Anxiety about meaninglessness
comes from the loss of an ultimate concern
a spiritual center, an answer to the question
of the meaning of existence, a meaning
which gives meaning to all meanings.
The purpose of the soul is pure being
not doing this specific thing or that.
The soul is thus a master of
non-addiction/non-grasping/non-clinging
to anything – pure non-attachment.
The goal of the spiritual life
is not to get rid of shadow
but to include and integrate it.
Without shadow, we would be flat and dull –
shadow gives us personality/depth/substance.
Our supposed inner adversary – our shadow
which we want to destroy – is our friend
when it points out our errors to us.
If the soul stops feeding
on the pleasure of the senses
it enters a “dark night of the senses”
that eventually leads to a “dark night of the soul”
that depends on faith alone.
These dark nights of sense and soul are voids
that paradoxically give light.
Religious faith is forever a struggle
between darkness and light/good and evil
pastoral and prophetic.
Institutions are always pastoral –
baptizing shared values/giving comfort and stability/
resisting change.
But prophets agitate for change
to get people out of their comfortable pews
thus institutions forever resist prophets.
Poets/artists/mystics/prophets
are often lonely creative individuals
because they do not fit in a competitive society
that spends all its energy on ephemerals.
They need powerful married love leading to Divine Love
which sheds shadow by its shining light.
Intelligent Christian Spirituality 