Dark Night of the Soul
"Dark night of the soul" sounds like a threatening and much to be avoided experience. Yet perhaps a quarter of the seekers on the road to higher consciousness will pass through the dark night. In fact, they may pass through several until they experience the profound joy of their true nature.
Many seekers would encourage the dark night experience if they knew what it was. However, to one engaged in the dark night, suffering seems unending.
The dark night occurs after considerable advancement toward higher consciousness. Indeed, the dark night usually occurs like an initiation before one of these special seekers is admitted into regular relationship with higher consciousness. The dark night also occurs to those who do not seek relationship but immersion or unity in the higher consciousness. While the term dark night of the soul is used broadly, its general meaning — in the field of higher consciousness — is a lengthy and profound absence of light and hope. In the dark night you feel profoundly alone.
The Dark Night of the Soul is a lonely painful process in
which consciousness is clouded by uncertainty to unravel the entanglements of
ego within the self. As the pain and suffering within self and the world are
faced and embraced, eventually the heart-beat of love is freed to express its
many rhythms of service to others, God, and self, one and the same. We can only
enter the dark corridors of this purification of consciousness if we accept the
courage that comes from our Spirit. Courage sustains our mind and body on our
journey through the deepest agony, suffering and pain. The Dark Night of the
Soul is entering a cloud of unknowing, through which profound illumination in
consciousness may emerge. By entering and accepting the intense pain and
emptiness that accompany this state, liberation, enlightenment, and
participation in Mystical Consciousness replace the ego's distorted clouded
perceptions with clear flowing light. The anguish and suffering within the self
and the world can be transformed to profound understanding and joy.
During the Dark Night, the deepest understandings of our true Self unfold.
Awareness slowly surfaces that we are a uniquely tuned instrument of service and
compassion to true Self and this attunes us to the true Self in others. In this
liberation of consciousness, we become free to know the multiplicity and unity
of the One, the Divine, the Self that encompasses all Selves. This state opens
us to understanding the interdependence and interconnectedness to everyone and
everything as we lucidly begin to witness the timeless flow of Divine
Consciousness in the Eternal Now. Through realization and acceptance, Divine
Consciousness may begin again to fully resonate in the empty spaces and places
within the self. The person passing through the dark night receives lessons that
reverberate with everyone as the experience resounds through the collective
consciousness of our species.
The dark night of the soul is an avenue for reintegration first through
disintegration. Western conditioning and socialization has created a false
perception within us all that we are an absolute independent self. During the
dark night of the soul we mourn as this notion of self is mourned. Through a
painful de-conditioning, we begin to understand that reconnection to our true
Self is not a singular process but a reconnection to everyone including our self
and God. False notions of a separate self are being burned up by the fires of
the mind. We begin to recognize that the feeling of abandonment by God, common
to the experience of the dark night, is really abandoning the false sense of
self and others we have developed. A realization unfolds that service to Self,
others and God are all the same. An understanding emerges that you are an
ever-changing relative self within One Self and other selves in the continuum of
consciousness.
This de-conditioning is not easy and is a lonely and desolate place of
suffering. You may feel that you are caught between two worlds, the perceived
painful world where you and other people helplessly suffer, and the enlightened
world where unlimited higher consciousness and Divine Love reigns. The ego knows
nothing of "let go, let God," during the process so it jolts and jabs the
thoughts and emotions continuously with its daggers as it tries to cut and
separate. The process is painfully stressful to the body and agonizing to the
mind as the ego interferes and keeps you perceiving a hopeless never-ending
battle between these worlds. The whole ego system is in the process of being
shattered as one recognizes that the ego's many strategies are from the ways of
the world, not the love of God. All the discordant noises, disharmonious
rhythms, repertoire of illusions, cacophony of prejudices, preconceptions,
conditionings, socializations, false images of self and others are being called
to task by the higher consciousness. One may feel that one's own voice is
unsupported by God and simultaneously unheard in the wilderness of the world.
This cloud of unknowing is antithetical to the ego that desperately fights and
wants to remain part of us as we enter mystical consciousness and enlightenment.
All duality perpetrated by the ego is being dissolved and disintegrated during
this most painful emptying process. Out of this lonely internal battle deep
within, begins to flow the wisdom of living purely for virtue's sake, free of
the previous ego's distortion that everything you do must be rewarded.
