Dark Night of the Souls

Dark Night of the Soul

Such a dark night
Fear of the tides and ever presence of the engulfing whirlpools
How could they ever know our state of being, our feeling
Those carefree, easygoers on the shoreline

This verse from Divan of Hafez is what filled my mind repeating when my good friend was telling me about his state of depression during a traumatic physical illness. He was further worried:

"why the medicine my doctor gives me is not relieving me from the depression?"

I listened to him with great interest, not only because he was a dear friend , but also because of the sense of closeness I felt with him and his state of chaos, remembering that not too long ago, I had spent six agonizing months in the

"Dark Night of My Soul"

All I could tell this dear friend was TO LISTEN. Listen to the message trying to break through the thick wall we all create around ourselves. Listen to the cries of his tired soul searching for a new dimension to leap into. Listen to the advice of the "Tavern Keeper" when he counsels

"With Wine, with Red Wine your prayer carpet dye".

The Wine, the Red Wine of Divine, the age old cure-all medicine of our souls is what his soul is asking for. To wash away the old colors of all past experiences, past expectations, and barriers, and dye his soul with the Happy Red color of the old Wine. To let his body experience a new beginning. To let his body and soul be soaked and healed in the Red Wine of Divine. I told him. I told him knowing that he may listen to me, but he can not hear me, at least not yet. He could not hear because he had just started his journey into the Dark Night of his Soul, and that was just wonderful. Not because I wished him any ill, to the contrary, because I loved this friend so dearly, and because I knew his cure, no actually his eternal healing started with the step into his Dark Night. This long night of chaos, confusing, and feeling of being lost is where one realizes what a stormy water he is treading, and how lost he can get without ever affecting a single principal of this universe. He realizes how insignificant one is in the whole scheme of things, and how powerless he is in trying to change what he sees.

Now, if one is "lucky" !!, he also realizes regardless of what everyone else says, or what everyone else does, we bring our own Dark Night to an end not by what we do, but by what we don't do. We can get to the Morning of Peaceful Light by a total and complete surrender, or as Hafez puts it: Presence, if you desire be Present, not Lost Life, if you desire in Life, not just in the World In another word, if one can not cast the world aside, at least one should abandon it from the realm of one's soul. With wishes for a Dark Night and the most Peaceful Morning Light for all.

F Tony Hosseini