The Perils of the Inner Life
dangers in the deep
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In a general sense, and not precisely because calendars and the reckoning of time changes over the centuries, as does the nomenclature and framework of the season’s holy days, we are approximately halfway between Christmas and Easter, Yule and Ostara, the winter solstice and the spring equinox, the extreme of darkness, and the equilibrium of harmony between dark and light, night and day that is always sought but manifests only briefly, if regularly, during the year.
This is the hardest part of winter. The celebrations of light have now passed, and we remain cold and dark. Our candles were blessed at Candlemas, but that seems of little comfort. A thread of promise hinted at in the pale, weak February sunlight and the secret stirrings in nature can only be perceived if we practice attuning our higher senses to it. A faint hope that there even is hope is all we have to buoy our spirits in the drab of late winter.
This specific kind of late winter experience, how it feels, looks, and colors our perceptions, is an apt metaphor for particular seasons of life and levels in the spiritual journey of our soul’s inner life.
The spiritual journey or the unfolding of your inner life is like a staircase or a ladder. Your here-and-now life, incarnate in material existence, is like a broad highway running horizontally along the axis of time. In your body, you can only travel in one direction, forward into the unknown future. In your inner mind of memory, you can travel to the past. With the visionary capacity of your imagination, you can peer forward. Those can be pretty convincing but are often polluted with our ego’s desires. They are interesting and sometimes helpful but not necessarily to be trusted without deep reflection and thorough testing.
The ladder or staircase of the spiritual or inner life rises vertically through what has sometimes been called the spheres, realms, or levels of ascent and descent. We love ascending to heights, but the ladder takes us both ways. For example, the Merkavah Mystics of old perceived the spiritual journey as a descent rather than an ascent to the heavens. Persephone perhaps best exemplifies the spiritual journey as both descent and ascent.
Carl Jung gave us another direction to consider: the journey inward to the Soul and the Self, to the inner life where the ladder and the broad highway intersect. The labyrinth is a good visual for this concept. When you walk the labyrinth, you leave the outer world of sense perceptions and travel deeper and deeper into yourself. The way is winding with backtracking and turning, causing disorientation. Yet, you can never get lost as the path inevitably leads you into the center, where many travelers have encountered God before embarking on the arduous journey back to the outer world.
Late winter feels like the moment in the year when deep reflection and inner journey work call to the soul. This quality of work is supported and perhaps even necessary before we can, in any meaningful way, embrace the new season of spring, resurrection, and all it symbolizes.
Some of us are drawn to the deep seas within our being. Something about the visually impenetrable dark waters and the roiling, undulating surface speaks to us of mystery, hidden treasure, sunken ships, and civilizations lost to a great deluge long ago. It's a world, a realm, that creeps into our inner ear as a siren song that calls us ever deeper by its alluring power. We recognize its danger but cannot resist it.
We arrive in the deep in various ways. Once we find ourselves there, we go about our work, rooting out long-held traumas and misaligned beliefs. We seek old wounds and begin repairs. We cast off old selves and layers of self that weigh us down and keep us from transforming into our higher potentials. We dig through the layers under the immense pressure of the waters above us, searching for what is Real.
If we diligently continue to ply our trade, working on the Soul and the Self, chipping and chiseling away, repairing and reforming, sanding and smoothing, we begin to behold wonders in the deep. The mysterious light of the Divine begins to show itself.
You have a spiritual awakening. Perhaps it is your first or one of the many waves of spiritual awakenings that sweep over us throughout our lives.
This is good. We love this. We understand things we didn't before. We feel wrapped in Divine love. We progress in healing, feeling gratitude, and being kind and compassionate. We know we’re on the right track. We begin and continue with beneficial spiritual practices. The sun shines brighter; the grass is greener. We’re pleased with ourselves and what we’re accomplishing.
But then it hits.
A stormy wind arises in our lives. The waters of our inner depths are tossed to the heights and come crashing down. Great gallons of salty seawater thrust us back into the depths. Our hearts melt in fear as we perceive the peril we are in. Thrown completely off balance, we stagger and stumble. We don’t know what to do. We are at our wits’ end. Will the storm ever end? Will we ever set foot on land and walk in the sunlight again?
Once we immerse ourselves in the ocean of our inner life, we begin a lifelong process of descending and ascending. The work is never done. As we progress, the dangers become more extraordinary, but the rewards are more sublime and powerful.
The downs and ups, the ins and outs, go on repeatedly like the turning of the year's wheel.
The winter solstice marks the end of one long cycle of light and blessing. The darkness closes in and threatens to overwhelm us. Then, like a doomsday clock stopped at the eleventh hour, there is a rebirth. The light of the sun against all indications regains its footing and begins to expand again. A spiritual awakening opens the space for a Divine Child to be born in the world and your soul. There are feasting days and festivals of light to help push away the darkness that had previously caused incursions of evil into the world.
