The onset of my depression was a moment when I suddenly became aware of an abyss behind me, one that had always been there but to which, for whatever reason, I was previously oblivious. Ever since I had simply assumed that this dark abyss was menacing, evil, an enemy; it threatened to swallow me whole, severing all ties I had to the world and people around me. When that happens my mind would stop responding to the world. I would be in total darkness, which is the total absence of everything good. The end of me.
Over time I came repeatedly upon an idea that challenged this assumption, which is that this darkness could be God or of God. It not only challenges the idea of darkness being bad, but also the idea of God as basically a glorified version of Santa Claus.
“I said to my soul, be still, and let the dark come upon you
Which shall be the darkness of God” – From Four Quartets by T.S. Eliot
“There is in God, some say,
A deep but dazzling darkness, as men here
Say it is late and dusky, because they
See not all clear.
O for that night! where I in Him
Might live invisible and dim!” – From “The Night” by Henry Vaughan
“Is my gloom, after all,
Shade of His [God’s] hand, outstretched caressingly?” – From “The Hound of Heaven by Francis Thompson
John Wren-Lewis wrote an article, “The Darkness of God,” about a change of consciousness he experienced, namely a rediscovery of what he calls “the shinning dark.” You can find them in two parts here:
https://tatfoundation.org/tat-forum-archives/forum2006-12.htm#4
https://tatfoundation.org/tat-forum-archives/forum2007-01.htm#4
Psalm 139 declares that light and dark are the same to God:
“If I say, “Let only darkness cover me,
and the light about me be night,”
even the darkness is not dark to thee,
the night is bright as the day;
for darkness is as light with thee.” – Revised Standard Version translation
I have noted external and physiological circumstances that usually push me to fall into depression. Where I am in my menstrual cycle, for example, plays a role. But I also have moments when for no apparent reason darkness just descends on me, and it does feel like a thick black cloud inside my head. Its coming triggers the fear of being totally submerged in it and unable to resurface. My usual impulse is to fight this dark cloud, to try to push it back and away. Lately I feel powerless. I’ve run out of energy to fight and deny it, and of ideas on what to fix. For you who are in the same position, what would happen if we just acknowledge its presence fully, and be still and let the dark come upon us, whether or not it is God? There will, of course, still be a risk that we would be completely overcome and did not come out.