{Corruption and Aridity: The Dark Night of the Soul}[26th March 1987]

[Redbook3:37-38][19870326:1543r]{Corruption and Aridity: The Dark Night of the Soul}[26^th March 1987]

.1543

[continued]

I probably learnt more in the period 1982 to 1986 (during which we ran our own computerised services business and developed our basement [flat]), about people, than in many years before; or at least more intensely (referred to above) about the corruptibility of humans, including myself: not in the obvious sense of taking* bribes, but in the tendency to lie, to cheat, to betray trust and friends, and above all to forget what one believes in under the pressure of [everyday] affairs.

My chief memory of the quality of those years was of their dryness. I complained to [W] more than once that my whole being felt dry, like dust, and I felt I had lost the creative and spiritual touch.

This genuine and strongly-felt quality seems to correspond exactly with the 'aridity' of St. John of the Cross (ref Times 19870323, Longley). I do have, and have read parts of, The Dark Night of the Soul, but remember little of it consciously. I believe a greater understanding has resulted from the experience; as a caution against believing myself necessarily to have passed through St. John's Dark Night of the Soul, however, I should record that when I first read the book, I seem to remember thinking I had already been through it myself, at a time when (if I remember rightly) I had not even begun (or had I?). Vanity is an abiding problem.

“Ascent to Love”, however, describes the second half of the Outer Circle, from the middle of the blackest part of Distraction, pretty well. (It could, of course, be stretched to describe the second half of the Inner Circle.) Self-abnegation is precisely what needs to occur at the point where Love must be followed: the “death throes of the ego” is [sic] also precisely placeable. It is not so clear (from the Article) that more follows on the way to Unity, on the Inner Circle – if it is the Inner Circle. It is perhaps silly to make a comparison with one newspaper article written about an interpreter of the original.

*[or giving, presumably]

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