Deeper: The Descent That Finds Us

“Go deeper,” they kept telling me.
My spiritual director said it softly.
My mentor said it with a knowing nod.
My Shifu said it with a gravity that felt like invitation and warning all at once.

But no one could tell me what deeper meant.

For years I treated depth like a destination—something I could reach if I tried hard enough, prayed long enough, disciplined my soul with enough sincerity. I thought depth was something I could achieve.

Then one day, I found myself slipping beneath the surface of my own striving… and nothing in me could stop the sinking.

And I learned: there is no “going” deeper.
There is only surrendering to the descent that has already begun.

The Darkness That Knows Our Name

The language of faith often glows with light—resurrection, hope, revelation. But Scripture does not hide the darker landscapes:
the cry of abandonment,
the forsakenness of Christ on the cross,
the journey Paul names as “sharing in His sufferings… becoming like Him in His death” (Phil. 3:10).

My own descent did not feel holy at first.
It felt like drowning.

Breath thinned.
Dreams dissolved.
Even the desire to understand slipped from my grip.

There was only darkness—still, silent, unresponsive.

Part of me panicked. Another part whispered, Is this what I came for?
I wondered if I had made a mistake, if even God had stepped away.

And yet, for reasons I cannot fully explain, I did not fight.
Not this time.

I let the sinking happen.

When Surrender Becomes the Only Prayer

There comes a moment in every leader’s life when control fails—
when our strategies, our spiritual practices, our attempts at clarity
no longer keep us afloat.

We mistake this for failure.
But in truth, it is invitation.

In that depth where nothing could be seen, where even prayer felt impossible, something unexpected happened:

I realized I still existed.

Not in the way I had known myself—
not as a thinker, a feeler, a leader, a doer—
but as a presence held within Presence.

It was a strange sort of knowing:
a knowing without understanding,
a life without breath,
a stillness in which the self no longer needed to steer.

Christian mystics call this the cloud of unknowing.
Paul calls it the fellowship of Christ’s sufferings.
I can only call it mercy—
a mercy that strips us of every illusion of self-salvation.

The Mirror of Nothingness

In that depth of “no-thing,” I saw something I had never noticed:

Everything I cling to—
visions, anxieties, comparisons, dreams—
is only a mirror reflecting back the emptiness beneath.

Not a void of despair,
but a spaciousness where God alone is real.

And as soon as I recognized where I was,
as soon as I tried to name or hold it,
I found myself returned to the world of form—
the world of tasks and relationships and calendars and callings.

Like the disciples on the mountain,
I wanted to stay.
Like them, I could not.

The descent gives itself only as gift, not as achievement.
You cannot go there.
You can only be taken.

The Way Back Is the Way Down

Ever since that day, I’ve wrestled with the same question:

How do I return?

But the truth is unsettling and freeing at once:

I cannot return by effort.
Only by surrender.

Depth is not something we do.
Depth is something that happens when everything in us stops doing.

It is Christ’s descent into death, echoed in the small deaths we consent to daily—
letting go of understanding,
loosening our grip on outcomes,
releasing the self we keep trying to resurrect by force.

This is not despair.
This is formation.

This is what it means to be “found in Him” (Phil. 3:9).
To let His pattern become ours.
To sink not into nothingness, but into God.

Invitation for Your Own Descent

Perhaps someone has been urging you to “go deeper.”
Perhaps the Spirit has been whispering it in ways you cannot name.

If so, hear this gently:

There is no going.
There is only yielding.

Only the small, trembling consent to stop swimming
and trust the One who holds you even in the dark.

If the descent is upon you, you are not lost.
You are being formed.
You are being aligned with the Christ who went before you
into death, into silence, into surrender—
and rose.

This week, listen for where control is failing you.
It may be the very place where Spirit is inviting you to release your grip
and be carried into a depth you cannot reach on your own.