Eventually the feelings of alienation and rejection by the world subside and you
are no longer between two worlds, but start to come home (Om). A lucid
illumination begins that all compassion and service are for the same Self, your
relative self, Universal Comprehensive Self (God) and every One. Through this
state of real being, you more fully realize that you can be in the world, not of
the world. You can be in the suffering, not of suffering.
There are many reasons that a dark night of the soul experience presents itself.
Each of the reasons is ultimately a matter between your Spirit and what you came
into this existence to learn. The dark night may occur to salvage the remainder
of your life when living has become full of disharmonious habits and you are no
longer living consciously or virtuously. The dark night may be an offering by
your spirit to meet the challenge of purification and regeneration of your being
before the end of your life. Whatever the reason, within such a conversion
process, a person must muster every ounce of their conscious energy to accept
this deeply painful transmuting of ego energy back to meaning, purpose and
service as they are one and the same. Some of us may have to endure several
periods of the dark night of the soul throughout life. Others may be guided by
their Spirit to stay in this state for intense work the remainder of their life
before they die. Many reject the gift of the dark night repeatedly throughout
their life as they follow their ego's perception that Spirituality should bring
instant gratification and should feel good. True transformation is a painful
process and takes time. When St. Paul was blinded and knocked off his horse, at
least a decade passed before he began his service. It is time consuming to face
and embrace all suffering, but it leads to understanding with the mind and
viscerally with the body.
It is difficult to know that your heart is not beating freely if the weight of
the ego upon it is all you've ever known. Almost everyone suffers the same
ailment. When we pass through the Dark Night we realize "I am a free Self and
still connected to the world." We each have the heart of Self that beats freely
in the infinite space of Self and that Self is connected and alive in the world.
This is the liberation, the enlightened, mystical consciousness that comes
through enduring the painful transformation of the dark night. The enlightenment
frees the mind to really see with illuminated perception. As the mind is free
from the entrapments and cages of the ego, it frees the body as well from "dis
ease" and sickness that was previously being passed onto it by the
ego-influenced mind.
In a psychological sense the dark night of the soul may be understood as a
dissonance between the ego and higher consciousness that have reached critical
mass. The ego does not wish full spectrum higher consciousness to illuminate its
illusions, denials and projections as it maintains an entangled web of violence
towards the self and the self of others. Intellectually, you may have the
insight that the ego never was your true Self, but this provides no emotional
relief from the feelings of emptiness during the process. This state is like
living in a cloistered monastery surrounded by spiritual sightedness with no
comforting insight within as to what is happening to one's self. The Self has
never fully emerged independent of the ego and the ego provocatively generates
terror and fear in this state of uncertainty. New constellations of thoughts are
beginning to be comprehended and integrated, while simultaneously old
perceptions and discordant emotions are also being dissolved and transmuted to
harmonious ones. The mind is in a composition phase for its understandings of a
new melody with full un-impeded heart-felt beat in its dance with Spirit, and
the mind will stabilize and equalize to have healthier biorhythms within
the body again.
With this change, you are sometimes going to feel as though you are not here. You may feel exhaustion, because we are literally changing cells and becoming new beings. Like a new baby, you may need lots of rest. Mental confusion and not being able to concentrate on routine tasks may happen as we are being programmed for something larger. Aches and pains throughout the body for which there is no specific cause are common. Many people feel as though they are going crazy. If they go into an orthodox medical office, most likely they will be put on Prozac, because they can’t define what it is. It is difficult for the medical profession because they are not used to dealing with the energy body
Men
will feel their
Mother Theresa was in a dark night of the soul the later half of her life
through her death. She realized throughout her life that the poverty of
disconnecting from one's Spirit was more destitute than the most intense poverty
and suffering she could view physically in the world.
The last three phrases from her commentary, Do It Anyway, radiate the chosen
determination and reverberations of her mystical consciousness:
What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight.
Build anyway!
People really need help but may attack you if you help them.
Help people anyway!
Give the world the best you have and you'll get kicked in the teeth.
Give the world the best you've got anyway!
