Buddhist writer Natalie Goldberg talks about how the darkest aspects of our lives can be the most spiritually illuminating. Interview by Lisa Schneider Natalie Goldberg, a practicing Buddhist for more than 30 years, is the author of 10 books, including the best-selling “Writing Down the Bones”, a guidebook for writers. Goldberg considers writing a spiritual exercise, and it has helped her come to terms with her relationships with her father and her teacher, Dainin Katagiri Roshi.

How can failure be useful to us spiritually?

Failure is what we’re all running from, we’re always running toward success with failure at our back. And actually, which one of us has never failed or never been disappointed or betrayed? What I learned to do was to step back and enter the heart of failure. There are a lot of jewels there for awakening.

Are there particular ways to work with failure, other than acknowledging it?

I think what I did in the case of my father and Katagiri Roshi — two people I loved very much and who also betrayed me — I really entered that betrayal. I didn’t cut off the love; that’s what we usually do — we either make it black or white, success or failure. “The Great Failure” is about embracing both.

And how do you do that? Well, you can practice, you can go to therapy, you can write about it, cry a lot-you know, it’s kind of a practice of grief because we have an idea that we won’t fail. You know so it’s a process that we’re human beings and on this earth and that we’re going to fail, we’re going to be betrayed, we’re going to be disappointed, and the world is not the way we thought it was. — Beliefnet.com