazareth and his bloody crucifixion followed by bodily resurrection was emphatically valued over the darkness of the world and the rest of the universe.
OM's suggested hypothesis that both light and dark are equal in importance now appears obvious when I consider that over the twelve-month span of any given year much of our globe experiences equal amounts of dark and light. Of course, I suppose one could argue that if we look at our universe as a whole and use relative size as our criterion for measurement, darkness is favored over white light because astrophysicists report ninety-five percent of our universe is dark energy and dark matter, only five percent white light (Conselice 2007). And in the full range of electromagnetic energy ultraviolet light (black light) coexists with white light as a relatively small segments of the spectrum. As far as I know, contemporary natural science assigns a moral value to neither.
OM also suggested that the presumably intelligent feminine energy which causes the ovaries to produce an ovum in the dark is equal in importance to the intelligent masculine energy in the dark interior of the testes to produce sperm. Further, equality of feminine and masculine importance goes at least as deep in our biological ancestry as molecules in which, according to neuroscientist Candace Pert, opiate receptors (feminine principle) and the ligands (masculine principle) bond and copulate (Pert 1997). Obviously, nature values cooperation between molecules for procreation as a prerequisite for evolution. By contrast, the conservative right wing religion of my youth had taught me that sex was dark and dirty, especially the feminine side, after all it was Eve who seduced Adam and caused their eviction by "God" from the Garden of Eden. (Oh my, what are we going to do about those naughty molecules!? Guess they didn't hear about Adam and Eve.)
Well, I could go on and on elaborating on this theme but I think you see the picture. Dark, in my early religious training came to mean sin, evil, satan, and devil; and white light was synonymous with Jesus of Nazareth, salvation, and the good angels. Thus, I was taught to eschew the dark and seek the white light of Jesus for the perfection of my soul. And rejecting the dark translated into deeply embedded involuntarily conditioned responses loaded with fear of everything dark -- dark skin of all hues, anything resembling the darkness of anima's womb, and the dark realm of the universe -- for if dark it was dirty and sinful.
Little wonder I was experiencing what the well known Spanish Christian mystic St. John of the Cross called "the dark night of the soul." (Underhill 1911). I was striving for the pristine perfection of my soul measured by a set of unrealistic, unhealthful, archaic science-based rules symbolized by the white light of Jesus of Nazareth. It just wasn't attainable even though I had experienced being "born again" followed by the so-called "infilling of the Holy Spirit" a purifying and empowering transformational act highly valued by Pentecostal Christians based on a verse in The Acts of the Apostles 2:4 (Luke circa 60-100 ACE). No wonder I felt alienated from "God" and depressed. I could never measure up to the stringent, I now know to be unhealthful, "standards of perfection" all formulated, ironically, with the intention of healing, saving, and emancipating my soul. I experienced that belief system as off-centered, imbalanced, conflicted, unhealthful, and soul-defeating.
In later years I came across a book by English Anglo Catholic mystic Evelyn Underhill (1911). While respected as an outstanding expert on mysticism, her writings suggest, sadly, she never got beyond the dark night of her soul. For example, her writings lead me to believe she struggled with being as she put it, ". . . deprived of all that has been valuable to the lower self," i.e. her sexual urges. Clearly empathizing with Dutch mystic Mechthild of Magdeburg (1913), Underhill quotes him: "...since Thou hast taken from me all that I had of Thee, yet of Thy grace leave me the gift which every dog has by nature: that of being true to Thee in my distress, when I am deprived of all consolation. This I desire more fervently than Thy heavenly Kingdom." I feel her pain, especially when I remember that but for the luck of the draw I could have been her with her unique soul development mission, DNA, involuntarily conditioned beliefs, values, and life situation, and conversely she could have been me and mine. She was doing the best she could with her available resources.