You cannot learn to love God with ego. Your ego has nothing to do with learning
to love yourself or others. Higher consciousness is entered freely for its own
sake and its illumination emerges by facing and embracing any darkness within
self. Herein is the fundamental lesson that loving the Divine, Self and Others
unconditionally, are one and the same. To enter higher mystical consciousness we
experience directly all the pain and suffering within and without. This
consciousness reflects and reminds us of the poverty of Spirit that remains
collectively among all human beings. This is not material poverty, but the
poverty of loosing touch with meaning and purpose, knowing true Self within and
with others, and real service to each other.
William of St. Thierry, a monastic writer during the 12th. Century said that
love is the eye in which we see God. Love itself is the understanding. St. John
of the Cross said that he felt closer to God during his passing through the dark
night. We each can know the deepest joy by embracing the greatest sadness
consciously with love. The dark night of the soul is offered as a gift of
illumination to every One of us. We are all reminded, beat-to-beat in the
longing of our soul for the Divine. The full spectrum of higher consciousness is
available in both our personal and collective evolution. As one of us
participates, it may be shared in consciousness for all the same.
Pain is never permanent.
St.
Theresa of Avila
....the endurance of darkness is preparation for great light.
St.
John of the Cross
As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a
light in the darkness of mere being.
Carl Gustav Jung
The dark night usually develops this way:
You Can’t Fit In
You, as a genuine seeker, have gone through many significant phases as you progress toward higher consciousness. Your faith is strong. You have kept loyal companionship with fellow seekers and perhaps you have already found a special teacher. You’ve experienced indications of the reality of higher consciousness and yearn to be more deeply in communion with it. You see the principles of a higher power at work in your life. Yet, all in all, you find yourself somehow painfully on the outside. You feel caught between your old way of living, your old tendencies and associations, and this nebulous, unreachable realm of higher consciousness.
You feel an exile in both places. You don’t belong in the old pastimes. in the old empty or numbing way of life, yet you somehow can’t fit in or feel at home in the fellowship of those who talk naturally of the higher consciousness and its reality. They are experienced, they are absorbed in it. They are loving, giving people. But you are unable to live, with full heart and mind, the way they do. They’re able to apply the principles of higher consciousness easily, yet it’s so hard for you. They have manifestations and proofs on a regular basis. You only stretch like a human mule after a receding corncob while pulling the heavy weight of your old tendencies behind you.
You try to be good, and often you can’t. You try to be loving and find at times your heart is hard like stone. Sometimes your projects fall down around your ears. You keep struggling and still you don’t break through. You understand the path is one of joy and yet your life seems to have been barren for a month or two, perhaps longer. Where did that early joy and zest go?
Hanging On
Up to this particular time there was joy, there was delight. But now there is only a hanging on, a dogged hanging on. You persist because you can’t conceive of going back to your old way of life. That seems impossible now. That would be like going to prison, living as if with a transorbital lobotomy.
You deeply want to have joy and fulfillment, easily manifest prosperity, but something’s not working. You don’t know what it is but something’s awry, and your meditations have lost their luster. Sometimes, during rare meditations, you do experience brief moments of peace. Your agonizing mind and heart rest from their turbulence and even these fleeting times of calm are so deeply appreciated. Your light dance of life, which had gone on for some time, is now a trudging in what seems a devastated and alien land.
Your fellow seekers look at you and show their concern. Their words of kindness are valued but you feel you’re somehow incapable of responding well. Your heart is numb. At these times your friends try to cheer you up. They invite you to dinner. You seem to perform fairly well, despite the emptiness you feel inside. What else is there to do? You wonder if you have any right to be in their fellowship at all. You think of leaving town, but where would you go? What good would diversion be?
A number of your friends in the fellowship of this great path know what you are going through for they have been through it themselves. They feel the main thing to do is encourage you to go on. They know if you keep it up and do not quit you will succeed. They know if you quit you will be a self-reject and will return to the old life, forever a foreigner, being neither at home with it nor at home anywhere else. They recognize that your own higher self, out of love, is lifting you up into its embrace. They see you are being drawn into your dark night because:
your inner potential has great stature
your crusty, old ego requires you go through the dark night in order to be transformed.
You Feel Totally Alone
Other seekers, for various reasons, do not have to pass through the dark night. However, the dark night is your way.