Eventually, the high spirits and joyful feelings of awakening wear off, and while the darkness is slowly ebbing away, the world is still cold and submerged beneath winter rains or blankets of snow. Everything in nature is pulled down once again into the depths of winter. Whatever hope may have arisen on a warm winter day sinks back to the dark depths. The dreary frozen days and nights drag on. In the old days, food ran short, and disease claimed lives. There was real peril. We have less of that now, but the wild animals must still navigate winter's dangerous depths. Plants and trees, too.
The dangerous crash after a spiritual awakening is real. But it is also part of a well-established pattern we observe in nature and ourselves.
The truth is there is no escaping the dangers of the depths in the inner life once you’ve answered the inward call and begun the journey. The first time you awaken and then experience crashing waves and a great undertow pulling you back down is perhaps the worst. Our human inclination is to curse the whole damn process and retreat to our former self. We may even manage that for a while, but it won’t be forever. The journey must continue just as the seasons must turn.
Once pulled back down to the depths, we face dangers. They come in many forms. They are dragons and sea monsters meant to frighten, paralyze, and make us question our path. They seek to deceive. They are especially good at feeding the ego and creating all kinds of narratives that cast us as victims, saviors, or heroes. Better, we should allow our inner self to be a Holy Fool and call upon the One above all things who has authority in all realms, inner and outer, above and below, past and future.
The Holy Fool has mastered humility (or at least is cultivating that path). When the situation is most distressing, the confusion is the greatest, and the necessity of rescue is the most pressing, the Holy Fool sends a cry upwards. From above, the storm is stilled with a whisper, and the waves of the sea are quieted.
The Soul and the Self are glad for the calm and the light as they are steered into the safe harbor they were always destined for. There was never any actual danger of them not finding their way there, just as there is no real danger of getting lost in a labyrinth or that spring will not follow winter, no matter how bitter the weather.
Just as the last blasts of winter, though fierce and deadly, are inevitably tamed, the warmth of spring steers the earth into the haven of a new season, and the soul finds its way to the light once more.
Nature seems to ascend and descend into the zenith of enlightenment in high summer and the depths of dark despair in winter more easily than our inner consciousness can withstand its corresponding spiritual journey of ascent and descent. Nature, of course, is ordained for such a seasonal existence. Even the tropics, while escaping wintery blasts, cope with deadly monsoons and wild cyclones.
Our souls, made in the image of the Divine, are endowed with thought, will, heart, consciousness, choice, agency, and authority, which births a far more complex relationship among our inner being, the physical world, and the spiritual realms. Navigating our inner world becomes a labyrinthine journey fraught with challenges we don’t readily accept or endure as Nature does. We notice the challenges, we fight them, and we analyze them. Our keen minds dissect them; we weigh their impact. We seek their meaning, contemplate their purpose, and hack away at the distortions and misperceptions our ego casts on them.
Sometimes, it is winter in our inner lives; sometimes, it is spring. These seasonal feelings can come upon us regardless of the calendar month. However, I have found a real and natural relationship between the outer and the inner. It should be no surprise to find your inner life fraught with “the storms of winter” and a loss of hope just now in the year when the promise of light and spring has been stirred, but the reality of February still roars around you. What could be more natural or instructive than to see your inner experiences played out in the world around you or to feel the spiritual truths in Nature affecting your inner being? Nature is a masterful teacher, wise and patient, happy to repeat her lessons and present them to you year after year.
The good news is that spring is coming, bringing a fresh sense of enlightenment. But spring is not here yet, and the last few weeks of winter will be the most significant test put upon us when hope is at its lowest ebb, and there is the greatest longing. Can we lean into this uncomfortable time?
We are always guided by the wisdom of Nature and the loving hand of the Divine One, who is never far from us, making sure we move through the storm and even stilling the storm for us. We will make it to the harbor of spring in the woods and fields and in our inner lives, too.
Our inner lives and our spiritual journeys are unique to each of us. We all travel in different ways and ascend and descend at various times and for personal reasons. I desire that you be guided by loving intentions and kept safe as you navigate your storms, that the storms will be stilled, and that safe harbors will receive you.
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When I was quite young I chose to live this inner life. I didn’t realize it at the time but now at 75 I see my choices clearly. I’ve come to realize the inner “me” is the authentic me even though outwardly I may appear otherwise. And internally February is like being 75. I’ve done this trip sooo many times! Will spring even come this time?!! But walking my doggie in the cold rain I cannot miss tiny bright green sprouts earnestly looking for light.
I take comfort in this writing of yours as it reminds me to bear witness to the full cycle and not just the bright flowering part. Thank you!!
Thank you Jan! This really resonates with me on many levels. In a season of False Springs and extreme cold my hope is still high and I know in my heart that the real Spring is coming soon. I see it in the tiniest of signs around me. Nature knows her job and the Divine is still very much present!