Mishle 28:21 Orthodox Jewish Bible (Proverbs)

What I've been trippin' on today:

Ask a lawyer what "thou shalt not lie" means. Good luck getting a straight answer out of anyone ensconced in the system regarding legal matters and personal consequences. This pertains to cops, judges, jurors, those arrested or those who might be arrested, etc. Almost everybody lies these days, it seems, like ‘CYA’ is a sacred duty or something.

Ironically, everybody believes everybody lies, so everybody who loves politics spins their wheels in a pig trough and sprays the fecal (lie) matter at people they deem as an enemy of some variety or other (Marxist/racist or whatever). Smudge, Don’t Grudge’ is a useful Slogan.

OK, back to the issue. Also, ask a lawyer what "Love your enemy" means or what the Sermon on the Mount means. From the looks of things these days, the media that protects the system swine, put money above everything. FOLLOW THE MONEY is hoe (how) people supposedly get to the bottom of corruption but rarely follow the truth when there's no profit ratio in it (Prophet Ratio...lol).

““To show partiality is not tov; for a piece of lechem that gever will transgress.””

— Quote Source: Mishle 28:21 Orthodox Jewish Bible

Money follows power and vice-versa. Jimi Hendrix talked about the power of love versus the love of power. So have a great many people through the millennia taught love and forgiveness. Respecters of Persons will sell out their principles in a heartbeat. Examples: Lying to convict a liar, hating to destroy a hater, and many other types of hypocrites abound.

There are many great people out there and probably many of the hypocrites actually mean well. But what about the people who are afraid to speak up or ‘gave up trying’ a long time ago because it's just not worth it to fight fighters. Some are accused of being weak when they say, “Goodbye, cruel world.” Some people are too gentle to live among The Bad Wolves.

Kid Rock said to ‘get in the pit and try to love someone’. Most people won't even lift a finger or put down the remote long enough to read a POV that differs from their own. The USA is pathetic in this way. Lazy moralizers and rabid adrenalin junkie/haters are guarding the henhouse. But there is hope. We can get out of the mess we got ourselves into, but Einstein said it can’t be done with the same mind that got USD there. Spiritual Experiences happen through humility, but pride precedes the fall.

Painting the Future (one of my favorite movies)

https://youtu.be/Y8QwXZh93_M

4/15/2016 Submission to OWN.

I wrote the following Submission on April 15, 2016, for OWN. The response? Crickets. I also reached out from time to time since 92 or so, to OWN. I have also reached out to KTIS and other Christian organizations, usually to no avail. I’m on God’s Path and can’t complain about the quality of my life or Sacred Path in the slightest. People that never give up occasionally get traction, so we’ll see where it goes.

Here’s the Submission I sent to OWN (I would do a better job if I reached out again, but I actually don’t trust OWN anymore. They seem to have been swallowed up by big media and the money therein is not to be shared with the likes of me, apparently:

”My last crime was robbing a store (2nd Degree Robbery with a knife) in June 1985. My other major offense (August 1977) was stealing a car after stealing from a store, resulting in my hitting a pedestrian and running over her baby in a stroller, killing him. I knew the police were looking for me (but not in visual pursuit) and I certainly wanted to get away before being found. I was also under the influence of alcohol. I plead guilty to Manslaughter with culpable negligence. Other crimes, both as an adult and as a minor, were Unauthorized Use of a Motor Vehicle. I now speak for MADD to stop alcohol-impaired driving. I also talk to a wide variety of offenders to keep them from making decisions that might harm them or others. I also talk about forgiving oneself, no easy task, but accomplished in great part (sometimes I struggle, but I no longer am suicidal).

I work for a company helping offenders on probation to secure employment or housing. Ironically, I am myself limited to low-paying positions, and find myself living paycheck to paycheck. I'm 59 and if I don't turn it around, I will die in poverty and have nothing in this world to show. I feel my emotional & spiritual life is a success in many ways, but as the saying goes, if it took a nickel to get around the world, I couldn't get around the block. I have been speaking publicly for 25-years and hope to make a living from speaking, but no one wants to pay me. They are happy to take my services for free and I am glad to help, but I feel devalued & disrespected.

As for family, it is just a word. I have siblings and relatives but I feel little connection to them, as I was in foster care, group homes, and pretty much "State Raised". I consider AA my family, but I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings by saying that in front of relatives.

I am working on writing books but get depressed with every contact of judgment and rejection by others. I feel trapped by my emotions and reactions to what others think of me.

