From Dark Night of the Soul to Rilke’s 10th Elegy suffering has been written about as a gift of growth
‘Our ancestors
worked the mines on that mountain-range: among men
you’ll sometimes find a lump of polished primal grief,
or the lava of frozen rage from some old volcano.
Yes, that came from there. We used to be rich.’ -Rilke
Rilke writes glowingly about the Laments and how they were lauded as the rich ones.
Suffering was seen as a gift...something to help us grow and stretch upwards towards the higher source.
The Holy books are filled with the stories of suffering.
What happens to us during those dark nights of the soul when grief and pain hold us down without mercy?
Every breath is like fire and just the slight turn of the head creates a pounding avalanche of searing pain.
Is that Holy?
Is that fair?
But the suffering is the doorway to that higher source...the ONE we yearn to know.
The source that is free of the human condition and all that is eternal.
It is where all that we have loved and lost resides.
If we can make it through the dark night we will be closer to them and the almighty love they have shown us through the searing absence of their presence.
What is this earth other than a learning bed of emotions and feelings.
To suffer means we have loved and the journey through pain will only show the love brighter and stronger through us on the other side of it.
The knowing that love is stronger than everything else..and others may acknowledge the lesson you are undergoing by holding that doorway of light open just a little until you make it through that dark night.
In the morning light you will have emerged that much closer to all that is high and closer to the unseen. And you will recognize what you lost as the greatest gift that was just hidden from you.
There they stand now with outstretched hand saying
‘But the dead must go on, and in silence the elder Lament
leads him as far as the ravine,
where the fountain of joy
glistens in moonlight. With awe
she names it saying: ‘Among men
this is a load-bearing river.’
-Rilke
-Lian Lunson