by Matt Licata
The grieving process might not have an endpoint, a goal line, or state of completion in which we come to some final resolution, “finish,” and land in some untouchable place, free from falling apart yet again. Although some forms of spirituality and healing have this fantasied end state as a targeted objective, the heart is endless and grief might become a companion for the duration of a life, a kindred traveler into the depths, revealing light the nongrieving state could never contain. For me, it is not so much a process as a nonlinear, unfolding partner. It moves not by way of a straight line but by that of circle and spiral.
This image of the spiral and sense of an unfolding process circling the material of our lives is a rich imaginative lens through which to vision the unique journey we are on. At times, it can be incredibly frustrating and repetitive because we spin around the same themes without it seeming like there is much movement. At other times, we encounter some crack where the light breaks in; what seemed at first glance a mere repetition is somehow different, revealing a piece of the mystery we couldn’t quite see at an earlier time. The alchemists called this spiral the circulatio, or rotatio, a sacred process involving touching and retouching the heart, the material of our lives. We circle or rotate around the essential themes unique to us that form the prima materia of our own personal opus. From an alchemical perspective, although we might not appear to be making any progress and might seem stuck, appearances can be deceiving.
Even if we no longer grieve the sense of a personal loss, we might be asked by forces larger than ourselves to grieve for the ancestors, the ones yet to come, and the earth and her creatures. At some point, perhaps we can no longer discern between our own grief and that of a galaxy being born and dying. Grieving is not only personal but cultural, historical, and archetypal. As it humbles and purifies, it opens a portal into the mystery.
Letting Go of Letting Go
In some contemporary teachings, we are frequently asked to “let go” of difficult states of mind that we do not like, with the underlying assumption that they stand in the way of healing and self-realization, as obstacles on the path. “Letting go” has become the battle cry of much personal development work, especially as applied to psychic material deemed invalid by a more transcendent orientation to “growth” and upward movement (we usually associate “growing” with up, not down into the shadow, body, and depths). Up and out the material goes, to some other dimension, place, realm, or abode where we’re safe from feeling, from further vulnerability, and from our hearts breaking, to a place of “mastery” and power and manifesting all the things we (think we) want and need to make us happy. It’s understandable, really. It’s an alluring promise.
Practitioners of this orientation, in ways that can be subtle and hidden under the surface, argue that anger is bad, confusion is a sign we’ve failed, fear is the “opposite” of love, and so forth. Even some ancient wisdom teachings tell us that anger is a stain on who we are and that we need to eliminate it; it is in and of itself the cause of our suffering and struggle. But anger is not the problem; what we do with the anger is the (potential) problem. If we have a theoretical view that anger “is” bad, how are we likely to respond when it inevitably comes up in our lives, in our own experience, and in those around us? We all know the tragic consequences of a culture that represses anger; that has pathologized rage; that is unable to tolerate, contain, and skillfully tend to the ordinary waves of human aggression—not to mention has forgotten how to mine anger’s healthy expression, for example, in setting effective boundaries, protecting our own integrity, and standing up for ourselves (and others) in the face of psychological, emotional, or physical abuse and neglect. We need only look around at the tragedy of mass school shootings or other senseless violence to see how our world is calling out for an embodied, mature, and authentic relationship to the natural experience of anger.
Certain feelings and states are conceived as being of a “low vibration” that keeps us trapped in some darkened dimension of experience, cut off from the great ascension that awaits all beings. “Just snap out of it, get out of that low vibration, it’s just your ‘ego.’” The idea behind the scenes seems to be that after we are enlightened, fear will be replaced by love, jealousy by openness, and heartbreak by joy. The grand spiritual replacement project marches on. But where is all this leading?
As a result of this aggressive campaign against various unwanted bands of the emotional spectrum, an array of valid (and intelligent) energies, messengers, and figures get pushed further into the shadow where they will eventually leak out, usually in ways that extend suffering for ourselves and others. This leaking happens at personal, cultural, and collective levels, and if we continue to deny, repress, or stuff our emotional experience, it will only gain power in the unconscious.
The alchemists were always on the lookout for and warning against a “leaky vessel,” meaning that critical aspects of the material seeped out of the container in which they were working. Rather than prematurely “letting go” of this material—an understandable position given the difficulty in staying with, working through, and metabolizing it—an alternative invitation is to cultivate a conscious relationship with it so that we do not inadvertently project it onto others and into the world in a way that generates more struggle, confusion, violence, and pain. For as the relational analysts have discovered, that which we are not able to access, articulate, contain, and work through, we will inevitably evoke in others, enact within the interactional field, locate outside of ourselves, or discover within our own bodies.
As with all medicines and approaches, there is wisdom in letting go (just as there is wisdom in “staying in the present moment,” “forgiving those who have harmed us,” and “accepting reality the way it is”); however, we must go slowly and not oversimplify things, which leads to a generalized, abstract relationship with these teachings that is secondhand and not sensitive enough to our lived, unique experience.
