Moments that Build the Soul

A fleeting apprehension of the Beautiful bears more weight than Mount Meru. A brushstroke of our gaze against the last petal of Autumn, sparkle of attention at the owl's lament from a hemlock grove, homecoming to the miracle of a breath.

These are the sacraments in the ordinary of the seasons. They stir a depth in us that resonates forever, whereas the contraction of  fear or worry, or the shudder of despair, are momentary shadows external to the soul, with no seed in the stillness of our Being.

The soul is Beauty itself, and it is never nourished by doubt, guilt, anxiety or blame. The soul is formed by those small moments when we are deeply happy. Joy is eternal, unhappiness a mirage. Be a flame, rooted in the ground of wonder.

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What of the "dark night of the soul?" Is there no dignity in suffering?

Pain is in the present moment. There is profound dignity in the way pain focuses our awareness. Pain, awful as it is, can be a gateway to Presence. But when our mind maintains a commentary about the pain, building a story of "me" around it, then pain becomes "suffering." Pain is present; suffering is about the past and future.

We are free to make a romance of our suffering as long as we choose to. Some of us identify so thoroughly with thoughts of shame, despair, victimhood and resentment, we are afraid to let them go. Letting go of negative thoughts, if we have identified with them, means letting go of the story of "me," and feels like death. To plunge into the void beyond the mind is annihilation, and not for the faint of heart.

This is what Christian mystics like St. John of the Cross meant by "the dark night of the soul." The dark night is not negative thought or feeling in the mind, but the negation of the mind itself.

"Dark night" in Christianity is precisely what the Buddhist means by "anatta," no self. And this sublime emptying of the self - "kinosis" in New Testament Greek - is the heart of Presence.