I am beginning to realise that living a spiritual life is a question of finding a very fine balance, like walking a tightrope, only more difficult because the rope to be walked is not visible. In fact it is not even manufactured. That you have to do yourself as you go along. And the raw material for it is each new day’s events, relationships and challenges. It is very easy, and fatal, to take one grand attitude, say for example the Ignatian agere contra. From then on you choose the least pleasant, or the most disagreeable option every time. That is taking a sledgehammer to kill the very subtle and universally pervasive working of the self and it is very inflexible. The gross instincts – fine, these you can clobber, but they are not the problem. They are so obvious that no self respecting novice would tolerate them. The self is so clever, sly and elusive that it is very good at subverting the weapons used against it. So before the unsophisticated Ignatian realises it his suffering (though greatly expanded) ego is taking a great deal of masochistic pride in denying itself everything remotely pleasurable.
Living the spiritual life intelligently requires understanding. This does not come easily. It comes haltingly and retrospectively and is always imperfect. The important thing is to be aware of this, to be resigned to the darkness and always prepared to make revisions. One thing that is certain is that you will not be able to keep to the tightrope. You will make mistakes and fall off, perhaps again and again. You will feel ashamed and disheartened and wonder whether or not this is not all a waste of time and you are getting nowhere. You just have to pick your self up, brush the mud and the dirt off and get back on the tightrope again. And then there are the distractions. These are the thoughts, feelings and ideas – like colourful and attractive skateboards, they come out of nowhere – immensely appealing and attractive, and it is so easy just to step onto one and be carried away from the tiresome inching forward into the darkness. The most dangerous are those labelled ‘Important’, or ‘Significant Insight’, or ‘BRILLIANT IDEA’. These are almost irresistible because they give the impression that they will get you where you want to go more quickly and being so brightly illuminated they are far more attractive than the darkness. Then there are the armchairs at regular intervals. These invite you to step off and sink into them to relax and rest, perhaps to sleep, or read a book, or watch TV. This option is especially attractive when boredom descends. That can take all the colour and interest out of the day, laying over everything like a pall, weighing you down with lassitude and ennui.
You begin to wonder what is the point of all this. Prayer, meditation and the spiritual life do not seem to be getting you anywhere. After all Pelagianism, in both its full- and half-blown varieties, does not work, according to orthodox teaching. Only God can divinise us. So why not more of a helping hand from God, why the need for such prolonged and thankless efforts? There have been times in the past when the going was easy, when the air was filled with the presence of God and all of life was translucent. Virtue, and the generosity that went with it, was not an imposition, or a burden. It was an easy melody that one danced to. Those times are now a memory. So why has the grace appeared to dry up? Why has God hidden himself? The only reason I can think of is that it is a process of growth. Do you want to remain in the bright sunshine of childhood, but remain a child, or do you want to grow and become what it is in you to be?
If, as St. Athanasius says, God became man so that man might become God, that becoming is going to involve a transformation, more than a transformation – more than a metamorphosis. It is going to involve a death, perhaps many deaths, and a resurrection. So it is not just a question of change and growth. It is far more than that. The main obstacle in all of this is the self. The last thing the self wants is death. It cannot imagine a beyond-death. Oh, it can imagine death of the body, but then the self is not the body. It can imagine a disembodied existence. It can imagine union with God. It has, perhaps, had experience of a union with all of nature, even with God. But it cannot imagine a beyond-its-own-annihilation. The self clings to existence. The self and existence are synonymous. No self, no existence. So whatever the self desires, whatever it aspires to, no matter how high-minded and altruistic, however generous and self-giving, it does it from within its own, self-inclusive perspective. And that is the problem because, although the self is not the still-point, not the centre of gravity about which everything turns, in its own experience it is. So, until the self is removed from the centre reality will not be seen for what it is.
This is what the darkness is all about. There is nothing of self in it. There is no perspective from which to see because there is nothing to be seen. There is nothing of interest, nothing self-satisfying. Within the darkness is the Void. The self is terrified of the Void because there is nothing to cling to, no support of any kind. One is suspended in a vast, empty darkness. There is no up, or down; no before, or after; no past, or future. This is the dark night of pure faith. It is beyond the verge of the empirical world. This is the terrible place where God is encountered. Terribilis est locus iste. [Gen 28:17]