gifts from a dark night

icebound trees at the edge of my yard. 12/14/08

"If you are like most people, you have gone through several dark nights of the soul. You may be in the middle of one now. You may be in a difficult marriage, have a child in trouble, or find yourself caught in a tenacious and terrible mood. You may be grieving the loss of a spouse or parent. You may have been betrayed by a lover or a business partner or going through a divorce. For some people, these situations are problems to be solved, but for others they are the source of deep despair. A true dark night of the soul is not a surface challenge but a development that takes you away from the joy of your ordinary life. An external event or an internal mood strikes you at the core of your existence. This is not just a feeling but a rupture in your very being, and it may take a long while to get through to the other end of it."

(excerpted from Dark Nights of the Soul, Thomas Moore)

"Care rather than cure. Organize your life to support the process. You are incubating your soul, not living a heroic adventure. Arrange your life accordingly. Tone it down. Get what comforts you can, but don't move against the process. Concentrate, reflect, think, and talk about your situation seriously with trusted friends."

(Thomas Moore, in Dark Nights of the Soul)

"Every human life is made up of the light and the dark, the happy and the sad, the vital and the deadening. How you think about this rhythm of moods makes all the difference. Are you going to hide out in self-delusion and distracting entertainments? Are you going to become cynical and depressed? Or are you going to open your heart to a mystery that is as natural as the sun and the moon, day and night, and summer and winter?"

~ Thomas Moore ~

"Don't be afraid to suffer,
give the heaviness back
to the weight of the earth;
mountains are heavy,
seas are heavy."

~ Rainer Marie Rilke ~

"Imagine a black sun at your core, a dark luminosity
that is less innocent and more interesting
than naïve sunshine. This is one of the gifts
a dark night has to offer you."

~ Thomas Moore ~