Some Vital Medicine for these Times

"You need to be able to get your arms around everything that is arising, including the fear..."

“In this shadowed terrain, we encounter a landscape familiar to soul—loss, grief, death, uncertainty, vulnerability, and fear. We have—in the old language of alchemy—crossed into the nigredo, the blackening. The alchemists described this time as a season of decay, of shedding and endings, of falling apart and undoing. It is not difficult to see these are the conditions of our world. This is not a time of rising and growth. It is not a time of confidence and ease. No. we are hunkered down. Down being the operative word. From the perspective of soul, down is holy ground.

“Collectively, we are not familiar with descent as something valued and essential and most assuredly not something we consider holy. Most of us live in an ascension culture. We love things rising up…up….up…always up. We value success and strength, power and prowess. When things begin to go down, we can feel panic, uncertainty, and even dread. How can we meet these unpredictable times with a sense of courage and faith?”

These passages are from Francis Weller’s new book (out next month) called In the Absence of the Ordinary: Soul Work for Uncertain Times. (If you’ve never read The Wild Edge of Sorrow, that’s a great place to start while you wait for his new book to arrive!)

From Carl Jung’s Red Book

I read this thin but mighty tome when I was in Montana last week—a perfect book for this moment. I don’t know how you all are feeling but I’m feeling overwhelmed—swamped really—and like I have a narrowing capacity to take in the world. It’s a cue that I need more breaks, more nature, and a more rigorous titration of news (once a day, not all day). That I need to get “above the line.” (For more: “Are you Victim, Villain, or Hero?”) This is imperative, as we’re all being called to summon strength, resilience, and durability and increase our capacity to tolerate what Weller calls, “the Long Dark.” This is the period we are in—and it’s uncertain how long it will last.

The Long Dark will not be fun, but something is happening, and I stand firmly in my faith that it must be necessary in some way—that we are part of a great pattern that’s unfolding. (For more on this: “Holding a Positive Vision for the Future”) When I feel the panic that Weller mentions above, I also remind myself what I do know: It may not be conscious, but our souls have been training for this period of history. I believe that we all chose to be here, too. This is a helpful context for me—for all of us, I think. When I feel victimized by the world, I remind myself that we are here to co-create our future. And I remind myself that if my soul has been preparing me for this moment, if I chose to incarnate and be embodied right now…then I must have a specific job to do and a specific role to play. We are all endowed with a gift. Whether it proves to be true or not, this orientation helps immeasurably.

Weller describes what we’re experiencing as a rough initiation, the best descriptor I’ve yet found. He writes of these as disorienting phases, which happen both personally and collectively, explaining, “The frequent lament is ‘I don’t know who I am anymore.’ This is the deep work of initiation. It is meant to dislodge our old identity, the sediment of self that we affix to our sense of who we are. We are meant to be radically changed by these encounters. We do not want to come out of these turbulent times the same as we went in. That is the invitation in this moment of history.” So, how will you let yourself be shifted, changed, and evolved?

I know enough about synchronicity to pay attention when the same concepts are served to me again and again: For the past year, everywhere I look, every retreat I attend, every book I read, keeps circling around the ancient theories of alchemy. Carl Jung wrote about alchemy all the time. Last fall, Carissa/Yeshua devoted a four-day journey to the process. It is a critical metaphor and pattern, and it fits this moment: We are in the nigredo, the blackening, on a quest to find gold. This is happening on a collective level, and also, I would argue, to many of us individually who are on an accelerated path to let go of old identities that no longer serve. We’re in the training ground, forced to evolve and expand. Some of us have been in the process before, maybe many times—put there by the death of a love one, or loss, or illness, or any of the other variations of suffering and disillusionment that are part and parcel with life. Some of us are there because our bodies are aging, or changing, or we’re entering or exiting midlife. (In Hagitude,

Dr Sharon Blackie

writes beautifully about the process of nigredo that’s initiated by the fire of menopause—she’s coming up on the podcast to talk about it.)

Here’s Weller, again in In the Absence of the Ordinary: Soul Work for Uncertain Times:

“It is helpful to see this as an inevitable and necessary time, a time of shedding and letting go, of sitting close to the furnace of death as it cooks away all that is spent and no longer serving life. Our time in the nigredo is a period of dissolution.

“The nigredo was called the ‘subtle dissolver’ in alchemy and was viewed as a necessary element in the great work of creating the philosopher’s stone. The work could commence through the attainment of the nigredo. Only when the familiar structures were eroded was it possible for something new to arise. It is difficult for us to see our time in the underworld as something required for the deepening of our soul life. One major challenge to understanding is that we are highly conditioned to strive for the light, rise above everything, and overcome every obstacle. Not so when soul pulls us downward.”

So what do we do as our soul pulls us down? I’m not sure. The ground that will emerge will be unknown and uncertain. There is no question that we are in the process of remaking parts of our world anew. Who is to say what will emerge? One of the skills we are building right now is the temerity to sit with uncertainty. (Uncertainty is one of the Phil Stutz’s three domains, which we dive into in True & False Magic.) If you missed last week’s solo episode on Pulling the Thread (“Is this Our Push Up the Spiral?”), I did an exploration of Spiral Dynamics, which is another psychological and cultural model that fits with this moment: A new level/tier is emerging as what’s old burns away.

Weller, a psychotherapist who spends most of his time ushering people through initiatory grief experiences, feels optimistic about the future even as these months and years will be difficult and hard. He believes that we have the medicine we need, forged from our collective grief. I know this is a tough nut—we live in an incredibly grief-avoidant culture, but he makes the point that we will only protect what we love. We will not protect out of obligatory feelings of should. And through this alchemical process, we will likely come face to face with the reality that there is a lot that we love, there is much to mourn, and we will do anything to restore it.

Weller is coming on Pulling the Thread and we’ll discuss the medicines we have at our disposal—as well as those that are ours to develop. One that he describes that feels deeply personal to me is an increased capacity “to turn toward fear, grief, and anxiety. This is a central psychological task for each of us. As we turn toward the suffering, we simultaneously separate from it. This move is crucial. Only then can we grant our pain sufficient compassion to allow it to heal.” When we are engulfed we can’t see that we’re being sucked down by the undertow. But anyone familiar with the metaphor of drowning knows that you must stabilize yourself before you can be of much use to anyone else. This is a skill we must build. To illustrate his point, he tells the story of a woman in his practice who is contending with a terminal diagnosis, a woman who experienced a visitation with her ancestors.

He writes:

“Is that woman who felt that deep connection with the ancestors bigger than the terror?” I asked her.

“Absolutely,” she said.

“That is how big you need to be right now. You need to be able to get your arms around everything that is arising, including the fear,” I said.

I feel this viscerally.

May we learn how to be big enough to get our arms around everything that is arising. This is what we’re being trained to do.

Pre-order now: In the Absence of the Ordinary: Soul Work for Uncertain Times