Mystics speak of a great sorrow in contemplation. It is very common in our modern times to have an intense aversion to any talk of spiritual sadness as a virtue.
We have a prevailing feeling that spirituality must always be uplifting and positive. This tendency arises out of a confusion about what Love truly is.
We know that God is Love, and that we are called to live lives of Love. Love is not always a positive happy feeling. Love is not always uplifting and encouraging. Love is selflessness.
Love is the rapture of being lost in the well being of others. It follows naturally that if you have Love for creation that you will feel a great sadness for the condition of the World and those within it.
There is a great heaviness in truth. In the reality of life there is hurt and pain and for many this pain and injury is all consuming and relentless.
As you become gradually aware of the truth you become more and more aware of the great sadness of reality.
Deep within the spiritual World is a center of absolute nothingness. This is a profound realisation for the spiritual practitioner to make.
Underneath all your ideas of what is right or good the truth is much more bleak. The knowledge of this is a necessary step if you wish to dwell with God.
In order to understand fully what is God and what is not, you need to see that without God you are meaningless.
There is nothing innovative or excellent you can do, and the more you learn and try the more this grief grows in relation to your efforts.
The more you acquire, the more you realise your own poverty. The more you come to know God the more you see the meaninglessness of all creation.
If you find yourself feeling a heaviness in your heart, do not assume that means you are off track. If you find yourself mourning for the state of the world, then you are mourning with God.
Do not fight the sadness, do not run from it. Be at peace with it. Be comfortable in it.
And know that it is fleeting just like your meaningless life. Learn to rest in the beauty of the Divine Sorrow. For not only are you empty in your being but God is just as much grief as Love.
If you are not tangibly soaked in tears then you are not living in the truth. This is the sacred sorrow.
When it comes to sadness, as with all things, the presence of the sacred can be known by the presence of peace. Divine sadness is a peaceful sadness, a heavy sadness.
If the sadness you are experiencing is accompanied by anxiety or anger then it is not sadness. Sadness does not worry. After all, anxiety too is meaningless.
Underneath this delectable sorrow is a river of Love which is neither joy nor sadness. It is eternity, beyond any Human description.
We call it Love because that is the closest Human word we have – but it is more than Love, more than the joy and sorrow which go along with Love. It is the root of all joy and sorrow.
Once you find peace with your sorrow and with your joy then you can move into the realm of the eternal – and your spiritual journey will have found the sacred well.