As this blog goes live on Nov. 4, 2024, our nation is on the precipice of a presidential election (and all the down ballot offices) that has us all, if we are honest, in a most difficult place. I’ve lost count of the number of conversations I have had in recent weeks where the repeating theme is how battered, lost and alone so many of us feel in the midst of these times not only in our country, but in the world. 

I hold as a working principle of meaning making (spirituality) that feeling alone–while it is an experience that most of us do not go looking for–is an important place for us to find ourselves. Feeling alone signals a circumstance which allows us, if we take it, the opportunity to check out what is going on with us and to discover meaning and guidance that is waiting there for us.

We often give an awful lot of energy to caregiving and caretaking of other people around us. That energy expenditure is a good thing. Human service, human kindness, human generosity, and human compassion are among our brightest and best values. And, we can engage them so intensely that we lose sight of ourselves in the process.

There is a light
within you, in your soul, uncreated
and uncreatable; it simply is.

If you wish to know yourself,
look for this light in the dark;
it is ever present, even when
you’ve lost sight of it. Look
away from what you think
you are, and look deeper into
the darkness that is within.*

If we are feeling confused, exhausted and alone at this time in our common history, it is very likely that we have been brought by all that is going on around us to that darkness within. At first, it is a disturbing experience. As the next few days and weeks unfold, publicly, I encourage us all to spend some time, maybe extra time, thinking of this aloneness as an invitation to notice the space within. We can find that light, the uncreated, uncreatable light that simply is who we are. We can notice it.  We can dwell with it. We can allow it to recenter us. We can become reacquainted with our own inner light. 

I am convinced that regardless of the outcome of this election, we will need to draw on our inner light to find our way forward, and we will need others who are doing the same for themselves. So, let’s greet the aloneness, the darkness, and open our eyes to the light within our souls. 

~Robert Patrick

If these kinds of questions and experiences sound familiar, you might find spiritual direction a good way to explore them.  Here’s how to get started.

*Excerpt from “There Is A Light Within You”, Meister Eckhart’s Book of Darkness and Light: Meditations on the Path of the Wayless Way, Sweeny and Burrows, p. 15