Your night is a very difficult time. While others may one day envy you for the marvelous growth you experienced in such a short, intensified period, you will, because of the pain of your experience, always feel profound compassion for those whom you one day see going through a similar night.
Being caught between the old way of life and the new possibilities, your sense of alienation intensifies. Your sense of inadequacy and not knowing what to do next becomes gnawingly constant. You feel you would do anything to get out of this state, yet it is only your ego which is keeping you in it. However, this insight is impossible for you to grasp while going through your long night.
And you feel so totally alone. Sure, you have friends and you appreciate them, but you are keenly aware they are not capable of feeling what you are feeling or knowing what you are going through. Sometimes they seem like clowns, sometimes they seem empty-headed, caught up in meaningless pursuits. They do not understand, you think, how much you are suffering or how you cry out and pray deep into each midnight. You try their advice but it doesn’t seem to touch the heart of the matter.
You begin to enter the dark night in earnest when you feel completely stranded. In the fullness of the dark night you don’t know where you are spiritually. You’re separate from God and man. You do not know where to turn. Your friends love you and wish you well but your condition does not improve.
The dark night is a very private matter. The person in the dark night is generally able to function quite well despite inner suffering. Often your acquaintances never suspect that you are going through the dark night — they probably do not even know what it is. Only people close to you — especially friends along the path — can recognize your pain.
You feel like a hollow person doing the activities of life with no motivation except expediency. Your eyes seem deeper in your head. You are profoundly aware of the suffering of humanity and the cruelty of one person to another. You feel that cruelty and negativity far outweigh love and constructive action.
You Enter Midnight
Alone, and not wishing to be, unable even to express yourself to others, you enter midnight and the greatest intensity of the dark night. Here you have finally come to the time of sovereign solitude. In this precious time, which has no apparent prospects of love or happiness, you clearly perceive that nothing in the outer world has proven adequate to heal your condition. Nobody, not even your dearest friends and loved ones, can make you whole. Even if they have tried, and love you enough to try loving you forever, they can’t give you peace.
You eye your books and consider all the benefit you have gained from these extremely wise vessels of truth. Yet not one book, not one thought, goes deep enough inside you to where the affliction abides.
You look at your possessions, your money container. No material thing has been able to help you. No material means have worked. Nothing, no one, in the outer world has enabled you to come out of this dark night.
In your loneliness, you next — in a seemingly random process — notice that none of your thoughts have proven adequate to your suffering. Not one — even repeated fifty thousand times — breaks the inner storm and lets in light. God and higher consciousness seem so far away that perhaps they are unreal. Neither one has, despite your protracted exposure of yourself, done anything to ease or remove your agony. Nothing appears efficacious. Nothing works.
Clearly, there is nowhere to turn. There is nothing to be done. All actions you considered have been tried. There is nothing to think, nothing to feel, nothing to do, nowhere to go. It seems you have to accept this defeat — or, you can persist in struggling against it. For awhile longer, you go about thinking, feeling, and doing other options that occur to you. But you realize in the midnight of your soul that you have tried every option you know of.
The Peace Comes
Helpless, totally helpless, as well as ever so alone, you abide in this condition. And you accept your predicament. You accept that there is really, except for a murmured prayer to a remote Lord and a remnant of a shredded faith, nothing else left.
Suicide would be absurd. Suicide would be an act of arrogance and vanity. You have grown far beyond such primitive responses to your private agony. No, nothing to do. Nothing remains in this lonely helplessness. There is, without question, nothing you can do.
You abide. You accept your state. How have you gotten to this place? That’s insignificant. Musings and feelings aside, you wait. You feel you may have to stay this way forever, doing the regular day-to-day things, but in this mood of emptiness. Nothing. Nothing.
Then, it happens. A holy presence comes into your room — sweetly, softly. You feel it filling you. Your mind is filled with mellow or bright light. Your heart, your still heart, is permeated with peace. This peace moves through your body like a cold spring of mountain water. It flows in your spine, your brain, and under your skin. Everywhere.
Also, this presence, this comforter, moves like a breeze across your arid mind and numb heart. Then, or a few days later, the fire of joy begins to smoulder.
Here, abiding with nothing more to do, your ego drops away! Your ignorant,
arrogant, fearful sense of self falls away from you.
You stand in light — a new being, a free being — transformed and
flood
A promise lives within you now.