GREAT referrence to
Dark Night of the Soul , BG! WoW
The main idea of the poem can be seen as the painful experience that people endure as they seek to grow in spiritual maturity and union with God.
from the above link
No one seems to
like suffering - that whole thing is an oxymoron, huh? I guess it might be better stated that no one wants to say, "suffering has it's good points," maybe they'd be thought of as a bit of a sadomasichist.
We don't make the rules - we just have to play by them
I found this interesting from the wikipedia link:
Psalms 13, 22, and 44 display King David, the 'man after God's own heart' undergoing serious confusion before and anguish with God, yet this is not condemned or mentioned as being unfaithful, but rather as the only measure of faith that David could have in the face of such withering apparent abandonment.
Rather than resulting in permanent devastation, the dark night is regarded by mystics and others as a blessing in disguise, whereby the individual is stripped (in the dark night of the senses) of the spiritual ecstasy associated with acts of virtue.
I think you have a good grip on the thrill-ride here, BG:
In the end for me, somewhere there is still some safety as well in ‘to each their own’, so I go with that as a default.
I agree, but this film was about an experiment where dosage was administered to patients, by a doctor in a clinical setting with a nurse & crash cart right there. One guy said that really made it more enjoyable, knowing he wouldn't die (if you can imagine saying, "this might kill you in your quarters, but dammit Jim. I'm a DOCTOR and you're in the sick bay)
All joking aside, no doctor is going to enlighten the
Dark Night of the Soul , but I bet there are snake oil salesmen that will say they have just the stuff...