People who seek God-experience in their life, and get to a certain point in the spiritual life, they begin to experience a period of aridity and dryness sometime in the process. The spiritual mystics who had previously tasted the presence of God, often in their moments of prayers, meditation, popular devotions, go through such moment of the ‘absence’ of God, as if God has left them. This is not something bad. As long as one is sincerely seeking God and not ‘giving up’, dryness in seeking God is an indicator that you are being prepared to move into a higher stage of the spiritual life. That you are being passed on to the IS-ness of God, where your AM-ness gets integrated. You are being led "upstairs," to the ‘seven storied mountain’ top of your soul. That you are not simply relying on your lower senses. That you are nearing your search-end in seeking him no matter what you feel or don't feel. The reason we don't feel his presence isn't because he has "left" us. Instead, he's drawing closer and we are blurred from the brightness of his presence. Therefore, we continue seeking him, regardless of the dry feelings. You show that your desire him for who he is, not just how you feel.
St. John of the
Cross, a great mystic and saint of the 16th century
wrote, "God values in you the inclination to dryness and suffering for
love of him more than all the consolations, spiritual visions, and meditations
you could possibly have." A time he felt God
was not a good friend, that he had abandoned him, “locked into a small room and
was starved and tortured by his own brothers when he sought to reform the
Carmelite order”. In that darkness, he felt rejected, and wondered if God was
by his side. Here is the wisdom from him, for those who desire to possess the
spiritual treasure: desire nothing in order to gain everything - the way of
“nada.” Then you would no longer experience want or the dryness. You would have
within you all you needed. From this we learn that God-seeking is the goal of
“letting go,” by putting all things in their own proper places, without the obsession
to control, the anxiety to possess, and the insecurity of losing the same
things. Through ‘neti-neti’ – not this, not that – attitude, one is free
to enjoy God.
Physically helping
others through social charity, makes one find God in the people they serve. It can be certain agnosticism. Ours is a
living God, practical, existential, and incarnate than mere intellectual. This
in turn leads to a deeper, spiritual realities. God and faith
are not feelings. One who lives in selfless service, experiences the presence
of the Absolute. Doubt and skepticism (e.g. St. Thomas) are real honest things
to do, in order to know the truth. Even in the arid moments of ‘passing atheism’
God can be real. Faith does not make truth certain, instead one
believes with uncertain feeling and intellect that God exists. Consequently, moments of unbelief, of dark nights of the
soul, God’s silence, indifferent and lonely periods, and skeptical times will
be there. One may experience God’s absence from one’s life. Only
goodness shown towards self and others, can carry us on when faith seems
burdensome. Only a sustained generous living can lead to have faith in the Absolute,
about whom we can never be totally certain.
The
aridity could be also a sign of a shifting of
one’s centre of spiritual identity, wherein, one moves from the centre
of self-reference - the place of feeling good within a limited space - towards a more universal pluri-focal centre,
beyond boundaries. Here, one recognizes not only those seeking God of one’s own
belief system (religion), but also all those seeking the Universal God of the
whole human species beyond the lines of control. The shift is to the cosmotheandric, universe, God and human species.
In the midst of aridity, the Reality-seeking efforts expand. One may still experience
the dryness in the midst of diversity and complexity, but becomes more aware of
a deep, underlying connection, that is more experienced, sensed, than
explained. This discovery of God as Being (IS-ing) becomes “everybody’s secret”
(Upanishads). It includes all living and non-living organisms, with which one strives to
live. This new faith conviction of mutual reliance emanates positive energy of
love, respect and compassion, an energy that becomes an all-inclusive
spirituality, elevating to a higher self. This divine power-centre (energy) is
everywhere. It is all in all. The part
is in the whole and whole is in each part. It is through moments of aridity,
analysis, scepticism, and questioning that one reaches a deeper spiritual
reality.
Thomas Merton, in a book called Seeds of Contemplation
says that the whole of creation is an incarnation of an idea in the mind of
God. It is within this creation, that we “live, move, and have our being, out
of the fullness we all have received.” This way we have an experience of the Kingdom,
where “with the whole of creation, free from the corruption of death”, we give glorify
to the Creator (4th Eucharistic prayer). The non-organisms too are
Spirit having material experiences. “We are all spiritual beings first, having
material body” (Teihard de Chardin). Therefore, spiritual aridity is a step
ahead to experience and feel this God, as a presence. Later on, this God became
IS-ness, Being. If so, one’s AM-ness is the real thing and that's where one is
with God. God’s AM-ness, His IS-ness, is shared with everything. In fact, many mystics
have some time passed from Jesus to God through the ‘dark cloud of the unknowing’
and the ‘dark night of the soul’. They passed on to the presence or the
existence of the non-dual advaitic God.