I am now friends with Sherrie, the mother of the child I killed, as she has forgiven me. It took years for her to get there and maybe would have never done so, were it not for her daughter driving under the influence and crashing, causing minor injuries to others. Sherrie realized her daughter could have killed someone and she reevaluated her lack of feelings of forgiveness and reached out to me.”

Boundaries in Relationships (recovery based) and the Gifts of Criticism

The things that BEST helped my personal life of alcoholic recovery (and speeches about DWI’s wherein the central focus is in encouraging sober driving, forgiveness, and love) were the Gifts of Criticism for which I will be ever grateful. I gave audiences comment sheets and read every single one personally, appreciating those that praised us as speakers. Still, mostly I was like the proverbial 'duck on a June Bug' on the critical reviews. Most of the so-called negative comments were constructive criticisms at worst, but the scathing or mean ones helped me the most. Not in vain, I read those sheets after every speech for at least ten years. I had at least (probably) a hundred pounds of comment sheets, but eventually, I put most of them in a dumpster as I had no more room for storage.

There's no universal utility in others holding us accountable. We have to hold ourselves accountable. Others should just be honest about how our behaviors affect them. My Sponsor said over and over again in my difficult marriage, "You're not her problem. She's addicted to misery." My Sponsor ALSO said when I complained about her, "I don't wanna hear any of that 'he said/she said shit!” Sorry for the s-word, but that's what she said. LOL!

AFG helped me stay on my side of the street. Accepting Sponsorship in my life helped save my life. So many cool memories to look back on today, but some of them didn’t feel so cool when it was going down. After an AFG meeting in Maplewood, I recall complaining to a friend about my Ex. I went Al-A on and on and on for maybe 15 minutes. After I emptied my hot air balloon, she said, "OK, so what's YOUR part in it?" I literally laughed out loud in irony and said something along the lines of a sheepish, 'Ah, shucks!'. I got busted out, but I (me) had to see it, and that became possible through her question and not a sledgehammer of ‘truth’. Yes, the truth shall set us free, yet truth without compassion is cruelty.

List of Books I Read During the Dark Night of the Soul

Welcome to what happened along my Sacred Path, the DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL. Literally, I doubt anyone who has been through it has the words, written or spoken, to accurately describe such a journey. If a description could be had, no one would have to experience it, because that would mean it’s a theory or something. As the saying goes, spiritual life is not a theory.

I list the books that impacted my life during this difficult period of my life. They are not chronically listed. The ones that had the greatest impact on my Soul will have an asterisk before the caption beneath each book.

​*I listened to this audiobook dozens of times. It helped me survive more than any other single work. God is Good! Thank you, Caroline Myss, for helping save my life! ​

​Kings die. "Abner is not far from any one of us. We share an Abner-nature that harbors sin’s stupidity, perversity, and twistedness. Let Abner preach to you. Let him tell you that it is possible to know the truth but not embrace the truth, to quote the truth but not submit to the truth, to hold the truth, and yet assault the truth. And so Abner joins all the other antichrists who strut around and say, ‘I will be king’ (1 Kings 1:5)."

— Dale Ralph Davis (2 Samuel: Out of Every Adversity)​

A person need not be in recovery to find utility in this book. I have loved poetry since I was a young person. I learned that only 5% of Americans say they like poetry, but I doubt it’s true, because people like music with good lyrics.

A penetrating book that helped me strip away everything that I Am not. It took 3 1/2 years to read, because I was living/dying in every word of it. This and Spiritual Madness by Carolyn helped the most. I guess *‘A Grief Observed’ was 'up there’ too.

As Neitchzie reflected, a person should never shrink from staring into the abyss and finding it staring back. I left no moral argument for or against suicide unexamined. Wasn’t it Socrates that said that the unexamined life is not worth living? Ironically, by standing by his beliefs he committed himself to his own legal death. Didn’t Jesus do the same, in a manner? He could have run away or begged a metaphorical rich Hollywood Elitist to have his life spared. Jesus healed the ear of the soldier that came for him. What I’m pointing out here is that they had a choice, but allowed or chose death, which is arguably a form of suicide.

It is certainly a quiet place, this Dark Night business.

Sometimes I felt like I was God's Debris, humorously speaking and felt the spiritual sparkles of sprinkled satire falling from heaven with jovial irony.