Stepping Off the Battlefield
As with all spiritual beliefs and practices, the act of “letting go” can serve wisdom, and it can also serve distraction and avoidance. Through experimentation and intuition, we must make these subtle discernments in the fire of our own direct experience. It is important to explore our motivation to engage certain forms of inner work, including the intention to “let go” of some aspect of our inner experience. What it would mean to slow down and to “let go” of an intense emotion, a painful memory, an old trauma, or a current self-image? Where would it go? What would we gain? What would replace it? What would all this accomplish? What are we actually talking about?
To be clear, I’m not suggesting that we jettison the concept of “letting go” but bring it into the fire of our inquiry, where we can allow its subtle qualities and essences to clarify. In my clinical work I have seen how the project of “letting go” can be yet another manifestation of unconscious self-aggression and abandonment of parts of ourselves not acceptable in our families of origin or to our developing personas. In this sense, the demand that we “let certain experiences go” is merely a painful reenactment of the way important figures reacted to our emotional world at an earlier time in our developmental history: “Just get over it. Snap out of it. Stop crying. We’ve given you everything, so stop being so sad. Don’t you dare get angry with me. Stop being such a baby. When will you be like [fill in best friend’s name here]? S/he would never do that. How could you let me down again? Stop being so scared! Be grateful for what you have and stop complaining!” Any of that sound familiar?
Of course, in the contemporary self-help world, the language is usually much more spiritual, but often the underlying prescription is the same—dissolve your fear, replace it with love; forgive everyone and let that wash away your anger; don’t be heartbroken because we’re all one anyway; get out of your ego and into your higher self; get out of that “low vibration” and lame third-dimensional orientation—ascend now into the fourth, fifth, or sixth, and so forth. Again, it’s not to s
ay there is no truth underlying these concepts; however, it is the shadow side which is often left out. We must illuminate and integrate the shadow into our inquiry if what we want is a full-spectrum, embodied, fully human relationship with these ideas and realizations.
By approaching psychic experience and aspects of our emotional, mental, physical, and spiritual bodies through the lens of “letting go,” we can subtly and unconsciously reinforce the neural pathways of previous empathic failure and the circuity of shame, in which we end up attacking our own vulnerability in ways remarkably similar to the way it was met when we were younger. This is not to say that all forms and approaches to “letting go” are oriented in this psychic patterning but only an invitation, as always, into deeper levels of discernment. It’s an invitation to clarify our intention for wanting or needing to “let something go,” what that would actually mean in our experience, and how we think it would benefit us to do so. Before we engage in any practice, including that of “letting go,” let us do so from a grounded and illuminated place.
Rather than “letting go” of difficult emotions, at times we are invited to step off the battlefield and turn back toward them, curious about why these visitors have come, what messages they might have for us, as we begin to relate to our internal world as a retinue of allies come to guide us into the depths. We are never going to unearth the intimacy, connection, and freedom for which we yearn as long as we are subtly at war with parts of ourselves, deeming them invalid and acting to purge them from the larger field of awareness that we are. We must discover for ourselves whether their mere presence or our abandonment and rejection of them is the root cause of our suffering and struggle.
Let us rest together as we come to the end of this chapter and allow a few moments to integrate the journey we’ve been on. As we turn toward that alive middle territory in-between the extremes and provide sanctuary and safe passage for our grief, shame, and the entire landscape of feeling to return to its home in the heart, we begin to care for ourselves in a new way, rooted in curiosity, compassion, and a fiery love of the truth. As our inquiry deepens, our confidence continues to build, and that no matter what is happening in our lives, we can trust in our capacity to meet what is there with newfound levels of presence and kindness and respond in more and more skillful ways.
4
A Sacred Deflation
Working with the Inevitable Experiences of Uncertainty, Disappointment, and Loss
In this chapter, we’ll explore the common themes of disappointment and loss, which on the surface can appear formidable obstacles in our path, seeming to obscure the peace and joy we yearn for, serving as daunting impediments to our deepest longing. As always, however, we must go into the depths and seek illumination and renewed vision, for in the core of these experiences is intelligence and guidance, even unexpected grace, that can be mined only in their center. We don’t usually associate the word “deflation” with something positive in our lives; however, as we deepen our capacity to befriend ourselves and our experience and infuse it with more penetrating levels of curiosity, awareness, and compassion, we might come to experience deflation as an ally as we unearth its unexpected wisdom.
