My love story with the Divine or a short version of my history of the Dance

        I was wondering today if and how has my love for the Divine changed over the years, from the first "communion" through the years of union. From passion to commitment? So I dug up my diary...

Excerpt from diary, 2005

        I have been in love many times. I have lost myself in others countless moments. This has been a search, an escape, a hope!? Why fall in love? And out of love? It never lasts, this initial miracle. People stay together, and they have happiness, but the flame subdues to a quiet comfort, feeling of safety and warmth. It falls into a state of polarity- you start to fight, you wish to change the other. You make up. And finally you find a balance. Or maybe you don‘t. 
The impermanent world is such. Maybe I have become a slight cynic. At the same time I do believe people should share, should love each other, should help each other grow.

I have another lover. She is permanent. As long as I have a heart to feel, I will love Him. This love makes me fall to my knees, but without lowering myself; makes me cry, but only of happiness; makes me laugh, but only in awe and respect. My love for the Divine. Can I possibly measure it? Can anything else compare to it? She comprises all- He holds within himself all creatures, great or small, every leaf, stone, ant, snake, man, ape. Every contraction of music and every subtraction of silence. She only frustrates me with this- She cannot be put into words. He cannot be put into gender and yet I cannot say It, for that in linguistic terms means a lifeless thing. Yet nothing is lifeless about this All. There is nothing less lifeless than the All at all! How can I praise the Divine? How can I sing about the Divine? Only with my heart, only without words. Only by living.  

The thing I can describe is the love itself. I feel the love with me- I do not kneel to hope to get something- I receive total love by loving totally, by understanding. And this gift- this feeling of being loved so much, so completely, without boundaries, unconditionally, whatever I do, good or bad, for this Source, this Essence never judges you- this gift of being loved is what makes me love so much. This KNOWING of being loved makes me fall on my knees and live only for this love. In fact you can't even say- the universe loves me and I love the universe, because in this experience there is no lover and no beloved- it all mixes up and it comes together and there is nothing else but love, everything just IS love. Love that has nothing to do with giving, getting, being together or without, ownership, possession, hope, clinging, needing. Pure love, utter devotion that spreads so far and wide and deep that there is no receiver and no giver.

But then... 
2005

I become more of a hermit every day, each day I loathe the social mask I have to wear more and more. When I am in a room filled with people I see wild horses run past me, through me, beckoning me to jump on, they’re going to meet the stars in the dark nightly sky, and I cannot bear it. I want to fly too, alone and free.

Can you vomit up all the pain that comes from the nonsense, can you forcefully remove all that cold soulless existence that grows in you like a tumour? You eat and eat and eat (food and gossip and regret, the waves from the tv-set- the list is endless) to fill the void but as you become the junk in your belly, your whole being twists and turns and disgusts you so you throw it all up only to feel the void again. I guess for me the darkness beats the artificial light any day. It cannot be filled with the fake. I can learn to love companionship, I can even learn to like the sun, it has shown me its grace on occasions. Yet the night remains my master, my addiction, my only true friend. It’s a safe place for me to roam with all the other slugs and serpents, unseen and undisturbed.

And...

        How do you find the heat regulator button on the radiator and turn it from explosive to mild? Can you have burning passion, love and inspiration and loose its dark counter part of frustration, self-destruction and anger? Is there matter without antimatter? Or how do you rid yourself of the illusion of both?

        All I know is that there is such a huge dimension to the word feel at those times. I don’t just feel, I burn down to my very core of being. When I feel self-hatred it’s not a mild wallowing in pity, it’s the scream in the pillow, pulling hair and in the past self-hurt kind. Maybe it’s just life. If you want to taste life, smell it, feel it, hear it to the extreme then you will end up wanting to kill it. I desire the fear and fear the desire.

And...

I guess because I have come to understand that everyone suffers I have in some way ended up reaching an underlining level of peace in my mind. I have gained an understanding about the constant change that everything is subject to. How can you fight with the law of nature? All you can do is flow with the tide and surrender to the madness, give yourself up to the universe. 

