In a dark night,
With anxious love inflamed,
O, happy lot!
Forth unobserved I went,
my house being now at rest.
Saint John of the Cross, Dark Night of the Soul, Translated by David Lewis https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/157984/the-dark-night-of-the-soul
I still wake up every morning after a somewhat restless night with my jaws clenched tight and this dark night still lingering around me. My curiosity and desire to understand what I, as this me, am experiencing was drawn to to the famous poem on the subject, The Dark Night of the Soul.
In the above epic poem from Christian mystic, Saint John of the Cross, the soul's journey, spurred on by a desire for God, is depicted in seven short stanzas, beginning with the soul leaving its bodily home and ending with the soul's union with God. There are many translations from the latin it was first written in. I am presently reading a translation of the poet's own explanation of the process ( see below) but I wanted to be exposed to another version/translation to see how those words would be absorbed in me before I read the author's explanations in more depth
In a dark night: So in this first stanza we are made aware of the "dark night"...that period of not knowing what is around the corner, the period of decreased clarity, that time between dusk ( our previous understanding of things) and dawn ( the emergence of light and truth...the new day). To get out into the night...is to to do so blindly as in "blind faith". Night, of course, also implies death. A certain dying is taking place here. There is this unimplied warning, as well...that because of the darkness the journey will be challenging.
with anxious love inflamed: ( in the book's translation, it reads: Kindled in love with yearnings. I bring that up because I think "yearning" is a key word needed to understand the pull of the senses, the soul is still experiencing at this point?) So we have the imagery, in either translation, of a fire burning in the heart...which is a "passion" that represents the human desire. "Anxious"? Maybe the narrator can't wait or maybe the use of the word is possibly indicating a fear of the unknown?
oh happy lot! So the poet is describing how lucky he/she is for having the night to give some cover in which to secretively leave behind the house and travel to the Beloved in. The night is not a cursed and unfortunate thing but a blessing, something the narrator might have been waiting for because they are so excited to see it.
Forth unobserved I went: I went forth without being observed. No one could see me leaving. There still may be some social expectations holding the poet back from admitting to others his desire to merge with the divine. The poem was written in the 16th century by a brother of the very powerful Catholic Church where how to believe and how to practice that belief was strictly enforced, so much was censored. Knowing God directly was also taboo. So the desire for direct union with God could have been considered a sin even, and would have to be approached secretively under the cloak night provides? The poet could also be describing how one dies to be reborn...no one can see one dying in the spiritual sense...not leaving the body but leaving all former conditioning and beliefs, leaving the ego and attachment to "me, my and mine" could be done without anyone observing. One could die in that way without being noticed? The lover here could be walking around doing whatever during the day without anyone noticing that they have "died" inside in order to be reborn in God's arms. Of course , as a holy man, Saint John could be referring to how being unobserved..."obscure" is humility and a necessary trait for a true person of faith to possess. Instead of outwardly creating a show of piety, one should keep their love for God inside them...not exploiting it , not making it an object of other people;s observations.?? This is the way many cloistered monks and nuns choose to practice their faith.
my house being now at rest: Hmm! I see this again as a dying of old egoic ways and of finding a certain peace as we leave or let go of bodily concerns. The senses are no longer controlling us...thus the "dark night" as well. It is that spiritual step of being pulled beyond the senses. We are stepping away from how we once lived...based on the perception of pleasure or pain...what we once knew and are walking out into the unknown in search of something Greater, deeper. In order to step out we must have reached a certain level of understanding...that would lead to a certain degree of peace and thus " a house at rest".
Of course, through this verse we have the picture of someone in love sneaking out of the house at night to meet a lover in secret. Which is quite a thing for a catholic monk to be writing about. The soul is the lover and God is the beloved.
I know not what the poet intended...what the poem was meant to say. I can only gather and make my own conclusions...assumptions I should say ...by the way it makes me feel when I read it. Poetry, I believe, just points to something in us and projects it outward. I want to tear this poem a part stanza by stanza just to get a better understanding of this dark night thing this mind of mine is experiencing. I am just going to do the first stanza today.
I am fascinated by this idea of leaving a house, that was once unstable, for the dark night. This house the poet speaks about, I believe, is something mind built around who we really are...this little meness with all its ideations and beliefs, its attachments. This identification with the superficial is something we need to leave eventually. I had an image as I read the poem of this flimsy house built on sand blowing this way and that way in the wind...and the soul swept up going from side to side. The only time it settled or became "at rest" was when the soul stepped out of it. Though the soul senses there is something more out there and yearns for it, it has not yet made clear contact with it. It is not yet sure what that Something is. It just feels compelled to go forward, into the dark night regardless if that means not being able to see or understand where it is going. In the poem it was the soul stepping out of the "me".
In line with that, I heard these words today and they kind of stuck:
Use life to free yourself, instead of using life to fight, to bind yourself. Michael A. Singer.
We so often lock ourselves into these houses that we build...these false identifications, this superficial life style but at the same time , part of us knows there is more...so much more out there...( well actually in here lol). We need to leave these false protections that we built and venture out into the darkness in order to find that Greater Something.
Eckhart Tolle speaks to this as well in the below video. He mentions how we tend to build our self identification (our houses) on the superficial plane, the material plane, the plane of form ( which includes thoughts, emotions, roles etc)...which in other videos he refers to as the horizontal plane. The vertical plane can cut right through that taking us deeper...to a deeper sense of "I" if we allow it to. Most of us are still too attached to what is on the surface to go deeper, as the poet above so wanted to do. Tolle assures us we can transcend but we must be willing to step out of these ideas of who we are...again...venture out into the dark night...to discover who we really are, at a deeper level. He also assures us that we do not have to go very far...the spaciousness of deeper "I" is right there... so very close...God is right there, so very close. We just need to be willing to leave our houses and venture through a bit of darkness to get there.
Anyway, dark night or not, it is all so wonderful, just as it is.
All is well in my world
Saint John of the Cross (2021) Dark Night of the Soul. General Press: New Delhi. Kindle Edition
Michael A. Singer/Temple of the Universe ( June 5, 2023) Using Life to Free Yourself. https://tou.org/talks/
Eckhart Tolle (June 4, 2023) Deepening Your Sense of I. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5nycEaSdxhg
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