Lessons from a Spiritual Crisis, or What Kalindi Taught Me

In the Integral Naked thread Darkness Shining Wild: IN Book Club someone asked about “spiritual emergencies”, "death/rebirth" or other challenging experiences…

I responded by describing losing Kalindi in 2001 and some of the effects it had on me. Here's what I wrote:

I've had one major existential crisis in my adult life, which I've spoken of elsewhere; I'll give a brief recap here. In 2001 someone with whom I'd been in a significant long-distance relationship for 2 years committed suicide - this followed a period of several months during which she was suicidal and I was devoted to trying to save her; it finally appeared that she was OK, and shortly after that point she killed herself. I was in shock and broken down/open, suddenly realizing the extent to which she had become the sun that I orbited around; with Kalindi gone I was flung into space, and all hope and meaning were gone. I spiraled down into clinical depression and a couple of months following her death I woke up planning to kill myself. Basically I felt like I was in an abyss and there was no way out. If it hadn't been for the fact that thanks to her I knew quite well the impact suicide has on other people, I would have done it for sure; but as I didn't want to inflict that pain on my family and friends I found ways to keep going and put my life back together again.

What did I gain from that experience? A more vivid sense of the ephemerality of life, the omnipresence of death, and the radical incompleteness of the relative realm. A deeper sense of the importance of love and connection. I feel that this grieving experience propelled me rapidly through the end stages of the green meme and into a more integral perspective. I feel more compassionate. I've also tried a lot of things that I might not have before, and I feel less afraid. After she died, many times I prayed to Tara to help me take on Kalindi's karma, if such a thing is possible, to process her suffering for her. I dedicate all my merits to Kalindi first and foremost, and often feel as though I'm living for her as well as for myself.

Through Kalindi I feel connected to Death in a way I wasn't before, now that someone I shared a deep heart/soul connection with has crossed that line - and "voluntarily" at that. Her life and death are an existential koan to me, a mystery I don't feel I'll ever fully plumb the depths of. It's easy for me to be grateful for her life, but sometimes in a certain way I can even be grateful for her death, however much I wish it hadn't happened, especially in the way it did.

For a long time after her death I felt completely exposed to life, helpless and vulnerable; and when my "armor" started reforming, although I felt more able to cope with life (in fact, more than I had been before she died) I missed the openness that I experienced. I would like to get back to that kind of state, but in a more functional (and less traumatized) way.

One other thing. In the midst of the worst of my "abyss" experience, I felt something that confused and disturbed me at the time: deep down there was sometimes a sense of...bliss...or space...or something (or nothing?)...at the time it felt like a betrayal of her to feel anything positive, but later I wondered if I was actually broken open to something like causal awareness, and just wasn't able to recognize it at the time for what it was.

arthur