Fujisan – Night Demons and the Right Stuff

Demons in the night.


We all have them. Some we know pretty well. Others exist only on the periphery of our consciousness as dark, disturbing shadows threatening our spirit and sometimes throwing us off purpose.


Spiritual writers refer to a "Dark Night of the Soul," which is a uniquely personal confrontation with those internal demons. To be clear, this post is not about organized religion or faith. Rather, I address a fundamental reality of our humanity. We all have a psyche, a term derived from the Greek for "soul" or "spirit. We all live a psychological or spiritual existence. Our psyche is where those demons play. It's where the "Dark Night" is said to occur.


One observer describes the Dark Night as "a time of powerfully intense internal struggling and questioning of purpose. This usually occurs just before a spiritual awakening. It is facing your demons, so to speak, and the abyss threatens to swallow you whole. If successful, the process strips away most of the ego that holds you back from seeing yourself as a pure being, distinct from yet inextricably connected to those around you and the universe as a whole."

Each of us who made the trek up Mt. Fuji eventually reached that point of "powerfully intense internal struggling and questioning of purpose." We all wanted to quit before we reached the top. We all had to reach deep inside ourselves to find some spiritual toughness that willed us on to complete the journey. We experienced a singular, personal relationship with that huge pile of volcanic rock. It became a demon to be confronted and conquered, a true dark night of the soul. "I will not let this f…ing mountain beat me." We each said it. When we each prevailed in the end, we had learned something new about ourselves. We accomplished a difficult goal in spite of every fiber of our physical and mental being screaming, "STOP!"

Many Japanese climb Mt. Fuji as a spiritual journey. We passed this woman, a septuagenarian if not older, trudging up the mountain alone. We passed her again as we descended, near the top, breathing labored with each slow painful step up those rocks. Hers was not a fitness jaunt. Her journey was clearly spiritual and personal. Judging from the age of her climbing stick, this was not her first trek. Darkness would fall by the time she reached the top. But such was her rugged determination, that no one could doubt she would reach the summit.

We all face challenges in life, sometimes by choice sometimes not. In the film, "The Right Stuff," Chuck Yaeger yearns to fly his experimental jet aircraft higher than anyone has ever gone before, "to find out where that demon lives."

When we take on difficult challenges we confront our demons. Demons not so challenged eventually run wild and take charge. Life then becomes either chaotic or sorely depressed. Only when we courageously confront those haunting demons do we truly learn who we are, "a pure being, distinct from yet inextricably connected to those around you and the universe as a whole," and that each of us in our own unique way really has the Right Stuff.