*A Sacred Dance is Grief. This book gained within me a deep respect for Melody Beattie. I worked with her brother Charlie in sobriety and was in treatment with another of her brothers Jim as a young person. IMO, this book was better than Codependent No More, at least for me (I say that because Codependent No More was excellent). My years in MADD 'forced a journey', to be sure, as did the Dark Night. Judy Collins walked a similar road.

*My favorite C.S. Lewis book. It was wonderful to see someone who was purported as spiritually evolved in Christian Circles admit he questioned everything, even God, due to Grief. My favorite C.S. Lewis book.

“No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. I am not afraid, but the sensation is like being afraid. The same fluttering in the stomach, the same restlessness, the yawning. I keep on swallowing.

At other times it feels like being mildly drunk or concussed. There is a sort of invisible blanket between the world and me. I find it hard to take in what anyone says. Or perhaps, hard to want to take it in. It is so uninteresting. Yet I want the others to be about me. I dread the moments when the house is empty. If only they would talk to one another and not to me.”

I received this book when I first started speaking for MADD as a gift of grief.

For anyone who has experienced a significant loss, this wonderfully informative and accessible book is a guide to understanding and overcoming grief.

The death of someone close -- a family member, spouse, or partner -- can result in feelings of overwhelming grief. At the same time, society unrealistically expects people to recover from grief as quickly as possible. I Can't Stop Crying looks at grieving as a painful but necessary process. The authors emphasize the importance of giving permission to grieve and suggest steps for rebuilding life without the one who is gone. They also look at how such a loss affects relationships with family and friends, as well as lifestyle, work habits, and hopes for the future. The book includes an appendix with bereavement groups, resources, and other self-help organizations for grievers.

'Aint't it the truth' poetry.

Life Forces a Journey is a unique collection of poetry that expresses the raw, moving emotions of the author as she struggles with what life presents her. From death and depression to hope and healing, Disch chronicles a journey that is at once difficult and restoring. Within its pages, readers will find accessible, authentic, straight-from-the-soul poetry that has helped Disch heal from her own pain, and may prove useful to others as well.

We can fill our coffins with the rocks they have thrown, (we can write poetry). or we can build our castles with the sticks and the stones.

Another book I got when I first joined MADD, gifted by Sharon Berg who became a dear friend and still is. She was the MADD Victim Advocate for Ramsey/Washington County in Minnesota. I was VP of the Chapter before they changed the policy and made it taboo to allow “Offenders” be in leadership roles. Reminds me of, “I wouldn’t be a member of a club that would have me as a member.” My Path is Sacred. All parts of it. I’m not ‘offended.’

Waking up is a motherfucker.

Figured I better read it before the month expired.

For a Kierkegaard book, it's an easy read. Most of his books are not easy to read IMO.

"In eternity it will be asked whether you may not have damaged a good thing, in order that you also might judge with them that did not know how to judge, but who possessed the crowd's strength, which in the temporal sense is significant, but to which eternity is wholly indifferent."
— Søren Kierkegaard (Purity of Heart is to Will One Thing: Spiritual Preparation for the Office of Confession)

“A loved one suffered from Bi-Polar and this helped me understand 'me' in ways I didn't quite grasp. Thought I bought it to understand 'others'. Ironic & inspirational.

During this difficult period of my life and every difficulty preceding it, I chose to FEEL ALL OF MY FEELINGS. I was not depressed. The Dark Night might have depression accompany it, but they are two different things. Testing the entire depth and breadth of one's soul means missing nothing.

In the book An Unquiet Mind, I asked questions of myself and contemplated those trials and tribulations of those whom I knew suffered from Bi-Polar. Here's a couple of quotes from that book:

"Which of my feelings are real? Which of the me's is me? The wild, impulsive, chaotic, energetic, and crazy one? Or the shy, withdrawn, desperate, suicidal, doomed, and tired one? Probably a bit of both, hopefully, much that is neither."

"If I can't feel, if I can't move, if I can't think, and I can't care, then what conceivable point is there in living?" — Kay Redfield Jamison (An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness)

One finds out who one's friends are when the stuff hits the fan. Poetic irony.

*This brought beauty and peace to suffering for me. The beautiful Mystery of Grief.

Transforming Grief, indeed.

I threw away 8-10 years of journals. Hundreds of pounds of writing. What a moron. It's about the only regret I have in life.

*A fantastic, brilliant mind was Teresa. A hard read for me, but nuggets of gold were therein.

