Spiritus.Contra.Spiritum.

Does love equal pain?  I was determined to write a blog entry today (and was doing a fabulous job of procrastinating by checking facebook every two minutes) when I saw a friend’s status update that read – “It is amazing how quickly the mind can turn pain into romance.”  An eloquent statement of the issue I’ve been contemplating. 

           

            I’ve always lived in that region below (or above) the surface – the region where the colors are more vibrant, the emotions more intense, the connection deeper, darker, and lighter all at the same time.  It is a fantastical, vivacious, and awe-inspiring place to be.  It is also a dark and wrenchingly painful place.  Eventually, the pain became too much, and I faced a choice: slow (or maybe quick) alcoholic death, suicide, or getting sober.  You’d think of the three alternatives, the choice would be easy, but it honestly took a lot of deliberation.  Getting sober required letting go of the intensity - my greatest fear was that I would lose the vividness, that life would become … suburban, beige, normal. 

            Jung’s writings to A.A.’s founder Bill W. reveal that he viewed alcoholics as those searching for a connection to Spirit (to the Divine, to God); alcohol provides a version of that connection, but perverts and twists it, until you find yourself in hell.  In his words:

            “His craving for alcohol was the equivalent on a low level of the spiritual thirst of our being for wholeness, expressed in mediaeval language; the union with God. . . . You see, Alcohol in Latin is ‘spiritus’ and you use the same word for the highest religious experience as well as for the most depraving poison” (CG Jung, 1961). 

Therefore, the only solution is to find a real (real meaning non alcohol-induced) connection to Spirit.  As Jung said, “The helpful formula therefore is: spiritus contra spiritum" (Ibid).  Which translates to using spiritual communion against the addiction to alcoholic spirits.  And for me, Jung was right.  His formula worked.

            So here I am, almost 21 months sober.  I walked through my fear of beigeness, and let go of the vivid colors, trusting (against my better rational thought) that the real connection, the real Spirit, the real Divine would have colors brighter and more alive than any drunken facsimile could have ever provided.  And yes, it got beige sometimes.  It still gets beige sometimes.  And I struggle.  For I have grown up with the belief that those colors don’t exist without pain.  The belief that connection, that love, that the juice of life is inextricably tied to anguish.  I am (slowly) beginning to see that real love (both human and divine) is not the fantastically romantic ache that I thought it was.  That there can be love without drama, without the epic, mythic proportions of Romeo and Juliet.

            It is easy to fall into my old underlying belief patterns, and the voice of that mischievous spiritus archetype starts cooing to me again, and I become nostalgic, turning pain into romance.  So I let go, a hundred, a thousand, a million times.  I struggle through the daily beigeness because I have seen glimpses of the true colors, and they are incredible.  For me, now, the true colors happen in a quiet, unassuming way.  They are no longer fireworks, but they also do not burn me.  And in their quietness, I find peace.