The Art of the Sacred Break and Despair as a Motive for Rebirth – The Marginalian

Just as there are changing times in the life of the world—dark times of confusion between the two world systems, times when humanity loses its ability to understand itself and falls into chaos to rebuild itself on the basis of a new organizing principle—there are such times in the life of every human being, times when the whole system seems to collapse and collapse into grief and depression that is still heavy.

In such moments, the most courageous thing we can do is to surrender to the process of pausing, trusting the dark place to light the lamp of a new path and strengthen our forward movement towards a new life plan. The poet May Sarton knew this when she noted in her sad reflection on despair that “sometimes one must endure a period of depression for what it might bring to the light if one lives in it, paying attention to what it reveals or wants.” James Baldwin figured it out when he thought about how to live in the midst of a very difficult time, insisting that such times can “force a reconciliation between you and all human pain and error,” which on the one hand is to live more.

This transition from suffering to surrender can never be taken for granted – it can only be achieved through the determination we call humility. That is the influential British ethnologist and cultural anthropologist Robert Ranulph Marett (June 13, 1866–February 18, 1943)—a pioneer in the study of the religious origins of evolution—mentioned in his first lecture at Oxford University, delivered on October 27, 1910 under the title. The Birth of Humility (public domain).

Marett considers the spiritual significance of such times of suffering:

There is work in every category [life] the spiritual power of energy exchange; the energy flows not only from the positive pole, but likewise from the negative pole… However, sometimes, the important burst ends, and the vision becomes flat and gloomy. It is at such times that there is the occurrence of a counter-movement, which begins, ironically, with a kind of artificial extension and intensification of natural depression. Somehow the depression treated in this way gives birth to a new vitality.

In line with William James's insistence that “man's emotions are completely different from nothing” – a strong opposition to Cartesian dualism, which science has confirmed by exposing psychological trauma as physical trauma and illuminating how the body and mind come together in the treatment of trauma – Marett sees that every tragedy of “psychic” pain “mental” of the mind and “loss of voice” in body and mind alike, and is based on the evolution of our biology:

The body needs to sleep quietly while its latent energies gather energy to function on a new plane. It is important, moreover, to note that, as long as it is growing, the new plane is also a higher plane. Rebirth, in fact, presupposes, rest in the rhythm of life helps in turn to increase your harmony.

Marett notes that both the sacred traditions of tribal cultures and the religious teachings of so-called civilized societies invite that painful but rejuvenating rest between the poles of the spirit as a way of redirecting the existence from the bad to the good – a rest caused by fear, because the paradox of change is that we are always too afraid to change, but we are too afraid to change. “Spiritual protection” to reach the next stage of spiritual growth.

Noting “man's widespread ability to benefit from the temporary stasis in worldly life that Religion seems to have authorized and even enforced in all periods of its history,” Marett writes:

Suspension is a necessary condition for the development of all those higher goals that make up a rational person.

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Until the days of this period of the life of the chrysalis have been painfully accomplished in which it cannot emerge a new and glorified creature, which, through spiritual transformation, is equally planted with shadows and works [being human].

Fill up on Ursula K. Le Guin on suffering and the other side of pain and Oliver Sacks on despair and the meaning of life, then revisit Alexis de Tocqueville on peace as a form of action and tragedy as a catalyst for growth.