Something Else: A Spiritual Director on Holding Obscurity & Disorientation
If you are in the thick of obscurity—holding inner tensions that cannot be resolved, or feeling disconnected from your deepest knowing…
If you are disoriented as the sands of time flow through the hourglass at a dizzying pace and there is no rest in sight…
Please open to this possibility with me:
A taste of something else may be very nearby.
Precisely what?
Precisely how?
No one can say for sure, but breadcrumbs abound…
A Felt Sense of Recognition
Something else may beckon through a felt sense of recognition—a resonance that “makes no sense,” or hasn’t before been consciously considered.
It might arrive through:
an idea
an image
a song
a movie
a blog post
a dream
Something else may encircle what has been deemed unworthy, illuminating a possibility just now, just here…in the presence of something else.
Something else may not conform to time as you have previously known it. One literal instant with something else may seem like hours—or even days—on the inside.
Something else cannot be explained. If you try to pin its wings down, it will evaporate… but something else can be sensed in your presence. Knowing this may save you time and energy.
Something else may be difficult to contain. This is normal. Nervous systems can be strengthened to bear what has not before been bearable—inner experiences that register as “so good,” and the ones that seem “so hard.”
Something else cannot be possessed. Savor every last drop. That feeling you are left with is GOLD.
Here are a few ways to work with that GOLD consciously:
Write a poem, paint, or collage—whatever your current art form is, or try a brand-new-to-you medium
Record a voice memo to remind yourself what you know in the presence of something else (or send one to a friend)
Call to mind someone carrying a fresh heartache or traversing a dense forest of uncertainty—hold them and the feeling of something else together
Take that GOLD with you on errands. How do others appear when you are fresh from something else? Your presence may transmit its glow without saying a word…or maybe saying a word is exactly what you’ll intuit. There are no rules.
Reflection: What else would you add to this list?
Staying Present to the Absence
If you tasted something else, and now there is only absence, I am sorry.
Please, please, please do not doubt yourself—or something else. I will make this wager: your encounter with something else was not an illusion.
Part of something else’s elusive, allusive beauty is improvisational genius. A great shape-shifter, something else keeps things fresh.
Absence may be as powerful as presence. Both may call forth great art.
With all of this context in mind, there are ways to open to a direct encounter with something else.
Orienting to a Way of Being: Expectancy Without Expectations
Sink into a present-moment experience with a memory of something else. What does it feel like—taste like, smell like, look like—when it arrives? Get really granular. How do you recognize something else?
Start the day with a wish to remember. Spend one conscious moment asking. Open your Notes app/Notion/journal/etc. Tell something else you are opening, and you wish to see/hear/taste/smell/feel/sense/know… and then move on with your day.
Give yourself to rhythms and practices. There is no singular right way. You might start by giving your full attention to a song that moves you. Breathe with it. Feel it. Sense it. Let it surprise you.
Dear Something Else…
Honest words like these are beautiful, too…
Please, dear something else. I am lost. I am afraid. It feels like I am going under. Will you remind me of the things I know, but can’t remember?
The Inner Landscape: John O’Donohue on Suffering & Complexity
John O’Donohue is a soul friend over space and time. His words are portals to the immediacy of presence. John died unexpectedly in 2008, but the wisdom he transmitted is alive. I experience it most profoundly in his audiobooks and lectures.
The Inner Landscape is a two-chapter audio lecture John delivered on suffering, produced by Sounds True. I return to it again and again, especially when heartache and pain are most acute.
Here is a description from the website:
Our bodies are mere outlines of a vast and complex interior world, a landscape of contradiction and immense mystery. This Celtic view of the human condition predates Christianity yet survives to this day as part of Ireland's unique spiritual tradition. In The Inner Landscape, poet and Catholic scholar John O'Donohue explores the themes of self-exile and hardship and the Celtic way of welcoming paradox and finding precious light in the darkest valleys of our inner terrain.
Instead of fearing the contradictions of the outer world, O'Donohue begins, the Celtic people welcomed them. They developed special blessings for times of suffering in the belief that hardship leads to a special insight or gift of the spirit. When you learn the Celtic “secret of equilibrium”—how to see every difficulty as a threshold of possibility—you renew your life with unending possibilities. Despite our vast technologies, O'Donohue says, our real knowledge is minimal. Only within “the inner landscape” with which we are each blessed can true knowing take place.
Listen to The Inner Landscape on Audible.
Presence + Space | Witness + With-ness
I’m Kirsten. If you’d like some company as you listen, come and journey with me in spiritual direction—a place to attune to your inner experience over time, and to hold questions or intuitions you don’t want to carry alone.
A Quick Word From Kirsten…
I am so glad you’re here. These reflections and practices are written by a human artist and spiritual director. They are joyfully and freely given.
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