When we talk about the path of descent it is important to realize that descent is not always traumatic, automatically full of terror, or necessarily negative. At the risk of stating the obvious, what descent is meant to convey is going down into the depths – again whether by unavoidable circumstance or as a spiritual practice. Here depth is meant to convey something substantive, profound, true, momentous, and yes, dark.
To understand why we would ever intentionally choose to descend or choose to be fully engaged when descent is forced on us by difficult circumstances becomes more apparent when we think of the opposite of these terms. A life that is intentionally or unconsciously characterized by the opposite is a life that runs the risk of being shallow, superficial, inauthentic, frivolous, or always light (which is an illusion and therefore implies a “lite” life). Practicing descent then involves going down or going into the dark but it need not be humorless or devoid of joy. On the contrary, during times of descent people often feel more alive, more authentic, and more “in touch.”
What descent almost always involves is encountering the unfamiliar, unknown, unconscious, or hidden. In Jungian thought, the movement of descent is the movement into the unconscious and so terms like shadow or darkness refer not to that which is bad but that of which we are unaware. In her book Healing through the Dark Emotions: The Wisdom of Grief, Fear, and Despair Miriam Greenspan emphasizes that these emotions (as well as others) are not “dark” because they are bad but because too often they typically and tragically remain unconscious, unattended, and unexpressed. She writes:
By learning how to attend to, befriend, and surrender to the energies of grief, despair, and fear, we create the conditions for something new to arise in ourselves and in the world. We experience an unexpected gateway to healing and transformation. We release ourselves from the strangled grip of pain into an amazing alchemy by which grief, despair, and fear are transmuted to gratitude, faith, and joy. (emphasis mine)
Notice that Greenspan is not so much talking about healing the dark emotions but healing through the dark emotions which allows her to suggest that these dark times of descent are also laced with wisdom.
As long as we assume that darkness is bad or evil, or think of heaven (or God) as up and hell (or satan) as down, then the underground journey or going into the depths or downward mobility will seem sinister or negative. Whether voiced by the Hebrew prophets, Jesus, Buddha, Jung, Kenneth Leech, Pema Chödron, or Miriam Greenspan, one of the psycho-spiritual rationales for daring to descend down into the darkness of our lives and of life itself is to become more fully aware of and present to the totality and mystery of each. It’s not just that to avoid descent or never to go into the dark is to opt for illusion and pie-in-the-sky fantasy, but more so that it deprives us of whatever meaning the mystery holds or holds out to us as gift.♦