This account of Underhill's inability to let go of her projections about a anthropomorphized image of "God" and move beyond the dark night of the soul helped me, paradoxically, to understand both my own dark night and also why I was able to discern a path by which to transcend, own, include, and cocreatively, with my soul consultant OM. Then, also learn to empathize with, understand, love, and cocreatively manage the powerful contents of the darkest black -- both healthful and unhealthful -- within my personal unconscious (now transformed to become my co-conscious). That was followed by coming to an awareness of what depth psychologist and analyst Carl Jung (1958) calls the collective unconscious, and IONS scientist Dean Radin (2006) describes as the realm of "entangled minds."
My ability to transcend, own, and cocreatively self-manage my dark house is not due to any advantage I may have intellectually or spiritually. Rather, my ability is derived from the wide variety of scientific and spiritual resources available in the times in which we live. Evelyn Underhill lived from 1875 to 1941. The availability of knowledge to her from Bible archaeology and the natural sciences was far less than that has been available to me. I am most thankful. I suspect that had she the resources I have had available in my lifetime she may well have come up with a cocreative self-management process similar to my own.
I empathize deeply with Evelyn Underhill and feel badly that she was unable to transcend the final barrier to liberation from her involuntarily conditioned beliefs relative to the characteristics of the Christocentric "God" image (Jesus of Nazareth as God image) of her religion. Her dilemma is virtually identical, I believe, to what I was, psychospiritually speaking, hung-up on for so many years. My belief system was literally crucifying my life in that I was unable to transcend the human-made barrier(s) and move on to the freedom, peace, and joy resulting from the long arduous push, like Sisyphus to the ultimate Mystery Source of all at the top of the mountain.
When I finally came to face to face with the findings of history and archaeology I was astounded. For example, the noted Jewish historian of the time Josephus listed nineteen different Jesuses (Humphreys 2006), some of them crucified, and not one of them on Josephus' list was Jesus of Nazareth. Without this Jesus there is no foundation for a Christian church. Nor is there any other reference to such a man in the history books. (In case you are wondering the Four Gospels which describe a Jesus of Nazareth are not regarded as bona fide history by reputable historians.)
Further, there is no archaeological evidence that a place called Nazareth existed until the fourth century A.D. (A.C.E). Still further, artist's depictions of Apollo the Sun God and early depictions of Jesus of Nazareth ("the only begotten Son of God" appear identical. That suggests that the church fathers of the time anthromorphized Apollo into becoming in their spiritual stories a living flesh and blood human (Humphreys 2006).
That and my coming to the realization I had been brainwashed to ignore logic and evidence from the natural sciences and gullibly base all my beliefs and values on ignorant faith-based scriptures like the Proverb " Trust in the LORD ... lean not unto thine own under-standing ... Be not wise in thine own eyes."(Proverbs 3.5-7), I began to search for ways to work my way out from under the dominion of these unfounded, unhealthful, and unnatural beliefs about a Jesus of Nazareth who existed only in the imaginations of people.
How were they unhealthful? I discovered it was unhealthful for me to have had unnecessary restrictions involuntarily placed on my soul's development plan for this incarnation. These restrictions were a direct result of my psychospiritual identification with Jesus of Nazareth. (For more discussion see my shiftinaction.com blog, "Notes About Why I Transcended Christianity," Johnston 2006.)
As to the power of any kind of psychospiritual identification, Italian psychiatrist and psychosynthesist Roberto Assagioli has shown that any feeling, thought, image, behavior or possession with which one identifies dominates and manages our beliefs, values, intentions, and behaviors. My experience also shows such identifications can translate into powerful ego images which served to grossly warp my perception of reality, i.e. delusional.
By following in the footsteps of Jesus of Nazareth described in the Bible story written two thousand years ago before the advent of the natural sciences I was identifying psychospiritually with him. Real or not he became my identity, my ego. Consequently my spiritual growth was limited by the constraints of a fictional savior and his idealized behavior. Consequently my true genuine self was not only overlaid by the persona of an idol but his Procrustean template served to mutilate it beyond recognition.