"Union is as if in a room there were two large windows through which the light streamed in it enters in different places but it all becomes one. " — Teresa of Ávila (Interior Castle)

Here’s a quote: The Interior Castle is about what we are at our deepest places. Here's a quote not from her book, but from someone else who sums it up well, indirectly: “Knowledge of what you love somehow comes to you; you don’t have to read nor analyze nor study. If you love a thing enough, knowledge of it seeps into you, with particulars more real than any chart can furnish.” — Jessamyn West

“If a poem hasn't ripped apart your soul; you haven't experienced poetry.” Edgar Allan Poe

This poem, Phoenix, was written about The (my) Dark Night of the Soul. It took three & 1/2 years to write. For the first 2 1/2 years, I wanted to kill myself every day, all day. The last year I only wanted to kill myself 2 or 3 times a day, generally. The original title of the poem was BROKEN, but after 3 1/2 years, I renamed it PHOENIX and added the last Stanza.

While going through the Dark Night of the Soul, I learned that different depths of grief have different tastes on the back of the tongue (tears have taste). I don't care if it sounds crazy, but it's true. I would have NEVER guessed this in a hundred years, but the experience is a Great Master. (Photography by Rose-Lynn Fisher http://rose-lynnfisher.com/tears.html...)

“Always go with the choice that scares you the most, because that's the one that is going to require the most from you.” ― Caroline Myss

A Story and Insight on Steps 3-7.

Yesterday, I heard a man tell a story about his mother who was on morphine and in great physical pain with not much time left on Earth School. She couldn't take more morphine for a couple more hours. He loved her so much and anguished terribly that she was in such pain, so he started praying out loud to God that her pain would be immediately removed.

Her answer to her son's prayer was instant and without contemplation, for she had learned in her long years to turn her will and her life over to the care of God (as she understood God). She said, "It is not up to you or anyone else, whether this pain will go away or not. It is up to God"

This story, because I'm in the 12-Step Program, reminds me of Step 6, which is incidentally my favorite Step. Anyway, if I have asked God to remove my pain, or my defects of character, or anything else for that matter in my emotional or mental life, and the things I asked removal of still remain...I remember that they belong to my HP and not me. If they are not taken away, that's God's business, not mine, and I practice acceptance around it. Maybe the defects remain for a reason I can never fathom. Maybe they remain as the only way to create humility in my dumbass. That or, maybe a future lesson is waiting in perfect timing to help someone else at the hour when it is removed. Remember this part of that certain prayer? 'Take away my defects of character'...because it might help someone else ('those I might help')?

…I had a thinking problem, and drinking was just a symptom.

For me, Step 3 is about total trust. 4& 5 is about identifying what parts of myself are blocking me from embracing full Love & Acceptance, 'life on life's terms' sort of a thing. I lance the boil in my heart & mind with the help of my HP, and Sponsor in Step 5, then leave the disinfecting process and timing up to God in 6.

Police Excessive Force, Drug abuse/Alcoholism Treatment for Offenders, and Transparency

Both Chauvin and Floyd contributed to a death. George paid the ultimate price for his part but had no officer kneeled on him while he was under physical duress, George would be alive today. Unintentional murder, AKA Assisted Suicide (metaphorically), at best, because Chauvin was guilty of Culpable Negligence. He should have known that his behavior could have or would have resulted in harm or death to the handcuffed and subdued offender.

The cops admitted they knew George Floyd had a history of drug problems and proper training or intentional CARE for human life would have demanded treating him as both patient and offender. Excessive Force is commonplace, and it needs to stop.

What's more, if people were placed in a secure treatment facility when drug abuse or alcoholism is substantiated, a segment of those sentenced to treatment might not re-offend. It's expensive to treat addictions, but it is less expensive than incarceration and especially repeated incarcerations. Check out the linked video from a friend of mine who spoke to lawmakers and the public at the Minnesota Capitol.

https://youtu.be/1rQccDwHaXg

Incarceration often keeps people sick or makes them sicker in some cases. Few people come out of a corrupt prison system healthier than they went in. Yeah, there's always a whole lotta CYA going on in cases like this.

Future Solution to avoid more George Floyd deaths? Transparency. Put a live camera on every cop that they can't turn off when they are ‘on the clock’, and have a publicly accessible website where citizens can view live footage at will. Indeed, there are times the footage should not be available but have a balanced Team that includes Citizens, a trusted Prosecutor, Judge, a Defense attorney, and maybe even an EMT or other health professional. If the footage is held from public purview, the Team is answerable. Live footage would stop bad people from lying to and about cops which happens all the time and would keep bad cops from lying all the time, too.

