Synchronicity - Wasteland & Green World

In Crossing to Avalon [the book I was reading when I discovered the Blogging the Artist's Way group] in the chapter called The Wasteland: Depression and Despair, Jean Shinoda Bolen tells the story of one of her patients:

His "nightmare" was actually a waking experience that probably lasted only a matter of seconds. It had occurred . . . at 2:00 P.M. on December 21. (Though he was unaware of it, December 21 is the winter solstice, the darkest time of the year; there could not have been a more symbolic date.) He was in a crosswalk near Union Square in San Francisco, in the midst of Christmas shoppers and holiday decorations, when suddenly he felt as if a motion picture had stopped and the scene had frozen. First motion and sound dropped away, and everyone and everything was suspended in a silent vacuum; then, as he watched in horror, all color drained out -- it was like "watching the world suddenly bleed to death" -- until everything was lifeless, immobile, and in shades of gray.

A moment later, everything was as it had been before . . .

He felt like he had gotten a glimpse of the ultimate reality, and it was empty, lifeless, meaningless. "This was what life really was like, what lay beyond the maya, or the illusion of life," he thought . . .

Most depressions that take such a toll in spirit last for many, many months, while his was over in a matter of seconds, minutes at the most. I told him that it was the mystical opposite of illumination. It was an experience of "endarkenment" as profound in its capacity to affect him as an experience of enlightenment and subsequent recollection might be.

I have had this experience. This exact experience.

Except it was the opposite.

It is nearly as vivid -- and indescribable -- to me today as it was when it occurred about thirty-five years ago. I was in my early twenties. It was summer -- we could even intuit that it was summer solstice.

I was walking, as I did daily, the two miles or so between work and home, in Billings, Montana. I don't recall paying any more attention than usual to the cement schoolyard on my left, or the paved street on my right, or the sidewalk under my feet -- but I noticed a weed pushing through the sidewalk crack, and then, suddenly, I was suspended in a silent vacuum, watching the green world explode around me.

Stems pushed up from the ground, cracking pavement, becoming vines and trees. It was as though I was in a timeless bubble, watching centuries unfold before me. Plants climbed buildings; structures cracked and eroded and shattered under the weight of vines, until any indication of human habitation was gone. It was all jungle, wild and green and very, very alive.

A moment later, everything was as it had been before . . .

I was standing on the sidewalk, on an ordinary street, on an ordinary day. But I knew that what had happened to me, what I had felt, was not ordinary, and I tried to hold it all the way home -- knowing that it would slip away, that feeling that has no language. And it did.

But the memory of it did not. The certainty of it -- that this was not crazy, this was not an hallucination -- this was something else, something real, even if outside of everyday experience -- that certainty stayed with me, too. Has stayed with me, all these silent years.

Bolen says:

His particular spiritual path was taking him through the desert or wasteland; he was on the via negativa, the path where soul encounters negation and pain . . . why some travel the via positiva while others must travel the via negativa is one of those unknowables.

I suspect that those who travel any spiritual path, travel both.

Comments

[Cheryl Fuller]

Matthew Fox wrote about "endarkenment" and the Via Negativa in his book, "Original Blessings". I loved his observation that seeds and new life take root in the darkness, not the light.

[ALAN]

dE JA vU

I have always assumed the event was something like a TIA or stroke event... but without any (recognized) after effects. Though low blood sugar or pressure may have similar consequences. It is important to me that "it" fits a mechanistic framework. I assume death ( at least some deaths) is like this.
"It" happened to me maybe in the early-mid 80's. In the spring, Little League season, on Saturday, just after noon. I was driving home with Brian and had just made the turn up the lane about 1/2 mile from home. My vision became darkened and color sense faded, pain between the eyes, weakness, panic. Brian aged 5-8 was pressed to grab the steering wheel and we slowed to a crawl. By the time we reached the yard the event was receding and normal function returning. unforgetable, my dad always had a fear of thus losing control, maybe he too had this experience.

[SB]

But -- Alan -- did you *see* something during this event? What I experienced seems nothing like what you describe. I had no pain, no weakness, no panic. Just this remarkable vision.