Speaking of a Procrustean template, you probably know the story of Procrustes (the stretcher), also known as Damastes (subduer) and Polypemon (harming much). He is a figure from Greek mythology who was a bandit from Attica, with a stronghold in the hills outside Eleusis. There, he had an iron bed into which he invited every passerby to lie down. If the guest proved too tall, he would amputate the excess length; victims who were too short were stretched on the rack until they were long enough. Nobody ever fit in the bed because it was secretly adjustable: Procrustes would stretch or shrink it upon sizing his victims from afar. Procrustes continued his reign of terror until he was captured by Theseus, who "fitted" Procrustes to his own bed and cut off his head and feet (since Theseus was a stout fellow, the bed had been set on the short position) (Wikipedia 2008).
The Pentecostal Assemblies of God constraints involuntarily imposed on me through my parents, ministers, and theology professors served as a Procrustean template for the formation of my beliefs, values, and behavior which were alien and discordant with my natural integral soul development commitments which I brought into this incarnation. I discovered that my well-meaning but misguided parents, church, and theological school professors had given me a psychospiritual Procrustean bed which forced me to conform to the dimensions of their interpretation of those now known to be fictional teachings of Jesus of Nazareth at the expense of my own unique soul development because it forced me to conform in a way discordant with my soul development mission. Little wonder I was so confused, feeling disconnected with our Source, disconsolate, feeling isolated, and generally depressed. My naturally healthy, loving, peaceful, joyful dark house was forced to believe in and conform behaviorally with alien, distorted, limiting, and toxic beliefs, values, and behaviors.
GOOD NEWS
But the good news is that Assagioli (1973) also described a process of psychosynthesis by which we can free ourselves from the bondage of unwanted, unhealthful and dysfunctional attachments, identifications, addictions, habits, and hang-ups. I experimented and found his process works like a charm.
He calls the process disidentification, which simply means to no longer identify oneself psychospiritually with whatever it was one identified with -- belief, value, motive, intention, attitude, process, behavior or possession -- anything I had said I was. Or to put it another way: Anything I formerly said "I am" and found unhealthful and now wanted to get out from under relative to its dominating crippling power in my life.
To illustrate, in my case I had identified myself psychospiritually as a copy of my idol Jesus of Nazareth so to disidentify with him, his message, his beliefs, values, behaviors, etc.as portrayed in the New Testament Gospels I simply affirmed, "I am not the image of, the beliefs, values, or behaviors of Jesus of Nazareth." And I repeated that several times with a great feeling of relief and awe that it worked so well to remove the huge chains of bondage I had been under for so many years.
I repeat that disidentification affirmation any time I feel it is needed. Interestingly, even though I have reaffirmed that disidentification the former identification remains in the deeper recesses of my memory and now and then pops up again. But the difference now is it comes to consciousness as an option, a choice, not an obsessive-compulsive act. When that occurs I just say, "That's an option" and go on to other options of choice in my repertoire.
My next step: I followed that disidentification phase with another affirmation, this time a healthful replacement identification: "I am pure, clear, timeless awareness of our original Mystery Source of all consciousness." I have reasons for selecting that terminology. First, I didn't want to fall into the trap of identifying with and thereby coming under the dominion of another temporal anthropomorphic version of the ultimate Mystery (For further discussion see my shiftinaction.com blog titled "God: Great Imperceptible 'Inkblot'?" (Johnston, 2007).
I have come to understand that the ultimate Mystery has no image and no absolute objective statement of attributes except for the absoluteness of its being a MYSTERY. I have also come to see that while there is no scientific or otherwise valid and reliable reason or logic in believing there is a Judeo-Christian version of God, I can easily see the logic of believing in at least the 'working hypothesis' that there exists a primordial Origin or Source of all creative evolution which probably is as all-pervading and omnipresent as a vast ocean water is to the fish swimming within it.
Astrophysicists say they have found electromagnetic energy in every known corner of the universe and it pervades everything -- you, me, everything. As you may know, we humans are electromagnetic fields. So to me, it is reasonable to formulate a 'working hypothesis', which states that intermingled and blended with universal electromagnetic energy is intelligent MIND energy. It-She-He may be a non-theistic SOURCE of all creative evolution. I have been using this working hypothesis for at least four decades and it has served me well. (Details are for another paper in the future.)
