(Buddha's Wisdom) Breakdown or breakthrough.
- Catholic/Christian mystics understand, “To get your breakthrough, sometimes God needs to break you.”
- Dark Night of the Soul: What it is and how to move through it
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| Dark Night of the Soul |
St. John describes the concept in his treatise Dark Night (Noche Oscura), commenting on his poem of the same name.
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| John of the Cross, 1656 |
The author himself did not give any title to his poem, which together with this commentary and the Ascent of Mount Carmel (Subida del Monte Carmelo) forms a treatise on the active and passive purification of the senses and the spirit, leading to mystical union [1] or "yoga" through samadhi.
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| El Greco "View of Toledo" (Google Art Project) |
The poem
Dating and subject: The poem of St. John of the Cross, in eight stanzas of five lines each, narrates the journey of the individual (soul, personality, persona, ego, self, spirit) to mystical union with God or the Godhead (Brahman). More
The Dark Night of the Soul
By St. John of the Cross
I. In a dark night,
With anxious love inflamed,
O, happy lot!
Forth unobserved I went,
My house being now at rest.
II. In darkness and in safety,
By the secret ladder, disguised,
O, happy lot!
In darkness and concealment,
My house being now at rest.
III. In that happy night,
In secret, seen of none,
Seeing nought myself,
Without other light or guide
Save that which in my heart was burning.
IV. That light guided me
More surely than the noonday sun
To the place where He was waiting for me,
Whom I knew well,
And where none appeared.
V. O, guiding night;
O, night more lovely than the dawn;
O, night that hast united
The lover with His beloved,
And changed her into her love.
VI. On my flowery bosom,
Kept whole for Him alone,
There He reposed and slept;
And I cherished Him, and the waving
Of the cedars fanned Him.
VII. As His hair floated in the breeze
That from the turret blew,
He struck me on the neck
With His gentle hand,
And all sensation left me.
VIII. I continued in oblivion lost,
My head was resting on my love;
Lost to all things and myself,
And, amid the lilies forgotten,
Threw all my cares away. Source
- The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul (Douglas Adams)
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