VISIONARY TEACHINGS
by Gill Schwartz

DARK NIGHT OF THE YEAR
WINTER SOLSTICE AND EMPTY MOON, DECEMBER 22, 2003

Sacramental Wounding:
A Redemptive Reappraisal of the Role of Suffering in My Life

Cast of Characters in my Shadow Hierarchy

PERSONA: Gill Schwartz
MEANING OF NAME: Dark Joy
ROLE: My Earthly Self

PERSONA: Kalananda
MEANING OF NAME: Bliss of the Dark
ROLE: My Soul Self/Former Incarnation

PERSONA: Mahakala
MEANING OF NAME: The Great Dark One
ROLE: Shadow Form of Awakened Compassion

PERSONA: Ushu EL
MEANING OF NAME: The Shadow of God
ROLE: An Angel from pre-Eternity

ENDARKENMENT
 

There is a Way of Darkness
As there is a Way of Light,
A descent to the Source
As there is the Ascension.

Shadow defines the face of the One
That without would be flat and lifeless.
The Lover's kiss is torment to the heart
As well as bliss.
The Maker's clasp can crush
As well as bring to creation.

Pray, do not simplify this mystery,
Do not fear-sunder the Whole.
Dip your being deep into the wonder,
Beyond choice, into the waiting revelation.

 

The Earth now lies in the dark trough of the year,
far-off Sun, at the edge of its turn around time,
vanished Moon swallowed in its dark umbra,
Ultimate Night blinds all seeing.

I'm drawn to the shelter of my innermost cave,
my safeguarded womb, so all the selves of me
may gather in comforting assurance.
May my soul find quench for its thirst in this Darkness.

I hold my burning heart aloft for light.
Its flames splash my wombcave's murky walls
alive with mysterious phantoms, mystifications,
safe from sunlight's cruel revelations.

My eyes grow owl sight. I behold dark entwine
with emptiness, shadow merge with void.
This lucidity discloses the workings of my heart,
the wounds I conceal in it. And how they may serve me.

Betrayed innocence resurges first to have its say,
the initial affliction my unknowing shades.
I recoil with grief at all that was lost
when that guileless openness winced shut.  

 

My afflicting parents betrayed not just my childish trust,
but the nakedness of my soul, those guileless eyes,
my heart still touched with God,
though encased in that infant self.

But they too, I know, could only show to me
what they'd been shone, do to me what they'd been done.
My grief embraces them too. How are we to cease endless
bequeathing and accruing of our sorrows?

In this recalled innocence, I recognize the flame spiked
shielding around my heart that, by design,
greets all with my viscous self-preservation.
I will not be so wounded --or touched-- again.

Not with tenderness nor care, but in cynical
defense against his own openness and fear,
my revealed child-self screams out in despair:
"Nothing I long for can ever come to be."

Blessedly, my Shadow Hierarchy now appears
to help me through this tortuous maze
I create by believing, as ultimate self delusion,
that I am other than the Treasure that I seek.  

First Kalananda, my soul-self, counsels me.
"They served thee well with these wounds.
Take them as assurance that what you seek
lies not outside thyself in other beings and things."

I yearn for the Knowing Kalananda revels in,
thus I take all he speaks as oracle.
But I can't conceive the correlation he sees
between my pain and release from delusion's bondage.

Mahakala emerges: He of dark mien who shows the Way
through suffering. In heart touching dirge he intones,
"If you forgive and receive the wounding as gift,
it will open you to awakened Compassion's fierce power.

"Suffering's teaching sears away the bonds of circumstance,
purges the dross that stains pure Mind.
May your wounds cauterize into a ring of scar, a Portal
to that Reality you seek, that all seek; your Awoken Self."

Though long a devotee of this same Compassion,
I clench at accepting my grief as serving
some intended role in my spirit's quest for growth,
in my human self's disclosing the treasure it bears.  

Ushu EL now manifests to embrace we three.
More encompassing than even this Night,
He bears us into pre-Eternity where every mote
of our beings returns to pure potentiality.

This alone dissolves my heart's barbed shield,
still there, even when joined with my two helpers.
This reveals the rage and self-loathing at its source,
retaliation for my shamed innocence.

Swirled in the currents of primordial being,
we three return to preexistent Chaos.
In this ultimate undoing, the devotion of the Heart
within my heart freely aligns me with the Word.

Beginning, Middle, and Finale', the Source and Destiny,
all are held within the Word that now enfolds me.
My life's torment does become a calling to surrender,
to renounce all partiality that distorts this Truth.

The guidance of my Shadow Hierarchy
led me aright. In the Word, their somber lore
aligns with my Angelic Helpers' Light. Thus merged
with the Word, the Dark Night turns luminescent.

 

 

 

Return to top

Copyright Gill Schwartz 2003   www.WisdomVisions.com