Connie Zweig Ph.D. - Meeting the Shadow of Spirituality: The Hidden Power of Darkness on the Path

MEETING THE
SHADOW
OF SPIRITUALITY

formerly titled The Holy Lon ging

THE HIDDEN POWER OF
DARKNESS ON THE PATH

CONNIE ZWEIG, P h .D.

co-autho r of

Meeting the Shadow and Romancing the Sh adow

MEETING THE SHADOW OF SPIRITUALITY

THE HIDDEN POWER OF DARKNESS ON THE PATH

Copyright 2017 Connie Zweig, Ph.D.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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ISBN: 978-1-5320-1540-3 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5320-1541-0 (e)

iUniverse rev. date: 01/16/2017

Scripture taken from the Holy Bible, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc. All rights reserved worldwide. Used by permission. NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION and NIV are registered trademarks of Biblica, Inc. Use of either trademark for the offering of goods or services requires the prior written consent of Biblica US, Inc.

CONTENTS

Other books by

Connie Zweig

Nonfiction

To Be A Woman (Ed.)

Meeting the Shadow (Ed. with Jeremiah Abrams)

Romancing the Shadow (with Steve Wolf)

Fiction

A Moth to the Flame: The Life Story of Sufi Poet Rumi

DEDICATION

To Neil

who wears the face of the Beloved for me

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Writing a book is essentially a solitary task. But I wish to honor my psychological ancestors, whose work is my inspiration, especially Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, James Hillman, and Ken Wilber. And I wish to thank the community of Pacifica Graduate Institute, especially my dissertation committee: Dr. Aaron Kipnis, Dr. Dianne Skafte, and Dr. Claire Douglas. That research formed the seed of this book.

Gratitude to the many people who have shared their tales of spiritual longing and disillusionment with me, as well as to those who have written their stories with honesty and authenticity, which I retell here.

To Candice Fuhrman, agent and friend, who shepherded this work into the world.

To Jeremy Tarcher, Joel Fotinos, and Mitch Horowitz, at Tarcher/Putnam, who published the original edition of this book.

To Steve Reicher, my first imago amore . I will not forget you.

To the teacher who lit the fire more than thirty years ago and to all my teachers since, who have helped to keep it burning.

To Joan Harrigan, whose profound wisdom and steadfast guidance relit the dying embers.

To my satsang : no words can suffice. You welcomed me home.

To friends and colleagues for reading the manuscript and spending precious time discussing these ideas with me: Tom Rautenberg, Demaris Wehr, Bryan Wittine, Naomi Lowinsky, Bob Forman, Aaron Kipnis, Marsha de la O, Jeff Utter, Tony Stern.

To my beloved giggle group Neil, Janet Bachelor, Terry Crowe, Bruce Langhorn, Maureen Nathan, Linda Novack, Paula Perlman, Rhoda Pregerson, Linda Schreyer, Malcolm Schultz, Steve Wolf for the best belly laughs during the decades of our friendship.

As the hart pants after the water brooks, so pants my soul after thee, O God.

Psalms 42:1

Could the longing for a god be a passion welling up from our darkest, instinctual nature, a passion unswayed by any outside influences, deeper and stronger perhaps than the love for a human person?

C.G. Jung

When the Guest is being searched for, it is the intensity of the longing for the Guest that does all the work. Look at me, and you will see a slave of that intensity.

Kabir (trans. Robert Bly)

As a meditation practitioner for nearly 40 years, I have been insane for the light. Like a moth diving into the flame, I sought to be consumed in the burning, cooked, turned to ash.

At times, on my knees, arms outstretched to the heavens, I beseeched my god. At other times, sitting still like a yogi for hours on end, my senses switched off, I turned an ear within to hear my god. Occasionally, for moments, the timbre of a celestial voice suggested itself; the horizon of another realm shimmered. But, at other times, disappointed and exhausted, I suffered the indifference of my god.

At age 19, I turned toward the East. The turn back did not begin until 12 years later. Today, in certain ways, I am still struggling to make the turn.

A student at UC Berkeley at the time, enjoying an intellectual, politically active, experimental lifestyle, I learned meditation for no holy reason or higher motivation but to date a man who would not get involved unless I learned the practice. I had no idea how this seemingly light-hearted decision would radically alter the course of my life.

After about a year of sitting, eyes closed and legs crossed, several internal changes had taken place: My chatterbox mind, usually highly active and alert, was quieting down. At bedtime, it was not full of obsessive or random thoughts, which kept me awake. My breathing, too, was quieter, softer and gentler, so that my body felt calm rather than agitated much of the time. Emotionally I felt more stable inside. Friends commented that I seemed less angry.

As my emotional turmoil subsided, I grew less engaged politically with the enemy out there and more engaged with the battleground within. I also grew less interested in saving the world through social activism and more interested in saving myself through the development of consciousness. Increasingly drawn to the meditative state, to the ocean of silence that pulled me away from complicated relationships and toward the simple goal of making that silence permanent -- enlightenment -- I began to long for god.

I signed up for a month-long retreat that involved meditating for many hours each day and listening to long lectures at night. Sitting in the hall that first morning with several thousand others, whose restless eagerness could not be detected in the stillness, I awaited the guru. I wanted to be calm, yet alert, open, yet unattached -- in the correct state of mind for him. I wanted to please him already.

A door opened and a tall, stately man in saffron robes glided into the room. A bushy beard, just beginning to gray, covered his face. He folded his knees beneath him on the couch, and nodded to the room.

I beheld the image of serenity, depth, and self-sufficiency. He embodied freedom from suffering, ignorance, even death. A complete, self-realized human being whose mere presence implied that I, too, could be free.

After several weeks, I was at home. I had found a small community of dedicated, like-minded seekers, an intellectually sophisticated and compassionate teacher and, most of all, a simple practice that emptied my mind of trivial thoughts and filled my heart with love.

Almost without noticing it, I adopted wholesale a philosophy that ran counter to everything I had been taught: The real world is an illusion. The only reality is consciousness. Pure awareness, big mind, can be reached only through meditation. Enlightenment or liberation from suffering is a result of the regular experience of that.