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The ABYSS

The ABYSS. The eye begins to see, I meet my shadow in the deepening shade; I hear my echo in the echoing wood-- A lord of nature weeping to a tree, I live between the heron and the wren, Beasts of the hill and serpents of the den.

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The ABYSS

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  1. The ABYSS

  2. The eye begins to see,I meet my shadow in the deepening shade;I hear my echo in the echoing wood--A lord of nature weeping to a tree,I live between the heron and the wren,Beasts of the hill and serpents of the den. What's madness but nobility of soulAt odds with circumstance? The day's on fire!I know the purity of pure despair,My shadow pinned against a sweating wall,That place among the rocks--is it a cave,Or winding path? The edge is what I have. A steady storm of correspondences!A night flowing with birds, a ragged moon,And in broad day the midnight come again!A man goes far to find out what he is--Death of the self in a long, tearless night,All natural shapes blazing unnatural light. Dark, dark my light, and darker my desire.My soul, like some heat-maddened summer fly,Keeps buzzing at the sill. Which I is I?A fallen man, I climb out of my fear. The mind enters itself, and God the mind,And one is One, free in the tearing wind. The mind enters itself, and God the mind,And one is One, free in the tearing wind. In a Dark Time...

  3. The Abyss • The Journey of the addict takes her/him into the bottom of an abyss where we surrender and begin the ways of transformation or we may instead begin to rot in hellish proportions • In the abyss we look straight in the face of our humiliation and demise and here is the place of asking for support • We are fearful of the abyss and yet fascinated at the same time • Is this not the impetus for addiction itself?

  4. The Myth and Legend of the Abyss • Creative chaos • No-thingness • Other side of being • The Whole • Collective Unconscious • Blue Dragon Cave

  5. Creative Chaos • Open to authenticity • Our very being is to question what it means to be - this is what our addictions are asking of us (Heidegger) • If we must enter the chaos to create ourselves (to rediscover) we must be prepared to accept discomfort, anxiety, restlessness, frustration, boredom, loneliness, fear, panic, depression, tears, laughter, hunger, desire, brooding, silence, and finally the expression of a new being • Most the above experiences are what we are trying to avoid in our addiction - paradoxically - addiction can manifest all of the above. • We then may ask ourselves • Who is experiencing these modes of “being”?

  6. Inside the Abyss • Once inside the abyss he / she must find the meaning time there and a way to return • It can be fraught with anxiety and panic, but their is work to be done there; work me must do ourselves. • In our addictions the abyss is our bottom • But as opposed to escaping (what happens in addiction) we are held “there” and learn something from it and in our return to the world we must not forget what was learned their.

  7. The Abyss of Dwelling • Rilke says this of the abyss... • But this very abyss is full of the darkness of God, and where one experiences it, let him climb down and howl in it (that is more necessary to cross over it). Only to him for whom the abyss too has been a dwelling place do the heavens before him turn about and everything deeply and profoundly of this world that the Church embezzled for the Beyond, comes back...

  8. Nietzsche Reporting on the Abyss • The creative process demands a descent into darkness in order to bring something new into being • The addict has unconsciously been hung on the peg of humiliation and trembled in terror before the chaos in (her/his soul) this is the gift of the abyss • We need to burn the controller of rational thought and this is found in the abyss of “fertile disorder” (pg. 221)

  9. In the Abyss we Sacrifice the Ego • In our addiction we praise the ego and run side by side with the “killer” • Our search takes us initially to the divine “seizing” the headlong rush of feelings - eventually though - this rush ends with the futility and knowledge that the ego cannot offer up a “true god” • Instead we brought face to face with the a fathomless abyss (the bottom maybe in addiction) and our if the ego is sacrifice we may find something unexpected their

  10. Moment of Surrender

  11. Rilkean’s Conclusions and Engendering the Dark Night of the Soul • Falling back on Basic Trust • Leap of faith • We have no reason to harbor any mistrust against our world, for it is not against us. If it has terrors, they are our terrors; if it has abysses, these abysses belong to us; if there are dangers, we must try to love them. And if only we arrange our life in accordance with the principle which tells us that we must always trust in the difficult, then what now appears to us as the most alien will become our most intimate and trusted experience.

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