What is an “existential crisis”?

Is it being caught in intellectualizing, fearing, hoping, believing and experiencing the resulting feelings that arise as a result of such a flurry of emotion-provoking thoughts?

Do such thoughts lead one to question existence itself... the meaning, the purpose, the value?

Do these thoughts lead to a complete disillusionment of existence itself or rather gravitation toward the Truth? Such a crisis can cause despair sure but maybe... could it be enlightening?

On one side (let's call it the "dark" side for now) there is depression… debilitating inertia… panic attacks and the whole shebang - on the other ("light")... there is a release, a surrender.

The "dark" side can manifest as one hell of nightmare, a suspenseful drama.

It may last moments, days, weeks, months… or years… at varying degrees. It may lead to sincerely illogical reactions and more pain or perhaps to the most promising realizations.

You know the proverbial "light at the end of the tunnel"?

Tossing and turning in bed late into the night on a regular basis under psychological assault, worrying about this and dreading that and feeling sorry for oneself, simultaneously hopeful and hopeless... until something pierces the "dark"-ness.

Another presence.

"Light" Or a God or maybe just insanity and more hallucinations but for just a brief moment there is a glimpse, there is MORE to SEE. A vision from above as if the walls and ceiling lend sight.

A body… in the dark of the night… in a warm room, lying in bed wrapped in blankets… eyes closed… somewhat strained but Silence reigns the Space. Even if for only a moment - undeniable peacefulness.

SEEING this person - YOU - storyless, nameless, crisis-less.

Darkness and Lightness offering an indescribable experience of the Whole.

The experience of darkness may resume... but impossible to forget the experience.

In the Space, leaving in Dark and entering in Light.

As a skylight illuminates a dark room it takes both to set the scene.

Both exist, or perhaps neither do... maybe the whole is all that there ever was, all that there IS and all that will ever be...

Can one live not in darkness or light but whole?

What lies beyond the skylight?

What is it that I am not seeing right now?