Never Take Yourself Too Seriously: Laughter, Music, Poetry, and the Tools of Acceptance

IN RE the Christ Meme: Part of the reason I post such things isn't that I am callous to Christ, that I am against anyone or anything, but rather to NOT allow myself to take MYSELF and what "I" think too seriously. What I think and believe is not the point of life.

Being peaceful NO MATTER WHAT I THINK OR ANYONE ELSE THINKS is what I am after. If I am annoyed, it's no one else's fault. I'm annoyed because I am ANNOYABLE. "THEY" are not my problem.

The atheist philosopher Sartre said, "Hell is other people." I concur only so far as "other" is in the sentence. Hell is "other" people. The world seems addicted to judgment; I try to consciously release that judgment from my own life and subscribe to the LIVE AND LET LIVE principle.

Here are examples of "other": other politics, other religions, other races, other genders, other opinions, other programs, other ancestries, people whining about whatever I am not whining about (other whiners), hating the haters, and 'other-others' ad-nauseam.

It seems to be the most secure prison in the world, is the one we justify and construct for ourselves.

Every ripple of change, pain, pang, joy, and surrender elude logical preconditions, stripping our souls, leaving us only with a choice to LOVE or bask in the illusion of 'otherness'.

Poetry, music, and humor cleanse 'me-ness' and rejoins sacred connection as experiences merge effortlessly into We. We upsidedown is a metaphorical Me.

All are One, Storms and the Eyes of the storms thereof. are part of the Great Whole (Holy). If the Eye is full of Acceptance, the whole body is, too. Our storms all look different from the outside, but the inside is the same. Until then, just laugh.

Most people probably don't have the slightest clue how big and compassionate someone's heart has to be to hang up the blamethrowers of life. I'm no scholar of any variety, but the Christ as I understand Him, died because He LOVED. Even at the end, what did He say? "Forgive them, they know not what they do." Three days later, he resurrected.

Ancient Greece made its greatest strides when they were free to do both good and bad things. My greatest single regret I see coming from Ancient Greece is how they made the human psyche divided against itself. They over-focused on the mind and left the heart out of balance with the mind. One manifestation of this illness came from the idea that "Feelings are not facts." Truth is, the mind and the heart are One. The mind is the thinking part of the heart, and the heart is the feeling part of the mind.

Einstein said imagination is more important than knowledge and pointed out that his leaps of higher ideas came suddenly, intuitively.

The 'dictionary' of Einstein's life exploded like a bomb in a printing press office, and the letters of the dictionary flew everywhere BUT came back together in a beautiful order.

After all, the dictionary and the Bible both contain the same words, albeit in a different order. The EGO exists as an illusion in the mind. The heart is not so deluded, and that's why the battlefield is in the mind and not the heart.

The Divine Feminine

The mind is supposed to protect the heart, for once the heart goes, our destiny goes. A poisoned heart is a most tragic state of affairs, with forgiveness and peace defying all explanation and knowledge rushes in to save the day (if we surrender to the Holy Spirit).

Sentio Ergo Sum Cogito, by The Incomplete Skeptic.

Let's start the Church of the Impetuous Paradox where we "spend" time inspecting the history of forever & chronologize eternity. LOL!

Truth without paradox is dead.

No disrespect intended, but both the delegates of 'Pseudo cum laude' Cogito Ergo Sum entourage and René Descartes belonged in a Thinker's Anonymous meeting. Descartes glorified thinking and abandoned himself (and relegated others) to the systematized, outside-in approach to life. But real sunshine comes from the inside-out.

Sentio ergo sum cogito. I Feel (the heart), therefore, I Think (the mind) I Am. For me, the mind is the thinking part of the heart, and the heart is the feeling part of the mind. Mind and heart are ONE. The Greeks did so much to revolutionize culture abroad and I celebrate this, but they also made schizophrenics of generations for thousands of years by focusing on mind and marginalizing heart.

Thoughts are the substance of mind, as hope is the substance of things unseen, and UNSEEN like Adam Smith's Invisible Hand is the wiping off the dust from the Mirror that is Humanity's God or Higher Power.

