The Dark Night Of The Soul or The Dark Night Of The Mind?
CHILDLIKE DREAMS AND THE PITFALLS OF LIFE
No one wants to suffer. No one wants to go to the depths of hell. I think it’s safe to say that none of us as children thought about how wonderful it would be to lose control of our lives and have no idea what was happening to us? As the child, we are the dreamer, the imagination is dominant, we fantasize how we want our lives to be. We are the creator of our future selves, and as children, some of us access this aspect of the mind much more than others. To be clear, this is the mind exploring in creation.
As many joyous occurrences we can experience, there are just as many hurdles the mind sees as obstacles or hindrances to the dreams we created as children. Whether upon sudden impact, or by gradual fated circumstance, life may present a series of challenges, disappointments, tragedies, you name it, life will happen. You may find yourselves facing one road block after another leaving you stuck with many unanswered questions.
All of life’s ups and downs are merely peaks and valleys on our path in this world. Depending on your state of mind, you may experience a variety of emotions and reactions to these rolling hills. The mind grows accustomed to believing peaks are “good” and valleys are “bad.” Eventually you may find yourself pulled into the great depths of darkness, a darkness that can have many levels and purposes as it prepares you for the Dark Night.
DARKNESS
External events trigger deeper states of darkness in our minds. It is quite normal to experience depression and discouragement when things appear to go wrong. These tragedies can leave all of us feeling lost, uncertain, and left to question why this situation has happened at all. You might feel victimized, attacked, and left with a heaviness that simply won’t leave. This can last for quite some time. Some snap out of the heaviness faster than others, but for those that get pulled even deeper, what is really going on? Is the darkness caused by external circumstance, or is this a true Dark Night of the Soul?
If the mind is fixated on an external event and uses it as cause for feeling depressed, then chances are it is simply depression. However, if there doesn’t appear to be any life circumstance that has pulled you into darkness, yet you are feeling as if something has left you, abandoned you, and the emptiness is happening from deep within, it is quite possible you have entered a type of Dark Night of the Soul, or at the very least, a level of it’s undoing.
WHAT IS THE DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL?
The Dark Night of the Soul has its place in most religions, and the mystics of the past have spoken of its purpose. St. John of the Cross has one of the most well known experiences, which he put into poem form. It is worth your time, especially if you find yourself down in the darkness for any period of time.
Along the spiritual path, the Dark Night is an experience of relinquishing who we thought ourselves to be, it is the realization that our special ego identities are not who we are, and the illusion of a separate self comes to the forefront. This is not the illusion of unwanted or wrong thinking, it is the illusion of a fictional self that is called YOU. This understanding can be extremely painful to us. All of our lives we have believed in who we are, we have been taught to build ourselves up, to create a strong sense of self, to empower ourselves, then to have this inner experience show itself can be extraordinarily dark and difficult. Quite frankly it is devastating.
When you feel to your core that you are not your special individual self, that it is some kind of mask in this world, and you start losing faith in the world, or believing it holds any real value, the experience within can be utterly impossible. There is a point of limbo, a place where you see the world is not what you thought it was, that you were not what you thought you were, yet you still don’t have any awareness of the EVERYTHING, or the unity of God. You are feeling nothingness, emptiness, and the fear that can set in becomes overwhelming. There is no other way to say it, this can be down right awful!
During this period of darkness, it can feel like God abandoned you, that any sort of spiritual connection has been severed. You might be asking for help, praying for guidance, just to be shown absolutely nothing. No matter what you try, no matter how you work to better your inner darkness, it simply doesn’t happen, in fact, it only gets worse. You are pulled into a spiritual oblivion. This can be extremely lonely. It doesn’t mean that you will be locked up in your bedroom for months or years at a time. You CAN continue to function yet all the while this is happening in the underworld. It’s like a battleground in the mind, wavering back and forth between believing in something greater, or believing in the purpose of the world, and you are getting a front row seat. If only we could enjoy the popcorn!
IS IT THE SOUL OR THE MIND?
There are many ways to view the Dark Night of the Soul. The question to ask is, what is really suffering here? From the religious perspective, the soul is needing purification before it can enter heaven. In this belief, the soul is the error. But is that really the case? Is it true that the soul needs evolution and purging before returning Home?