So I use the 'working hypothesis' that a transparent, participative, caring Source of all exists, and it probably consists of two poles, two polar cocreative principles: anima and animus, yin and yang, feminine and masculine, whichever set of terms you like. But this Cocreative Source, I hypothesize, is not an authoritarian one-pole God or Goddess but is a timeless, infinite, window-glass-clear, experimenting, cocreating, caring, participating, infinite 'ocean' of conscious awareness within which all of us live, breathe, and have our being.
Thus, when I use the term 'Source' I do not mean in any way "God" because the term "God" elicits within me all the unhealthful feelings, thoughts, and false images of a Judeo-Christian God which I find inconsistent with what I have come to experience our Source is, namely, an imperceptible indefinable Mystery. I amplify this point in my SIA blog titled "God: Great Imperceptible 'Ink Blot'?" (Johnston 2007). Should new scientific evidence-based knowledge and/or intuitive insights come via my soul consultant OM, I will revise my hypothesis in whatever way seems healthful and practically useful at that time.
Once having come to know those two steps, namely disidentification and identification, with the wonderful assistance of Roberto Assagioli (1973), I found it useful to reverse those two steps and add three steps of my own. They include: 3. transcendence, inclusion, and ownership; 4. cocreative self-management, and 5. receive feedback and make necessary adjustments.
So to make it all as clear as I can, following is my five-step process as it exists today for cocreatively managing with our Mystery Source my dark house in a way which transcends and circumvents the long night of the soul as described by Evelyn Underhill, St John of the Cross and other apparently 'one-pole mystics'.
Step One: Identify and attune with the subtlest-of-the-subtle, timeless, 'infinite', window-glass-clear all-pervading Mystery Source of all consciousness, health, full functioning, and well being.
Step Two: Disidentify with attachments, identifications, addictions, habits, hang-ups, etc. relative to temporal feelings, beliefs, values, intentions, processes, behaviors, and possessions.
Once all attachments, etc. have been disidentified with the result is a 'perfected soul' -- no more mortification or purgation needed. (A perfected soul is one which has completely disidentified with all temporal attachments, identifications, addictions, habits, and hang-ups.)
Step Three: Transcend, Own, Include every existentially available feeling, thoght, image, behavior, and potential possession (former attachments, etc.) in your repertoire of possible options for deploying in various situations within practical and healthful parameters.
Step Four: Cocreatively self-manage with our Source my repertoire of temporal options in an integrally healthful way according to one's intentions in the situation at hand. Every response is an option with consequences including caveats regarding overuse or misuse.
Step Five: Process Feedback from our Source, one's dreams, other entities, and ecosystem on how one is doing relative to achieving intended targets relative to soul development, creative objectives, innovative objectives, problem-solving objectives, preventive maintenance objectives.
Make adjustments in intentions and behavior as needed to bring one back in line for optimum healthful achievement of my intentions.
GENERAL VIEW
My general view of the unitive life includes oneness with the total mystic path of our Anima-Animus CoSource's way. I call this the study of our Mystery Source or, if you will, Sourceology, which I see as best done through the study of integral nature by way of natural science systems, including consciousness, mind-body health and wellbeing, cosmology, biology, physics, anthropology, psychology, sociology, and economics.
Generally, I experience the integral health-oriented mystic way of a sourceologist as follows:
o My integral healthful intentions pave the way to identify with our infinite, window-glass-clear, timeless Source which pervades and energizes all the cosmic darkest black and whitest light.
o My integral healthful intention paves the way to disidentify with, transcend, include, and own both poles -- anima and animus -- of intelligence and energy throughout my entire repertoire of existentially available options.
o Our Source and I co-manage not only my dark house, but also the practice of respecting and honoring all individuals and groups irrespective of gender, skin color, soul maturation, physical maturation, sexual orienation, national origin, intelligence, or whatever. . .
o I am continuously transforming through the ageless consciousness and love of our mysterious Source which I hypothesize is transparent, formless, all-pervading energy, logically comprised of equally important but complementary opposite cocreative, intelligent anima and animus energies. This timeless cocreative psychoelectromagnetic anima-animus pair permeates all my temporal intentions, feelings, thought, sensations, parasensations, memories, images, behaviors, and feedback loops.
