Looking For Light in the Darkness

Many people traverse large portions of their lives in darkness. I'm referring to darkness in the sense that it appears as though nothing will improve, in the sense that nothing makes sense anymore, that they have done all they can and yet nothing has worked in the way they had hoped for - and these are not depressed individuals, but rather, individuals who have not yet recognized that there is always some type of light. And of course the minute a minute fraction of light is found, a portion of the darkness must give way to it, and it is immediately not so penetratingly black anymore.

The dark night of the soul that so many authors - old and modern - have written about (St. John of the Cross, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Thomas Moore, and Gerald May, to name only a few), is not a place everyone necessarily arrives at, but it is a place, that if you arrive at it, requires that you examine yourself in ways you may not have done before. And examining yourself in these ways, may lead you to that ephemeral (at least initially), and then more lasting and sturdy recognition of the divine self within that Joseph Campbell (and many others) writes about so extensively in his collected work.

This faint recognition then, might be the glimmering of light in the darkness that may - as it is steadily sought and wooed and believed in despite the darkness - grow to a strong and brilliant light that will never again permit access to such complete darkness into an individual's life. Darkness yes, but never complete. Some of the light will always be there as a guide on the way to even greater light.