Another perspective is that the MIND is really the one in turmoil. If the soul is a pure replica of our REAL HOME, then we simply let go of the mental construct that we assumed ourselves to be, in order to see the soul. This is a devastating moment for the thinker. When everything you thought to be true, isn’t true, it’s the mind that will fall into an endless abyss. It will travel the spiral staircase, go through the levels of unraveling, until nothing is left to unravel. This is the true Dark Night.
You can experience many mini Dark Nights in your life or lifetimes, prior to this event. These mini moments certainly prepare you for later down the road, each one pulling you slightly deeper into nothingness. When all is gone, yet our true Home in God has not yet been united within, this state of total and complete limbo brings up sheer terror in the ego mind. A true subconscious terror is released. The ego is the one shaking in its boots. It is the false identity that doesn’t exist. It is knowing the “I” that you thought was you, is not so. This may last quite sometime. The more you understand what is happening, the calmer you will be. However, the fear must simply be released, so allowing that to happen, watching it as it comes forth is helpful as you go through this very trying time.
The beauty of the All in God does not include the mastermind of trickery, the dual mind is not included. If there is only ONE in God, then the conflicted mind cannot go on. You must choose between the false mind of the ego, and the right mind of Spirit, they do not coexist. This is the real dark night, this is the total darkness that is toward the end of anyone’s journey Home, our journey beyond this world. This Dark Night, whether you relate it to the soul or the mind, brings you to the brink of non-existence itself.
A PERSONAL ACCOUNT
When I was pulled into the abyss, a level of terror arrived in my life that quite literally dominated my every waking moment. After having the experience of merging, and severe difficulty in operating in the world, I surrendered to the process that was pulling me deeper. As I focused to get in touch with this much larger presence surrounding me, I often felt like I was being erased, quite literally wiped out of existence.
At times I would be preparing a meal in the kitchen while my young children entertained themselves. Chopping vegetables, I could go into very deep altered states of consciousness, and a strange pulling feeling would appear from deep within my being, as if something was sucking the life right out of me. It felt like a part of me was being forced into a deep darkness, a rabbit hole upon which I would never return. I often thought I would drop and go into another realm, yet that never happened. Instead I would seek refuge on the couch until the disappearing subsided. What felt physical, never actually did anything physical to me. I always maintained alertness and awareness, almost too alert at times.
These events repeated themselves for a period of time, and I became used to losing the feeling of me. It seemed that the “I” within was being eliminated, and something much greater was stepping in to take its place. All I could do was observe and watch the terror, breathe in and out, as this supernatural phenomenon occurred. Words do not do this experience any justice, as the petrified feeling that arose is truly outside of language. It was as if the small ego mind was seeing its terror of losing its own existence. The larger field of awareness was there to just see it. I couldn’t do anything about it, I couldn’t ignore it, or run from it, I simply had to walk it, to live it fully, to see fear and terror for what it was, and to accept fear as a gateway into something else.
THE END OF THE HERO’S JOURNEY
The Dark Night can be summarized like walking through the ring of fire. Much like the end of the epic hero’s journey, often portrayed by slaying the fire-breathing dragon, only to discover that the dragon is really YOU. You are the one holding the gun to your head, not a nice discovery, but a truthful one. When this realization sets in, when this fearful moment arises, this is such a devastating and painful truth, that the darkness sets in for as long as it needs to. You now know the false image of you is nothing, yet this stage of oblivion, where nothing has yet to take its place leaves the mind in a state of utter panic.
There is very little you can do to change this inner subconscious revelation. You merely bare witness to its release. Knowing that this is something you must go through in order to see clearly may bring peace to your situation. Trusting that you will be guided through this process, that the inner faith within will never burn out, that this current state of true darkness will pass, and your union with the larger awareness is inevitable will only help as you navigate these tumultuous waters.
The person in the midst of the Dark Night of the Soul knows deep down that the love for union outweighs anything else. You know that you will not make this choice logically, this is beyond your small self. You must simply wait until something greater presents itself to you. Then the ALL is known, and there is no longer the uncertainty of who and what you really are.