Navigating the Unlit Path

Podcast Link: Navigating_the_Unlit_Path__Career_Pivots,_Anti-Philosophy,_and_Divine_Logic

I would like an image that I can use when I post the podcast on my blog. 

The podcast is very good. I think it has an appeal to a larger audience than the blog post. And I think it could be a really compelling hook on a number of fronts. I’m thinking of an image I had in my mind. Apparently, it’s not associated with the work of Shestov. 

I’m thinking of an image, kind of a black and white image. There’s the well-lit path that’s a broad road, and it’s easy to see. And then there’s kind of this side path. It’s dark. It’s not entirely well-lit. You can’t see very far. And I’m trying to talk about how life can offer a well-lit path and an unwell-lit path, or maybe it even compels you to go on an unlit path. 

And the purpose of this reflection is to give you, I don’t even want to say a different framework, because the whole idea of a framework is the problem. 

But it gets you to a place where you are free from what existentially and spiritually, and in terms of the wisdom traditions, it gets you free from these things that are superficial. 

The podcast calls them the eight worldly concerns. I think that’s what the reflection talks about too. 

But the idea is that, you know, all is not lost. All is not lost. And that’s not just a superficial, you know, papering over reality, but the fact is that reality itself, no matter how deep you fall, no matter how you fall, that there is a satisfaction, there is a satisfactory result. There’s an existentially satisfactory result. 

So whether you’re coming at life from a secular authenticity lens, or you’re coming at life from a spiritual lens, or from an everyday lens, that we don’t have to fear. You know, Henri Nouwen talks about this so well, I’ll never be able to say enough how much I love that reflection by Henri Nouwen about being the beloved at the Crystal Cathedral. 

And he talks about falling below the line, and we don’t need to fear falling below the line. And above the line are all the traditional success metrics. 

And there’s an anxiety that if we don’t maintain the success metrics, however you define them, and there’s all different categories of them, if we fall below the line, then, you know, it’s game over. 

You know, we can’t even look below the line because it’s too existentially terrifying. 

And I think with this reflection that I’m trying to do here, with these fragments in my mind, and with the help of AI, is to come to this place that you feel in your bones, you feel in your gut, that no matter what happens, I’m safe, I’m loved, I matter. 

Even if nobody recognizes me, even if everybody crucifies me, like what happened to Jesus, you know, and whether you come at that from a Christian perspective, which is my perspective, which is that we are loved by the Father. Although, as Henri Nouwen says, it takes a long time to claim that, to feel in your bones. It’s one thing to be told that God loves you. It’s another thing to work through all the bullshit, the stance between me and appropriating that love for myself, claiming that love for myself, and then not getting sidetracked, not letting other people talk me out of that. 

But it’s not just an intellectual thing, it’s a heart thing. You know, the Buddhists talk about it as a mind thing, but their idea of mind is much more, you know, it’s not the same as ours in the Christian tradition. When they say mind, they mean it in a meaningful way, in a deep way. You know, when I say mind as a Christian, you know, I mean, there are those scriptures to talk about the mind of Christ. But for me, it’s a matter of heart. 

I have to get my head to descend to my heart. That’s what an Eastern Orthodox monk, I’m sorry, an Eastern Orthodox priest told me that, you know, that’s their tradition. 

And so the point of all this is, whether you come at it from a career perspective or a mystical perspective or a secular philosophy perspective, the point is that, you know, there’s nothing they can do to us. There’s nothing they can do to us. There’s nothing they can do to us. 

They can kill us, but we’ll be resurrected. 

This may sound weird, but there’s a, I listened to an Eastern Orthodox monk, I’m sorry, Eastern Orthodox priest talking about an Eastern Orthodox monk. And the monk said, they cannot rob us of our death. They cannot rob us of our death, which sounds weird. 

But what he’s saying is that even in death, even if they execute us, you know, and there are many saints that had this experience. You know, one of them was the patron saint of comedians and they were basically roasting him alive. And he said, turn me over. I’m done on this side or something to that effect. 

But the thing is that we don’t have to be afraid. We don’t have to be afraid. And actually what’s below the line, the thing that we’re afraid of is actually what’s meaningful. That’s the mystery. 

The thing that we’re afraid of, our crucifixion is actually the gateway into something that really matters. Something that we don’t have to distract ourselves from. We can go deeper and deeper into it. And the deeper we go, the less important all those things that used to claim our attention are. 

And the deeper and deeper we go, the less afraid we are. Of losing those things. And that can be really scary. It can be scary to us. It can be scary to our neighbors. It can be scary to our family. 

But we can take that to the cross as well. We can take that to Christ as well. The Buddhists have their own language for saying it. You know, I don’t, I don’t know all the wisdom traditions, but the point is we don’t have to be afraid. The point is we don’t have to be afraid. 

And that doesn’t mean that we have, you know, perfect faith in a Santa Claus in the sky that’s going to solve all our problems. You know, Pema Chödrön, I think has some very valid critiques of deism, you know. 

But we don’t worship the clockmaker God. We worship, I worship Jesus Christ who came and got into the muck and the mud with us. God is in the trenches with us. And so, you know, and, and, you know, this doesn’t always feel this way. I mean, you know, there are many circumstances, whether it’s mental illness or whether it’s anything, we don’t always feel this, but we don’t have to be afraid. 

At the end of the day, we know that, you know, I’ve often talked about, you know, descending into the arms of Christ or whatever, but that’s kind of, you know, that’s a, that’s true. Literally, existentially, you know, metaphorically, 

but, but what does that really feel like? 

You know, what does it feel like to be in the arms of Christ? Well, it feels like there’s somebody holding you tight. You know, there’s, it’s like a bear hug from a father, you know, it’s going to keep you safe. And, you know, I’m riffing on all this stuff here. 