SOME REFLECTIONS
Evidence of her commitment to her one-pole masculine-based belief system is contained in a letter in which Evelyn Underhill quoted the Dutch mystic Ruysbroech whom she greatly admired, "When love has carried us above all things into the Divine Dark, there we are transformed by the Eternal Word Who is the image of the Father; and as the air is penetrated by the sun, thus we receive in peace the Incomprehensible Light, enfolding us, and penetrating us."
It is evident she could not realize anything but glimpses of achieving that beautiful goal because she could not transcend her identification with the anthropomorphic image of her dominant masculine God to accept the ultimate as an ongoing Mystery too grand to describe in mortal human terms.
Where Evelyn Underhill broke new ground was in her vision of and insistence that this state of union could produce a glorious and fruitful creativeness, so that the mystic who attains this "final perfection" is the most active doer - not the reclusive dreaming lover of God.
That, however, appears to be more of an envisioned ideal state which, sadly, she never completely realized for she, even to the end of her life, appeared to be mired in the "dark night of her soul", remaining stuck in feelings of isolation and depression during much of her lifetime.
I appreciate Evelyn Underhill for the mystic path she described, even though never fully realized, for from her experience I learned much about what I needed to do to with our Mystery Source to effectively manage my dark house for optimum integral consciousness, peace, full functioning, health, wellbeing, and joy -- individually, socially, and ecosystemically.
In an attempt to present a clearer comparison of Evelyn Underhill's mysticism and my own mystic path I call Sourceology I have prepared a chart which overviews our two paths as options. You may access it via the attachment titled A Comparative Overview of Two Options -- A Christian Mystic Way and A Sourceologist Mystic Way.
Yours with empathy and trust in evidence-based integral natural science and our timeless, aware, all-pervading, caring, omnipresent Source of all integral health -- individual, social, ecosystemic, and cosmic,
Bob
REFERENCES
Assagioli, Roberto (1973). The Act of Will. NY:Viking Press
Christopher Conselice (2007), Scientific American, "The Universe's Invisible Hand" - February 2007
Hall, Calvin, S. (1954). A Primer in Freudian Psychology. Meridian Book.
Humphreys, Kenneth (2007). Jesus Never Existed. East Sussex, UK: Iconoclast Press
Johnston, Robert Wayne (2007). Notes on Why I Transcended Christianity http://www.shiftinaction.com/node/3679)
Johnston, Robert Wayne (2006). My Integral Noetic Allegory About Our Origin and Purpose on Earth http://www.shiftinaction.com/node/2333
Johnston, Robert Wayne (2006). My Ten Commitments (alternative to the 10 commandments) http://www.shiftinaction.com/node/1172
Johnston, Robert Wayne (2007). My One Great Shift? http://www.shiftinaction.com/node/3288
Johnston, Robert Wayne (2007) God: Great Imperceptible "Ink Blot"? http://www.shiftinaction.com/node/4298
Jung, Carl G. (1958). Psychology and Alchemy. Bollingen Series XX. New Jersey: Princeton University Press
Authorship uncertain although some attribute to Luke (circa 60-100). The Acts of the Apostles. The Gideon Bible
Mechtild of Magdeburg (1913). Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company
Radin, Dean (2006). Entangled Minds -- Extrasensory Experiences in Quantum Reality. NY: Paraview Pocket Books
Underhill, Evelyn (1911; re-issue 1999). Mysticism: A Study in Nature and Development of the Spiritual. Oneworld Publication
Unknown author (2008). "Dark House", Wikipedia
Unknown author (2008). Procrustes. Wikipedia.
SUGGESTED READING
May, Gerald G. (2004). The Dark Night of the Soul: A Psychiatrist Explores the Connection Between Darkness and Spiritual Growth. HarperSanFrancisco..
McKee, Kaye P. (2006). "When God Walks Away: A Companion to the Dark Night of the soul." Crossroad Publishing
© Copyright 2008 - Robert Wayne Johnston - Copying is freely permitted, provided credit is given to the author.
