A Night Without Moonlight

This article is about how to perceive and understand depression and sorrow and how to deal with these difficult moments.
“A night full of talking that hurts
My worst held secrets.
Everything has to do with loving and not loving.
This night will pass.
Then we have work to do...”
 - Rumi
It is clear that mentally balanced and healthy people seem to be happier and that happiness has to be the ultimate goal of life. We naturally try to avoid sadness and depression because sadness moves us in the direction of a negative energy, and the basic, fundamental motivation for human beings is to feel positive and happy. Even for masochists, who may use sadness as a means toward some kind of fulfillment, which they may see as happiness. Depression and sadness slows our energy level and may even manifest harm toward us if it is prolonged; we can get physically or mentally sick when we are depressed. Happiness on the other hand can enhance and promote health and well-being.
Rumi believes that striving for happiness doesn’t mean there is no room for sadness. Sadness has a legitimate purpose and reason. For Rumi, grieving and turning within, or toward darkness, is the threshold of the unknown, a kind of sanctuary, a place of collapse. Not always looking for a false happiness gives us meaning and depth. Rumi believes darkness always begs sincerity. It is at this threshold that we surrender our egoism, our self-centeredness, our defense mechanism, our need for control, and perfection. It is in the dark that we fall and weep for all that we feel we’ve lost, all that we do not understand and never will. We spend restless nights in the dark, whisper and tell secrets in the dark, and even pray in the dark. Darkness is none other than the realm of shedding, dying, transforming, and renewing.
 Though darkness is frightening on many accounts, it is immensely potent, creative, inspiring, and nurturing for some of us. I would say gorgeous, soulful things come out of darkness: children, mud-flowers, root vegetables, wine, speech, and song. Give space and time in the darkness, even the one who has lost her passion for life, emerges again filled with renewal. Darkness in many respects is the mother of re-birth.
 Carl Jung, the Swiss Psychologist, believes that in the intensity of an emotional disturbance lies the value, the energy, which one should have at his/her disposal in order to remedy this state of adaptation. Nothing is achieved by repressing this state or devaluing it rationally! 
 But how to allow darkness in, how to sit alone in stillness and unknowing, in anguish, in anxiety, in pain, and embrace them all gracefully? How to act when depression is wrapping its vulture wings around us?  Is it possible to bear the darkness that surrounds us and think about the good things that are ahead of us? Is it possible to resist the temptation to chase it away with artificial lighting of self- imposed addiction and miscellaneous distractions? For this is what most of us are tempted to do. What happens when we feel our spirit collapse, when we find ourselves alone and frightened, disconnected, and barely able to breath? Is there a way to endure the dark nights of the soul and still function in the world? What of bad dreams, dark circles under the eyes, and heaviness upon the heart? And what is the virtue of despair, hopelessness, disappointment, lack of hope? Is it really fair to say that darkness holds promise, or is that something we tell ourselves to get by?
 Once we’ve collapsed, we have no choice but to cry out in our weakness: “Emergency”!  Once our feet touch the bottom there is no option but to go up! Thus collapsing in the dark is, in the final analysis, an act of surrender that brings relief and carries us above the water! The dark current also carries us through the channels of “the Self, " and drops us into the vast ocean of is-ness.
 Most of the time, agony, and despair humanize and purifies us simultaneously, and longing takes us to the breast of belonging - where we receive nourishment and begin to build.
 Certainly, it is comforting to think that longing (emotional pain) has an important effect and it does! Through longing and suffering come self-knowledge, strength, and wisdom, as well as active compassion and gratitude. Nothing compares to the realization that one has pulled oneself through a dark and difficult period, and that one has emerged stronger and wiser. Free of arrogance, defense, and indifference, one will emerge with compassion, kindness, and sensitivity. At such time, the world seems new and full of possibility, as it did in childhood.
 “What hurts you, blesses you.
Darkness is your candle.
You must have shadow and light source.
Listen, and lay your head under the tree of awe!”
 - Rumi
 Rumi's basic outlook toward our emotional pain (depression) and the remedy or treatment is offered in the Masnawi in one short poem, and it appears to me that this will express Rumi's outlook toward this aspect of human condition. Here is my translation:
 “Where pain, medicine goes there.
Where a ship, water goes there.
Where a problem, solution goes there.
Seek water less!
Gain thirst instead.
Until a fountain in your soul springs from your head to toe.”
- Rumi
 It seems to me that Rumi describes emotional pain not only as the expression of what is missing in one's life, but also as the treasure chest from which our aliveness can bubble up. He seems to be recommending that we look where the symptom (thirst) is pointing, so that we find the inner well of our water. As Jungians would put it, our human experience is one of having to hold the tension of the opposites, as that is the nature of life on this planet.
 What I understand of this  Rumi's poem is: When night passes and consciousness dawns, the work of actualization begins. Once we have become aware of the actions and thought forms that landed us in the dark, we must strive to re-pattern our behavior. It is our responsibility to continually grow into ourselves, to realize our potential, getting rid of that which makes us cling to neurotic patterns of behavior. To suffer to the core, to feel oneself re-made by grief that becomes joy, is to acknowledge and consent to human development.