At the same time it makes me so much more sensitive to seeing all the suffering in the world. It’s so strange- I thought that I was so lucky to gain an insight that will protect me from pain, but now I find that this has only opened me up to feeling EVERYONE’S hurt at the same time- what do you do with that? I walk on the street and I hear people shouting and screaming at each other, I see violence and it makes me cry, this blindness, the hurt that people cause themselves. If that is the salvation in the loss of ego then its grotesquely hilarious. But at the same time an inescapable fact I guess. On this earthly plain there is no pleasure without pain, never mind your vision and perspective, when the pleasure gets greater then so does the pain.

The strength of it is scary. I feel the weight of the world on my shoulders so much that my head wants to explode, my neck longs to shatter into thousands of pieces.      


If death is not the answer and life kills you day by day then what do you do?

I’m numb. After one implosion, waiting another. I can sense it already though my awareness is concentrated on the level of my skin, as thick as an elephants.
Maybe the next one is the last. Does it matter? Joy is as far as the moon.

And..

Darkness. Guilt. Suffering. Sin.
        The winds are howling, battering the tiny birds as they fight to keep their direction. Not a soul outside, though its midday.
I sit in this moment and try to hold it. This desperate and beautiful moment. The atmosphere is dark and yet filled with little specks of carefree laughter, tiny bits of hope.
        Or is it my mind?
        I sit and I play with my vision like the wind is playing with the trees and the birds. Bending it, twisting and turning everything and yet not changing a thing. The birds will fly in a straight line, the trees will reach to the skies after the wind goes once again. My essence will remain constant. Nothing matters. How beautiful.

And..

Still 2005

Little glimpses of truth. I am chopping a tomato to make a fresh salad. My mind is empty, the thoughts have tired of themselves, time has gotten over it’s pompous self-delusion and has left me be. So all I do is chop a tomato. I do not think- I am chopping a tomato, I have quite forgotten words. But I am here, now, still, with a full awareness. And this way, suddenly- I am for the first time chopping a tomato. Quite unexpectedly I am filled with joy and peace. I know, this very instant, that the meaning of life is chopping a tomato. Chuckling I fall to a seat and sigh, “Thank you- tomato! Thank you- divine, for allowing me to chop into your essence!”  I have a fleeting feeling maybe I was actually chopping up myself. 

Somewhere in India, 2006

We are all free, nonexistent, without beginning and end. Bubbles of air, drops of water, grains of sand. Who am I? Who are you? Take a microscope and still you won’t find the answer. But in that ocean, cloud, in that desert of sand, nobody stands alone, separate. There are no quarrels or misunderstandings. This if we step out of our tiny little shell for a moment and look around. Or turn inward and take a look at our hearts. We will discover that someone has tried to pull our leg- nothing is as it seems, nowhere is the person we call “I”. 

And now? What happens now? Will all the storms in the world sail past me now? Of course not. But who will they shake? Who will they hurt? In fact are there any storms at all outside our own little inner world? Or do the rivers of suffering start from here and run into myself?

I have caught hold of the carriage of now and pulled myself to its comfy seat. This moment is the only one that exists, that matters. I, who have since childhood searched for a reason to be, have jumped from one view to another, like a piece of wood on stormy waves, a prey for the forces of nature, victim of my own emotions and passions, have reached the simple truth that no reason is necessary. The solidity of myself has separated me before from this truth, the search itself has prevented finding. Dissolved in the sea there are no more questions. Everything just is.  

And perhaps even a more wonderful realization- there are really no polarities. I have said that this is true before. I have believed that this is true before. I have even, in brief magical glimpses experienced that this is true, yet somehow I have never truly understood the real essence of this truth. If I am lost at any time in my life, then it only appears to my very limited consciousness then, at that moment, that I am lost, that I am not whole at the same time. I am simply playing the game of the cosmos- the appearing and the dissolving, blindness and vision, good and bad.  But that game itself is also a part of the divine essence. The divine is whole. So how did I think that when I didn’t have my mystical vision I was not whole? That when I was shaking with torrents of torture I was not also peacefully laughing? That when I was deeply ridden with all sorts of complexes and diseases I was not also shining with health, light and confidence. In reality all these are words, concepts, feelings. Ever-changing protrusions from the centre that doesn’t change. 

All that there is leaves me in deep awe. 

All that there is, is a playful dance of all the opposites, all the possibilities. A natural rhythm and energy. A heart, that goes on beating no matter where the legs run and how the hands bang and gesticulate.  A heart that keeps on beating no matter what dreams the head dreams.

