This is a note I wrote a few years ago. I was thinking about it the other day and thought I would repost.
A few months ago, my brother in-law died suddenly from an enlarged heart. He was in his 20s at the time and living with us. His sudden departure was a very painful process for me, my wife, and all of our families to go through. I have known my wife's family since I was a boy and had known Drew since he was practically a baby. Our experience since his death has been really up and down. My wife and I have been so busy that it has been hard to really catch our breaths and truly mourn the loss we felt. But there was a this heaviness that was becoming almost overpowering.
A couple of weeks ago, while I was sitting in a meeting, I closed my eyes momentarily and instantly an image came into my head. I could see it as clearly as I see the computer monitor in front of me now. The image was of me floating but completely submerged in water. I was underneath my body looking up at it. The light above me was broken and it came through the waterline. I could tell the water was deep because beneath me the water was dark. It felt so incredibly peaceful to just lay there, floating in the water. Only when I thought back to it, did I think it odd because I am a little afraid of deep water (I see it as analogous to heights and I am definitely afraid of heights). The feeling of peace was powerful that I remember the desire to fall deeper into the water. The image was very vivid.
In the weeks following it, I felt increasingly uneasy about it because I couldn't quite understand it. Why did it pop into my head? Did it mean something or was it just 'random.' Did the dark water represent death? Did the light represent my brother-in-law? It was very frustrating thinking about it, so I tried to block it out and not worry about it. Then, yesterday, I was at a book store and came across an interesting book called Dark Nights of the Soul by Thomas Moore. It was on the bargain rack for $5.95 and it seemed interesting. We have other books by Moore. He is a theologian and a psychologist and so he brings in many stories from the Bible to illustrate his points. But he is not dogmatic and often taps into other religious, literary and philosophical traditions for inspiration and clarity. Anyways, I was reading this book last night before I went to sleep. The basic point of the book is that times of intense sadness, trial or loss (the dark nights) are often treated by our contemporary society as things that the individual must work through or overcome and that they are bad things to be avoided at all costs. His view is that the dark nights are a natural part of life, they may be viewed as teachers (instead of torturers), at times we may not be able to do much about it except ride it out, and often times they are leading us to someplace new and grand that we can (if we choose to) use to gain a better understanding of ourselves.
In the book, to illustrate this fundamental point, he initially recounts the story of Jonah. Basically, how Jonah was called by God to go to Nineveh to tell the people that God was angry with them because of their evil ways. Jonah refuses and instead jumps on a ship to go to Tarshish. During the voyage a great storm threatens to destroy the ship. The sailors find out that it is because God is angry with Jonah and so they throw him overboard. A great fish swallows him up and for three days/nights he is trapped inside of this fish. Afterwards the fish spews him back out, God asks again him to go to Nineveh and this time Jonah agrees. So Moore writes: The hero, or better, antihero he is the victim of circumstances simply sits in the bowels of the fish as it carries him through the water. Because the story is associated with the sun setting in the west and traveling underwater to the east to rise in the morning, this theme is sometimes called the Night Sea Journey. It is a cosmic passage taken as a metaphor for our own dark nights, when we are trapped in a mood or by external circumstances and can do little but sit and wait for liberation..imagine that your dark mood, or the external source of your suffering, is a large, living container in which you are held captive. But this container is moving, getting somewhere, taking you to where you need to go. You may not like the situation youre in but it would help if you imagined it constructively..Sometimes in your darkness you may sense that something is incubating you or that you are being prepared for life. You are going somewhere, even though there are no external signs of pogress..The whales belly is, of course, a kind of womb. In your withdrawal from life and your uncertainty you are like an infant not yet born. There may be some promise, the mere suggestion that life is going forward, even though you have no sense of where you are headed. Its a time of waiting and trusting.In your dark night _you may have a sensation you could call oceanic being in the sea, at sea or immersed in the waters of the womb. The sea is the vast potential of life, but it is also your dark night, which may force you to surrender some knowledge you have achieved (some part of the ego)
When I read that it really resonated with me. Although I am normally afraid of water, the image in my head never elicited fear. It is dark with only broken light from above providing any sort of illumination. I am completely submerged but there is no fear of not being able to breath. The only time that that happens to humans is when they are in the womb. It really felt like it all came together. The image in my head for the last few weeks suddenly made sense. It seems to me that as we collectively deal with our sense of loss and grief, its helpful (at least for me) to think that grief is NOT devoid of meaning. The process itself can help us if we let it. As I let this understanding sink in more, it left me with a greater sense of peace and some level of excitement as to where the universe was taking me next.
