The most
common theme in this blog is PRACTICE—how taking an active role in our own
spiritual formation is crucial if we want to grow. I write about this so often
because I continue to be amazed and grateful that such a thing is possible at
all--as I continue to be amazed at how often it’s not taught, embodied, and
transmitted.
On the other
hand, habitual focus on practice can get to be a kind of haranguing. I often feel like I’m haranguing myself, pushing too
hard, expecting too much, flogging a weary horse.
I feel this way because it’s
true. There’s a decisive difference between haranguing and encouraging, and I’m
sometimes oblivious to it.
Thank God for the gifts of frustration and weariness
and misery—signs that get our attention, turn our heads around, get us to look
down at our compasses long enough to notice we’re turned the wrong damn way!
What follows is another wise bit of Gerald Mays book, The Dark Night of the Soul. I'm sooooo grateful we have many wise teachers to help us along the Way.
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John and Teresa pay relatively little
attention to the active aspect of the spiritual life because they know from
experience that our own autonomous efforts can accomplish very little. They are
much more interested in the passive dimension, the work God does within us,
seemingly beyond our own will and intention. John says quite bluntly that all
this effort does not work…grace is needed to find “the courage to be in the
darkness of everything.”
It is easy to understand that we
cannot free ourselves on our own; life itself teaches us that. But it’s a
lesson many of us seem determined to forget. Even now, with a lifetime of
self-improvement failures behind me, I still keep trying.
As soon as I become aware of some bad
habit or personality defect in myself, I try to take it into my own hands and
fix it on my own. It’s possible that I have been successful at some of these
attempts, but for the life of me I can’t think of an example. I usually have to
fail several times before I admit that I cannot do it alone.
Giving up the striving isn’t easy. We
human beings naturally try to achieve satisfaction in all things through our
own autonomous effort and control. This is just as true in our search for
spiritual fulfillment as it is in the rest of life. We may yearn to “let go and
let God,” but it usually doesn’t happen until we have exhausted our own
efforts. There is a relentless willfulness in us that seldom ceases until we
have been brought to our knees by incapacity and failure.
In John’s vision, it is during the 'passive nights' that God’s grace flows through the ruins of our failed attempts,
softens our willfulness, and takes us where we could not go on our own.
Sometimes we may experience it as an
inner relaxation and letting go. At other times it may feel like something we
cling to is being ripped away from us. Either way, the freedom comes only
through relinquishment. The actual experience may feel like delightful
liberation or tragic bereavement, or it may happen so deeply that we are not
aware of it at all. But one thing is certain: the process of freedom is one of
subtraction—we are left more empty than when we began.
Prayer is never really separate from
the rest of life, so the passive night
of the senses brings a similar change in one’s spiritual activities. Prayer
that used to be full of consolation and peace may now seem empty and dry.
Worship and other church activities are not as rewarding as they used to be. It
is increasingly difficult to maintain daily “active” practices like prayer,
meditation, journaling, or spiritual reading.
In general, one finds oneself losing
interest in the spiritual things that used to offer so much gratification. Even
the images of God one has depended upon may gradually lose their significance.
All the while, as we have seen, the
process happens in obscurity. We do not understand that the changes we are
experiencing are opening us to more free and complete love. Instead, our most
common reaction is self-doubt. Because we assume we should be in charge of our
spiritual lives, our first reaction is usually, “What am I doing wrong?”
This self-doubt, combined with loss
and confusion, explains why the passive night of the senses is often
unpleasant, why it involves territory we would not choose to traverse on our
own. I want to reiterate, though, that the experience can in some ways be
pleasurable. A lessening of dependence on one’s work or relationships can
sometimes feel freeing. Even the loss of one’s habitual spiritual
activities—especially if one has been doing them out of habit or obligation—can
feel like a burden lifted.
Pleasant or unpleasant, however, all
such experiences do involve loss, and there is always a certain emptiness left
behind. The passive night of the spirit, as John sees it, is the process of
emptying and freeing the spiritual faculties: intellect, memory, and will. It
liberates them from attachment to rigidly held beliefs, understandings, dreams,
expectations, and habitual, compulsive ways of loving and behaving righteously.
In my experience, the most universal
change accomplished by the passive night of the spirit is the blurring of one’s
belief in being separate from God, from other people, and from the rest of
creation. Increasingly, one feels a part of all things instead of apart from
them. Such softenings can happen with any rigidly held habitual beliefs and
concepts.