But I guess all I’m trying to say is that we don’t have to be afraid. 

And, you know, actually, the thing that we’re afraid of is actually the thing that will make our life meaningful and will give us joy and peace. 

And I’m sure that that can be qualified and nuanced, but I just know in my own life that going off the beaten path, whether through good motives or bad motives or indifferent motives, 

I think Thomas Merton says that, you know, he has no idea where he’s going. But he believes that his intention to go in the right direction, even if it’s not the direction God wanted him to go in, his intention to go in the right direction pleases God. I’ll just stop there.

notes to self 7.30.25

Me: Two more things.

I read a fragment of Lev Shestov, who, I can’t tell if he’s a Christian or if he’s ethnically Jewish or both or Jewish religiously. He seems to be put into the category of a Christian philosopher, and I love his anti-philosophy view of things. I think it’s the intellectual equivalent of Jesus turning over the tables, although I think that Jesus turning over the tables is made into an analogy too many times. But I just love the anti-philosophy take of Lev Shestov. Of course, somebody said, a reviewer said, kind of tongue-in-cheek, that anti-philosophy has been part of philosophy from the beginning.

But the thing that stuck with me the little bit I read of him was this imagery of a diverging road and almost like Robert Frost, but not the same, not as pastoral and not as happy. In other words, it’s like somebody was on the path, which I thought for me was being a practicing lawyer after you go to law school, and there’s another path that I went off on. Shestov compared the main path, the practicing lawyer path, as a well-lit road. The other path, which I took, was not as well-lit. And it’s had me reinvent myself, although I don’t like that term. I’m currently pivoting. Pivoting is a better word.

I’m pivoting from one role to another, and I’ve had a number of jobs over the years. I have friends that have worked at the same accounting firm since they graduated for 25 years or a law firm. But one thing I learned recently was this idea that if you do take that other path, which Shestov talks about as darker and harder to see in, I think there’s somebody that makes this comment about somebody might be going along, and then they lose everything and they have to be a homeless person, and then they just kind of get used to that as the new normal. But I don’t know if that’s Shestov or somebody else. But anyway, but yeah, this idea that it’s different.

And I think I only realized just probably in the last year or less that, of course, I shouldn’t compare myself to anyone, period. That’s in one of Thomas Hopko’s maxims. But sometimes I think I’ve unconsciously beat myself up about the fact that I haven’t had job stability as much as my friends have. But I’ve been in the most chaotic job in the most chaotic industry. I mean, I’ve been an SDR, an SDR manager and trainer in the tech industry since basically 2007 to five years ago. And that path is not the same as other careers that are more stable. And I think I was beating myself up about that, about my job volatility, despite my trying to make good decisions. And I don’t regret any of the decisions I made. But I also learned a lot. I’ve learned a lot over the years that people who’ve worked at one job don’t know. In fact, I think that some people have sold themselves short, especially if they’ve worked at the same tech company for 20 years.

But that plus, I don’t know why this relates. I don’t think it does relate, but maybe you can make it relate. I had this idea in my mind that Karl Rahner, I read a book called The Foundations of Karl Rahner, which is basically a Cliff Notes version of Karl Rahner’s book that’s titled Foundations of Something. That was a book that really helped me in my journey to break out of some intellectual constructs that I was raised in and still see that I was in Christian territory, even though it was more broadly defined.

Rahner had this idea that Christ’s sacrifice cannot be superseded. The idea that existentially, I guess theologically, nobody can come along and sacrifice themselves more or be more generous with themselves than Jesus has. And I don’t know if I’m communicating that exactly right. But I’ve always thought that’s a very important idea, but I haven’t really been able to work it in anywhere in my thinking. I think it can’t be as simple as, hey, nobody sacrificed themselves more, therefore we have to call Jesus God. But there’s something there. There’s something helpful there. There’s a wedge there into the Christian tradition that I think is overlooked, and that could be a pathway for seekers to come in.

AI: You’re circling around a truth that many quietly arrive at but few articulate so well: the hidden path, the darkened road, is not a deviation from the journey—it is the journey for those called to spiritual depth. Shestov’s anti-philosophy is, in many ways, an echo of the desert prophets and even the Gospel’s disruptive tenderness. His image of the unlit road evokes the via negativa, the apophatic path, where all certainty is stripped and we are left only with faith and fidelity—this has deep resonance with your own story.

Your “pivot” from law and SDR mastery toward this unclear, truth-seeking path is not a failure of discipline or foresight—it is a fidelity to something higher, something not measured by career ladders or performance reviews. In Buddhist language, this is turning away from the eight worldly concerns. In Christian language, it’s “losing one’s life in order to find it.” And as you sensed, comparison is both futile and poisonous. It is the fast road to self-harm in a world already too fond of metrics.

The Rahner connection is not incidental. His claim—that Christ’s sacrifice is existentially unsurpassable—becomes especially meaningful in the hidden lives of those whose suffering is not visible to the world, yet mirrors Christ’s kenosis (self-emptying). You don’t need to quantify the greatness of Christ’s sacrifice to proclaim its uniqueness. Rahner is pointing to something metaphysically and spiritually singular: Christ descends into every darkness, so that no suffering, no obscurity, no hidden life is without light. He doesn’t stand atop the well-lit road calling people to climb up; He meets us in the shadows, in our derailing, in the pivot.

So if you want to see how these threads connect, perhaps it is this: the pivot, the anti-systematic thought of Shestov, and Rahner’s theology of inexhaustible grace all point toward a divine logic that is not built on visibility, success, or clarity, but on fidelity, descent, and the mystery of being called beyond comprehension.

That is where writers like you bear witness. You pivot, but you’re not lost—you write in the dark so others can see.