Original Mind & Original Heart are One. Have you ever heard the saying, be ye as little children, for such is the Kingdom of God? THAT! I've also read that “Knowledge is a polite word for dead but not buried imagination.” e.e. cummings

I'm in charge of what I say, you're in charge of what you hear. The same applies to the written word. The Alpha and the Omega/the snake eating itself, as above so below/on earth as it is in Heaven all bear common or ancient ancestry. Sit back and dwell on that silently for a while.

I draw an ironic smile when I hear someone say that 'feelings are not facts' because I believe that Love (a feeling) is the Greatest Fact ever experienced. Drawing abstract consciousness from the original mind is like unsheathing the flaming sword protecting Eden's Tree of Life, and is akin to a solution feasting like vampires on problems. "Live in the solution" sounds good to the EGO, but is the paradigm of self-slavery to the extreme. Goethe related that the most secure prison is the one we don't know we are in.

One of my life-changing, favorite poems.

War is the greatest paradigm of forced cooperation, yet comprehension is not a Peacekeeper requirement of cooperation. Respect is. Forcing solutions and imposing harmony is a maladaptive dire sickness plaguing us, leading to a societal psychosis that even music might not cure. Music and poetry, prayer and acts of compassionate discourse have helped save my life through the years. Let's bring that back into focus again.

The great philosopher Rodney King nailed it (and no, I’m NOT being sarcastic), but cruel satirical headlines attended his echoes in some circles, but I'll repeat his unconditional grace here because true freedom lives in the Questions of Life and not so much in the answers: "Can't we all just get along?"

As ‘The Picard’ would say: “ENGAGE” and as someone near and dear to my heart said some 2,000 years ago, “Love one another.

If anyone even reads this whole blog post, I'll be fucking shocked. I barely could stand to do so myself. LOL! Peace Out & Groovy. Have fun. No excuses.

Dark Night Musings

The following barely scratches the surface of those years described.

Hundreds of breakthroughs, mostly unnoticeable, littered my path to distract me toward lessons deeper than life itself. Dozens of breakthroughs, all unique and seemingly independent, left me to wonder if this was/is the one! Then more and more and deeper and darker, the lights become useless, and the rays of darkness with immense, mysterious beauty engulfed my entire comprehension. Every brand of the holy-water tear was tasted and tested, recognized, and labeled like Adam un-naming animals and plants. Who would have guessed that tears are spiritual with various tastes for each brand of grief? Only trust and choice remained as I floated downward in the dark river of death.

Dark River

Death

'Now' was darkness as day and daylight could no longer require of its captive slave mud and straw, for the sacred rains dissolved all meaninglessness of this illusory world. The hibernation lasted until the oceans dried up, but the living waters served up spiritual oxygen.

Some years ago, I was traveling the Dark Night of the Soul. Had you ever made this journey yourself, the above-stated 'Musings" would be second-nature and ironically indescribable with logical vocabulary, a sacred space where poetry alone eclipses the sun of reason, giving birth to the Rumi's and Hafiz beyond life & death.

What started my journey was twofold: first, divorce from my narcissistic ex opened the door, and second, a later relationship with a practicing alcoholic herself kept that same door wedged open, ultimately herself ultimately being found dead by her daughter—cause of death: drinking.

A book that had been recommended by a public speaker (and friend) from Hazelden who presented his Story at “The Recovery Church” in St. Paul, Minnesota. Immediately following his speech, I drove to The Mecca of All Bookstores (Barnes & Noble) looking for the recommended book he mentioned, titled "Addiction & Grace," written by Gerald May.

I found it on a bottom shelf, but next to it stood another book that enchanted my soul with moonlit trees barely discernable on its’ cover, titled "The Dark Night of the Soul, penned by the same author. The "Spirit in my Chest" verified I was to have this book, so I carried it and the other book to the clerk and made my purchase. One might easily read the book “The Dark Night of the Soul” in a day, but it took me three & one-half years to read, not because I was a slow reader, but because I was LIVING and experiencing every word I read. That last year lapsed before I had reason to believe I had come through to the other side, returning to marginally 'normal' living; proverbially, I returned 'in' the world but no longer 'of' the world. It reminds me of prison, in a way. Prison was my monastery, of sorts, but monastery or not, no one comes out the way they went in.

Making the mystical journey is not strongly suggested for the strong, for the strong will collapse and perhaps fail at the Herculean Vulnerability required to pass this test. Age and the Dark Night of the Soul are not for sissies...just like poetry. As Poe pointed out, if poetry has not torn your soul asunder, you've not written any yet.

Thank you for feeling these words.