...... October 2012

       My love came out of the night. How impassioned it was in those beginning stages! How painful was its beauty! I was a prayer then. Nothing else mattered. Days were obstacles cause I couldn't wait to fall to my knees and cherish. I was consumed by the union and I longed and needed the solitude that allowed it. 

      This love is not bound by the night anymore. The pendulum used to rock hard and fast from ecstasy to despair, it was such a difficult existence for many years, constantly torn up and then flinged to the heavens and torn up again by these extremes. I had no control whatsoever, I had no idea why the Divine had one day simply filled me from above, and I had no idea how to stop myself from falling into Hell. It was the opposite of constant at those times- namely because of that despair I felt when I was without it. It was all or nothing then. 
      When I wanted it all and devoured all the Universe I needed to empty myself after a while. It was a spiritual bulimia which then expressed itself as a physical bulimia. 
      When I had it all, then my mind collapsed into fear for a while- too high, too fast! It was a spiritual vertigo which then expressed itself as the physical vertigo also- the ground was literally falling and rising under my feet, I couldn't even work for a while, walking was a huge mile-stone I had to conquer again. In other words- with the spiritual gymnastics- the body follows- beware!
      It was a spiritual death which made me go out and test the limits of danger, to feel as alive as I possibly could. And then it was a spiritual birth which made me long for physical death. And again it was those moments when I was ready to give up that actually sparked Life! Death! Life! Death! Life!
      Yes, it was a passion then! 
      Yet it is through this rocking- that I know that there is no good or bad. Yet it's through the experience that the love remained by my side, saving me time and again from the ultimate threat I posed to myself- that I developed my absolute and unshakable trust in the Universe, my rock-solid faith that everything happens for the best, despite all the seeming suffering on the surface reality. 

     How can I describe my love now? It is such a quiet feeling now compared to all that, despite its stealthy strength. A silent under-current of everything. A saving grace for every disappointment, an indestructible net underneath every fall. The arms of this love always catch me. Every unpleasant thought is subdued by it. When before I loved to fall cause it meant first the void and then the flying and dissolution in ecstasy, then now I have  learned to love the simple walk on the ground of being. For some years, they can be called the stabilizing years I guess- I did not fall at all, and I was shocked by this, it was the polar opposite of what I knew and was used to. Of course life goes on and suffering returns. It returns so much smaller though, and more importantly- it returns within the loving arms of the Divine.       

      This feeling has spread out over a myriad of tempos and tonalities now. There is no frustration with describing it, cause there is no need to describe it- it is there, just there, in day-light and at night. Sometimes the awareness of it sleeps also. But when the sleep has lasted for longer than I can bear, for days or weeks, the love soars through my heart refreshed with such a tumultuous ecstasy that I still kneel, I still shout out to the heavens and laugh for hours with tears of gratitude rolling down my face. And I am grateful for the temporary solitude cause I get to feel the over-flowing joining. Its just that I don't need the rapture anymore, I am utterly happy to find the quiet energy of love behind small things.

       I am married to You- to Myself. No earthly love or the loss of it makes me suffer for long. Most of my friends are shocked at how fast I get over things. But they don't know about my real love, which encompasses and immortalizes these loves also. 
       I have no more ambitions in life cause You were my only ambition. I only want to live when I live, and to die when I die, with You by my side, around, within- 
       in Love.

The dance starts out slowly, fueled by a vague longing in the heart and a strong curiosity of mind.

The dance quickens into fire- both igniting and purging darkness.

The dance settles into the dance. 

The dark nights of the soul

All right.
The good, bad and the ugly- lets start from there. And yes- all at once.

Through all the turbulence that a persons life can have I guess it is the Dark Nights of the Soul that can stand out the most. Spiritual crises and dark nights are many and vary from person to person. Here is a little introduction to my own.

It is seemingly hard to distinguish between a psychological disorder and a spiritual crises. Caroline Myss says it well when she says, “when the root is spiritual the person lacks the motivation to blame other people for causing the crises. Rather, he or she realizes that the cause of the crises is within. The inadequacy of the external components of the persons life is a consequence of the spiritual crises, not the cause.”
And also from personal experience and from what I hear is the norm- when a person is in a spiritual crises, then they are able to function in the every-day life adequately, almost normally. Usually only the people closest to them can recognize that something is wrong. In my case almost nobody knew, only one or two I told, but I didn’t have many people around me at stage of my life, I kept to myself then.

