Void Walking

Void Walking

"For whomever has not known himself has known nothing, but whoever has known himself has simultaneously achieved knowledge about the depths of all things." - Gnostic

Very few people will consciously strive to know themselves, will consciously endevour to enter the dark unknown of themselves. Let's face it most people believe that deep down there is something very ugly inside themselves. After all most religions give us the idea that we are basically sinful, unworthy of the love. We need redemption, or at least suffering to become the beloved.

It is this basic belief that makes us afraid to face the unknown within ourselves. Most people live day by day, just surviving, just defending their basic mode of existence, rarely questioning what they perceive themselves to be. Most people live their lives just reacting to external circumstances and would just continue like that, if there was not Divine intervention in the form of "the school of hard knocks." It is within this school of hard knocks that we are forced to face ourselves and change the course of our direction in life, change our perceptions about ourselves and the world that surrounds us.

We can of course simply ignore all of this, blame someone or something else for our misfortunes, and simply dull the resulting pain that will afflict us, and live our lives in a depressed state. Never really understanding why we feel such pain.

In reality we would rather live in pain and suffering than change. We fear change, but most of all we fear the period of chaos that always precedes change. Yet to achieve self-actualization, our highest potential, we have to change. It is part of our growth process.

"Some complex systems, apparently including those that undergird conscious experience, appear to exist on the edge of chaos. For them, ordinary stability is punctuated by periods of chaos. This notion was first introduced to describe processes such as the intricate metabolic cycles of living cells, or the exquisitely complex neural events of the human brain. Systems on the edge of chaos shift back and forth between predictable behavior and chaotic activity. In so doing, they may undergo important transformations that can produce growth. Periods of chaotic activity can throw a system out beyond its ordinary grooves, affording it an opportunity to come down to a different path, a new attractor." Radiance of Being – Allan Combs

As above so below, as below so above.

Within our lives we experience such apparent chaos when we move between thresholds of consciousness. Allan Combs calls such states liminal.

"The life of a spiritual commitment may be exhilarating at times, frightening at times, and depressing and discouraging at other times. As we move forward, the corrosive aspect of the spiritual work tends to break down our accustomed habits, throwing us out from comfortable past patterns of thought, emotion, and behavior toward as yet indefinite futures. At such times we are out between attractors, floating in liminality. The word limen refers to a threshold. Subliminal percetion refers to perceptions below the threshold, for instance, of hearing or sight. To be in a liminal state is to be at the threshold between two conditions, yet fully inhabiting neither. Liminality is experienced when we make transitions between periods in our lives, between states of consciousness, even between life and death. Such states often accompany the chaotic condition that sometimes occurs when a system is moving towards a bifurcation into a new pattern of organization. Liminal states hold great possibilities and also real dangers, because our fate is open-ended."

The Dark Night of the Soul can be described as such a period of liminality. Either external or internal events may give rise to such periods of liminality. It is within such a state that humanity as a whole finds itself in at this present time.

"Trying to unweave, unwind, unravel

and piece together the past and the future,

Between midnight and dawn, when past is all deception,

The future futureless, before the morning watch

When time stops and time is never ending." T.S Eliot

"It is a time that challenges us to disperse the shadow of our psychological past, which includes all the character weaknesses and imperfections imprinted in our youth and reinforced throughout the years. It is a time for change, for self-examination and self-acceptance, a time for truth, a time to stop fooling ourselves.

William Bryant - The Veiled Pulse Of Time (Life Cycles & Destiny)

It is the crucible of self-evolution.

"When nothing is sure, everything is possible. "-- Margaret Drabble

As much as we would like to believe that the world we live in is predictable, it is not. Can you be truly sure about anything? Yet we are prepared for life only based on the so-called predictable. Yet, it is how we deal with the unpredictable that makes or break us.

We become hugely disappointed when things do not turn out the way we thought it would. We become discouraged when we make mistakes and fail to achieve what we thought we would. We become depressed when we can't see a way foward. However, if we look at the unpredictable, the unknown, in a different way, we can see it as gifts given to us along the way, opportunities for growth. Each setback that we experience in life contains a clue to our personal power, a clue how to develop our personal power.

Within times of liminality lies our greatest opportunities for psychological and spiritual growth. We are however not prepared in our upbringing for such periods. In the past such periods of transition were marked by rituals of initiation, so that there was a definate understanding of transition. Today there is no such help, and only when we experience a breakdown do we go in search of help.

I find it very interesting that the experience of the Dark Night of the Soul is relatively unknown in the East, this is speculated to be because in the East positive patterning forces activated by practices such as manta repetition, physical exercise, and correct posture, help to stabilize the student during periods of transition and "It is hard to remain long in a state of drifting disorientation with a Zen master nearby to give you a sound crack on the head with his walking stick.!"

I have found it useful during such times of transition to earth myself in the mundane and clearly focus on my intent for living. To walk the void, the chaos, the unpredictable path, you have to be flexible and alert, for there are always clues for us along the way.

Although at times we find ourselves alone, even abondoned, we are not. Liminal times are also compared in mythological terms with the "trickster" who helps us to see another way. Sometimes we have to descend into the nether regions of ourselves to bring back our beloved. What is our "beloved"? That hidden part of ourselves, that we long for.

"Jesus said, 'If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you." The Gospel According to Thomas.

Always there is what the Nascapi Indians call the million-year-old man, a kind of living council, that brings wisdom from our ancient roots to guide us through the threshold . I have also heard it called the anagogue of souls (from the Greek 'guiding')

"O guiding Night

O Night more lovely than Dawn

O Night that has united the lover with his beloved

Transforming the lover into her Beloved."

St. John of the Cross