It’s natural to have a bias for the experience of “success” over “failure,” whatever those ideas have come to mean for us. But let us be conscious of this predisposition and not fall into fragmentation. Whether in the outer world of accomplishments or in the inner world of collecting experiences, learning to fail consciously opens us to the full spectrum. There are secret jewels in failure not accessible by way of success, but we must cleanse our perception to mine the gold hidden there. Inside the contraries of success and failure is a doorway, a parting of the veil, revealing an unknown reality of newfound creativity. Although it is tempting to remain on one side of the door—or the other—the invitation, as we’ve been exploring together, is into the alive, yet not fully known middle territory, which will require an inevitable confrontation and integration of the opposing energies so that a new, third way can reveal itself.
We live in a world that has lost contact with the evolutionary potential of conscious dissolution, deflation, and the inevitable disappointment we each face as we journey along the way. These experiences are not mistakes or errors to be corrected, cured, or fixed, for they are too holy for that. The art of allowing things to fall apart and honoring the death aspect of the death-rebirth journey is one known by alchemists, mystics, and poets but is not popular in a culture obsessed with persona and happiness at all costs and with the fantasy of invulnerability, untouchability, and consistent feelings of joy and peace.
The alchemists referred to this stage of the psyche as the nigredo, or blackened state. Despite the possibility of future stages of light, transmutation, white, yellow, and red (leading up to the discovery of the mysterious philosopher’s stone), the nigredo is pure on its own. It has its own interiority, depth, and meaning, bearing messages, gifts, and visions not available in lighter and brighter stages. Its value is found in its own subjective core, not merely in its function as the preparatory phase for greater (whiter) things to come. In religious language, the nigredo is the dark night of the soul, the creative potential of the blackness and separation, which is painful and purifying as it removes or putrefies (putrefactio) what has come to make way for the new to emerge. It would be uncommon in our conventional world to view the process of putrefaction as holy, even sacred, but it comes as an expression of the divine, or the beloved, as darkened midwife to the deep interior.
This cyclical activity is the essence of creativity and is nonnegotiable in human experience as well as in the natural world, a symbol and archetypal image of the energy (love) that keeps the stars from falling out of the sky. This process reveals that the old must be recycled, decomposed, and turned into fertilizer to produce the soil required for the new to take birth. The qualities of this soil are the same qualities that form the cells of the human heart, the nature of which we must discover in our own unique ways. We can try to fight against this organic movement, which we often do, abandoning the energies of reorganization in hopes of keeping the old forms alive. But as many have discovered—in a way both heartbreaking and purifyingly humbling—this battle will be lost. It’s a holy loss, though, as the consequences of denying the creative activity of dissolution are a life of partiality and flatness and a heart that longs (endlessly) for life.
If we will not consciously carry the energies of failure, deflation, and disappointment, they remain in seed form in the shadow and will erupt, usually in unskillful ways that lead to chaotic experiences for ourselves and others. This is true not only for individuals but also for couples, families, groups, cultures, societies, and countries. The wide-ranging consequences of how this material is tended is why many consider shadow work not only necessary for one’s own psychological and spiritual growth but also an ethical responsibility to the world and life everywhere. (I’ll speak more about the shadow in chapter 8.)
Through our willingness to contain, hold, and care for the entirety of what we are, we will know the reality of the sacred world. The invitation, as always, is not to something partial but to full participation in success, to full participation in failure, and to knowing the ineffable third dimension we experience in the core of the unresolvable dance between these seemingly contradictory poles of experience. Out of this experiential knowing we naturally surround the figures and energies of our unlived lives with our presence, hold them and provide sanctuary for their conscious integration, dissolving the trance of partiality and revealing essence.
It is not easy to navigate and play in these relational fields until our perception is cleansed because the dream is thick and deeply embedded. Fortunately, as I will continue to repeat, this work requires only one moment, this one, and cannot be completed in the past or future. Only now. No matter what is happening in the inner and outer landscape, we can all begin right now. And now. And now. And even now.
Creative Dissolution
In the face of this dissolution, the question isn’t so much how we can most quickly facilitate rebirth but to what degree we will participate in the death when it appears. Psychological death, or spiritual death, is not just a preliminary process in which we engage so that we can put it behind us and get on to birth. It is a valid, honorable, holy unfolding in its own right, with its own interiority, dimensionality, and intelligence, as the alchemists remind us through their conceptualization and experience of the nigredo. It is not just a way station from which the new is launched but a container, catalyst, and vessel of insight, perspective, and revelation that can never be found within the state of birth. It is perfectly natural to trust that rebirth will occur, but let us do so while staying embodied during the death aspect of the journey, the dissolving of form, which carries its own sacredness and integrity.
In times of transition, our tendency is to rush to rebirth, quickly back into the known, in an urgent attempt to cure, maintain, or heal that which is dying, that which longs to transform. However, death does not need to be cured or healed but lived and touched and experienced fully. It is natural to resist falling apart and do what we can to put it all back together. It’s so human, really. But it is only from the womb of death—attuned to consciously—that rebirth can emerge. Inside death are the raw materials for new life, and any birth that occurs without tending to the creativity buried within the dissolution will be partial.
