Mark, thank you for your explanation of what you mean. That clarifies a lot. I agree with everything you say. With a slight reservation at: “it all depends on how the darkness is imagined.” Even this I agree with, to a point. I know that this is true, given certain circumstances. 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. The statement of Heraclitus works for people who still have enough strength to confront the suffering. But I completely agree with what you say about spirituality that denies the body and life. Blake, along with Lawrence, had a lot to say along those lines:
1. Man has no Body distinct from his Soul for that call'd Body is a portion of Soul discern'd by the five Senses, the chief inlets of Soul in this age
2. Energy is the only life and is from the Body and Reason is the bound or outward circumference of Energy.
3 Energy is Eternal Delight
And talk about a poet of ecstatic vision:
Ah Sunflower, weary of time,
Who countest the steps of the sun;
Seeking after that sweet golden clime
Where the traveller’s journey is done;
Where the Youth pined away with desire,
And the pale virgin shrouded in snow,
Arise from their graves, and aspire
Where my Sunflower wishes to go!
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