The crises usually comes after a period of ease in meditation or another spiritual practise. Things seem to be going very well indeed, a person feels they’re growing and learning and they are filled with all kinds of new understandings and joys about themselves, life and the Universe. And suddenly…

The Void. An endless, dark, horrifying Void. Nothing makes sense. Nothing to hold on to. Your sense of self and identity is not there. You have no idea who you are. All you are is empty, but this emptiness is not the emptiness of no-thought state where you found bliss before. It is an alien, depressing Void. Reading other peoples experience I see that depression is a very common experience of the spiritual crises. Everything in life, everything that you see and experience is totally without a meaning. More than that- it is cruel and filled with suffering, so much suffering that you cannot bare it at all. In one of those “dark nights” I survived from one panic attack to the next. I felt I simply could not exist in this world of suffering anymore, I tried to breathe but the air, the atmosphere seemed so filled with energy that my body did not want, that breathing seemed to be the most difficult thing in the world. But at the same time that you cannot bare the thought of living, you know that suicide is not an option. It is a wish, to be sure, it is a wish to go back to your source and rest in peace, the longing to join the eternal is great, almost unbearable, but you know that it is not a solution, you know that it is not an ending to your troubles, and you would rather work on yourself in this life, than escape to the next life and start all this again.

Also the messiah-complex is easy to come at this period, for me it was anyway. Because your heart is VERY open, you feel the whole suffering of the world, it seems to press down on your neck like a mountain and the weight of it is killing you. You cannot bare to see all the people and other sentient beings suffering, you need to help, yet you know you cannot. You know that all of them are exactly where they need to be and the only transformation for them is within themselves. But the heart goes to the place of messiah-complex anyway, because it seems the only possible solution. This was the point where I actually thought I was going insane, and this fear and realization brought me back out of the crises.

Another experience that you can have is a feeling of utter disconnection. I call this experience of mine as the meeting with no-form. It was a sudden falling away of all concepts. I could see all objects around me but my mind knew no meaning to them. I looked at my arms and I knew at the back of my mind that they were connected to my body but at that time I had no idea what their purpose was, I simply wondered at these amazing dangling things from my body. I knew I was looking at a cup but had for that time lost all memory it seemed- of what a cup was for. It was beautiful, I felt I saw things as they were. But the utter disconnection was extremely frightening.

And yet another physical side-effect- vertigo. Vertigo is a physiological disease that many people experience. Yet with me- I have only experienced it during spiritual crises. The earth literally seems to be a wave underneath your feet. It is a natural side-effect of feeling groundless I believe, at least was in my case. Your body reacts to and exhibits what is going on in your mind.

One crises of mine was connected with Vipassana meditation. If you are a sensitive person then Vipassana can be a really hard thing to experience. First because suddenly there is an out-burst of all your inner hidden psychological insecurities, feelings that have been buried for so long are suddenly out in the open. Even though I thought I had worked through my childhood issues, there were scars and issues that suddenly overwhelmed me. And second because I started to feel the energy of the body in such an extreme way that meditation sessions were literally torture sessions where I felt I was being swallowed up in the intense pain and pressure of the energy of my body. Panic attacks, feeling of loosing your mind, how to get out of this? By forcing yourself through and continuing- there is no other way. Realization that everything rises to pass away of course in the end leaves you walking out of the place feeling you are rather floating than walking. After all the suffering I felt I lost about 10 kilos of my weight, but the process itself- so hard!

So in the end- I know that people are always encouraged to seek a therapy, a support group or whatever, during these really hard transformational processes. I never had any. I believe that you have these experiences, because you can handle them alone, you are never given anything more than you can handle. Yes- it might have been easier with a therapy. Yet the things that you learn on your own- these are the things that stick with you.
Stick with it. All the suffering of these times is a blessing. Any transformation is hard. Sometimes you feel that you cannot possibly deal with this. But you can. And you will look back at these times as the most profound periods of your life. Why is growth so painful? Cause all that we were before, it is like a solid wall inside you, that needs to be dissolved into a river of fluidity and freedom. It will hurt. But the hurt is temporary, while the gains will last.

Here is a video with Ken Wilber talking to a student who is experiencing a crises of spirit during meditation Dark nights of meditation practise