Tag Archives: darkness

From the Gutter, the Stars Shine Brilliant

Posted on by under Darkness, path, Spiritual light, Uncategorized

stars

Oscar Wilde wrote, “We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”

While literary critics have pondered the meaning of that provocative line, anyone pursuing spirituality in recovery knows immediately – and with great personal empathy – exactly what Wilde was saying: Even in the roughest storm of life, we can see the startling beauty of the heavens.

Despite his considerable literary talent, Wilde died an impoverished alcoholic at 46, in exile from England and mostly estranged from his family. He was imprisoned for two years for homosexuality, and for the rest of his life he was barred from seeing his two children from an earlier marriage.

In the darkness of the gutter, the stars can shine incredibly bright.

In a recent song by the metal band, Disturbed, they say, “Sometimes darkness can show you the light.”

The contrast between the dank despair of human decent and the eye-burning shine of spiritual revelation is shocking – sometimes it’s shock enough to lift us up to the world of the living. Other times, it’s merely the faint call of a promising world on the other side of death.

The light-filled world of connection and hope is a blink away. It’s right here in your breath. The path to this warm earthly home is visible through the stars that we see from the gutter. Even in the sour sink of fear, we are always strong enough to climb through. Yet many will die tonight for the lack of seeing that path. Their time will come again and again even so.

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Fear Was the Problem

Posted on by under Darkness, fear, spiritual awakening, Spirituality, True self

Fear was my biggest problem. I had no idea.

I didn’t know anger was fear. I thought my anger was justified. I didn’t like being angry, but I thought I couldn’t help it. It was a natural response to a broken world and its broken people.

I didn’t know anxiety was fear. I thought my circumstances warranted anxiety. I thought the solution was to change the circumstances. The circumstances were impossible to change.

I didn’t know resentment was fear. I thought my feelings of resentment were justified. My resentments extended back many years. They produced anger, sadness, and discomfort. I was stuck with them.

I didn’t know jealousy was fear. I thought my jealousy was caused by others.

I didn’t know sadness was fear. How could sadness be fear?

The negative feelings were with me for years. I thought they were a permanent part of me and intrinsic to all life. I prayed that the negative feelings would not manifest into illness. They felt like illness. They also produced negative behavior. I worked hard to separate my behavior from my feelings. I didn’t want to behave poorly just because I felt poorly. But I did.

I tried to be positive, but I worried I was simply putting a bright blanket of untruthfulness over the darkness. Wasn’t it better just to accept the negative? I didn’t want to be phony. I took pride in my ability to face the inky black void.

All the time, I was surrounded by light. I couldn’t see it. I thought this dark world around me was the entire world. But my dark world was a delusion. I was the problem. Remove that dark me, and the world goes light. So I removed the dark me.

The Lunatic Is in My Head

Posted on by under Darkness, spiritual awakening, Spiritual light, Spirituality, True self

“There’s someone in my head, but it’s not me.”

This line is from the song “Brain Damage,” by Roger Waters. The song appears on Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon album, released in 1973. In the song, a lunatic is approaching. First it’s on the grass, then in the hall, and finally, “The lunatic is in my head.”

Waters tells the story of seeing a “keep of the grass” sign on a beautiful patch of lawn, a place that was welcoming. He thought that was crazy.

The powerful song sends a simple message. Given time, and given the lack of a creative or spiritual force in your life, the messages and pressures of the world will grow near and ultimately become who you are. What seems crazy in this world is at first on the outside. We see it as teenagers and swear we will not become part of the craziness. Yet, unless we know how to outmaneuver it, the insanity moves to the inside. Few of us are given any instruction in how to outmaneuver the madness.

When I first heard the song as a young man, I felt it as a potent warning . I was at the stage where the lunatic had moved from the grass and into my hall. I felt very much in danger of losing the battle of the self to world. There is a passage in the children’s novel, A Wrinkle in Time, where a character faces a similar battle. Charles must maintain his identity in the face of life-threatening darkness.

In spite of my noble attempt to stay sane in this world, the lunatic did eventually enter my head and I succumbed to the darkness. For many years, there was someone in my head and it certainly wasn’t me. The world, of course, saw it as sanity. I tried to see it as sanity. I thought I had finally come around. But it was not sanity, and I suffered for succumbing to the world’s madness.

During the time when I was young and I felt so threatened by the world, there was something very important I didn’t understand. The light may go out in your head, but it hasn’t gone out in reality. The light surrounds us, and our failure to perceive it does not diminish its power.

Willingness was all I needed to step back into the light. The lunatic is still in my head. It comes with our DNA, it’s in the drinking water of our culture, and it gets passed from generation to generation like a virus. But now I’m aware that the lunatic is the lunatic and it’s not me. Likewise, it doesn’t have to make my decisions.

Yes, there’s someone in my head and it’s not me. That “someone” does a lot of thinking. It’s a whole committee. But I don’t have to believe the thoughts that rattle in my brain. There is also light in my head, and I can trust that light. The light doesn’t make me suffer, and it can actually untangle the darkness of the thinking brain.