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But sometimes, and for some people at certain points in their lives, there is no choice in how to imagine the darkness: it is simply darkness, irredeemable, destructive. I’m thinking of extreme states: schizophrenia, heroin addiction, what have you. In some situations, the darkness can’t be penetrated by imagination, it is simply dark and potentially annihilating.
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Andrew, there is no doubt that some psychic states are indeed very painful. And I have direct experience to testify to that! But does that fact mean these experiences are of no value, and should be eliminated, if possible? Sometimes pain is necessary to life. The way to physical fitness, for instance, often involves the pain of heavy exercise, but there is no other way to make strong muscle. No pain, no gain, is true.
Part of our hyper-spiritual culture is the idea that all suffering is pointless, and should be eliminated. Which I see as Gnostic resistance to incarnation.
However, many recent long-term studies have found that depression very often leaves people
stronger and more resilient.
Hillman says that "pathologizing" ( the psyche's inherent inclination to generate symptoms) is often painful, but is necessary to "soul-making":
"Since pathologizing is frightening, we are obliged to follow fear, not with courage, but as a path that leads deeper into awe for what is at work in the depths of the soul."
"The soul-making of pathology has its distinct flavour, salty, bitter; it ‘skins alive,’ ‘wounds,’ ‘bleeds,’ making us excruciatingly sensitive to the movements of the psyche."
"The analyst’s insight and the patient’s wound together embody the archetypal figure of the Wounded-Healer, another ancient and psychological way of expressing that the illness and its healing are one and the same."
That is, the sufferings of depression may lead to insights otherwise impossible to attain:
Or, to put it more poetically:
"The wound and the eye are one and the same."
And unlike the "upward" transcendence into the light, the pathologizing transcendence downwards really does deflate the ego, which is why we hate it and resist it so much. The ego-balloon is avid for upward flight, since this suits its nature, but feels crushed when held down in the depths.
"Pathologizing leads out of the ego and into a recognition that through a pathologized experience I am bound to archetypal persons who want something from me and to whom I owe remembrance."
Re-Visioning Psychology.
In short, depression can be re-visioned as a spiritual initiation - which is how the 17th C. "School of Night" (Ralegh, Chapman, & co.) saw it. And re-visioned in that way, the pain can become more bearable, since it is not a pointless, futile experience.