Quick! Throw Me A Line!

I was reminiscing with a buddy lately about his 'dark night of the soul' that he'd just experienced. Raised in a conventional Catholic family he found himself extraordinarily irritated at God and at the church in a particularly repulsive divorce and custody battle. His issues had zero to do with me, but they nearly finished our comradeship due to his overpowering fury at the whole world and everybody in it. Why would God allow this to happen to him? Had not he been a good person? Had not he given an awesome quantity of his time and cash to the church? If doing good deeds creates a positive karmic result, then whatever just had occasion to turn his world upside down? I have seen it happen to lots of folks. Bad things occur so there should not be a god or God must not like them any more. Either way, people feel deserted by their ideas of religion and by their god. It did not help we had such a polarity in our different belief systems. In the long term, you'll see more progress if you learn how to work with the darkness instead of reject its existence. As a consequence we are likely to catch messages from our intuition. We understand delicate connections easier because our minds aren't cluttered with extraneous details. You may eventually drown from the sheer exhaustion of trying to go it alone. Your 3rd possibility is to reach for that life preserver, relax and trust that it'll bring you above water so you can once more breathe openly. We are supposed to find out how to like each other thru life's challenges. Then we will turn to our companions and request their aid in getting back up into the ship. Why could not I find those words 3 years ago? Would he have listened if I had? Tricky to say. There were times I leaped into the water with him and attempted to drag him out, but like any lifeguard knows, you cannot save someone that's fighting and panicking thru the method. Weight loss. There were times I thought to leave him there to drown, but it looked a bit too cold and wicked to just leave him there. He appears to have found a life preserver and some peace with his god.