A text that I have translated and which perfectly depicts the phase in raising awareness, which we know as the “Dark Night of the Soul”. Unfortunately, I can’t find the name of the author so it will remain unknown.
***********
The “dark night of the soul” sounds like a rather threatening experience that would be desirable to avoid.
But a quarter of awakened souls on their way to higher consciousness go through the dark night of the soul. It is actually possible for them to go through several of them until they experience the deep joy of their true nature.
Many awakened souls would encourage the experience of a dark night when they knew what it was.
But to one who is within the state of a dark night, the suffering seems endless.
Dark night appears at an advanced stage of consciousness development.
It usually appears as an initiation before the awakened enters into a connection with a higher consciousness.
Dark night also appears in those who seek not only connection but also merging and oneness with a higher consciousness.
The term dark night of the soul is widely used, but its general meaning is a long and deep absence of light and hope.
In the dark night, we feel a deep loneliness.
The dark night of the soul usually develops as follows: You, as a consistent seeker, go through many significant stages and progress towards higher consciousness. Your faith is strong. You maintain loyal friendships with other seekers and may have already found a special teacher. You have experienced the reality of higher states of consciousness and strive for even deeper unification. You recognize the principles of higher forces at work in your life. But overall, you still painfully feel like you’re still on the outside. You feel caught between the old way of life, old tendencies and associations, and this foggy, inaccessible level of higher consciousness.
You feel like you are in exile in both worlds. You no longer belong to the past, to the old empty or unfulfilled way of life, but in a way you do not belong or do not feel at home with those who quite naturally tread the path of higher consciousness and its reality. They are experienced, they are in unity. They are dear people and people who provide a lot.
But it is impossible for you to live with a full heart and mind, the way they live. They simply apply the principles of more consciousness, while it is still difficult for you. Manifestations and evidence for them are commonplace.
You stretch like a donkey towards a class of corn that eludes you, at the same time dragging behind it a heavy burden of old patterns and tendencies.
You try to be good, but often you don’t succeed. You try to be full of love but often your heart is hard as a rock. Sometimes your projects fail and you keep fighting and still fail to breakthrough. You know it’s a journey – a journey of joy – your life seems like a barren/unproductive month or two, or even longer.
Wondering where that previous joy and aspiration went?
Until that particular moment, there was a joy. But now there is only perseverance, persistent perseverance. You are persistent because you cannot comprehend a return to the old. That would mean for you like going back to jail, like living with a lobotomy.
Deep down you want joy and fulfillment, a simple manifestation of abundance but something is not right. You have no idea what this is about, but something went wrong and your meditations have lost their charm.
Sometimes, in the rare moments in your meditations, you still feel moments of peace.
Your mind in agony and your heart resting from turbulent moments and you are even grateful for those rare but deep moments. Your once easy dance of life, which has disappeared for a while, is torturous and you feel like you are in a foreign, unfamiliar country.
Your friends are watching you and expressing their concern.
You respect their warm words of support, but you feel like you just can’t respond the same way. Your heart is insensitive. At the same time, your friends are trying to cheer you up. They invite you for coffee, lunch. You pretend gratitude well, no matter the emptiness you feel inside. What else do you do? You wonder if you have any rights at all to be near them and you don’t even want their proximity. You’re thinking of going somewhere else, but where would you go? What would you get out of it?
A few of your friends know what you’re going through because they’ve been through it themselves. They feel that the only thing they can do for you is to encourage you to move on. They know that if you continue you will succeed. They know that if you give up, you will reject yourself and return to the old life, as an eternal stranger – neither at home with you nor anywhere else. They recognize that your Higher Self, out of love, lifts you into its embrace. They see that you are drawn into your dark night because of your great inner potential and that your rusty, old Ego requires you to go through the dark night of the soul in order to be transformed
And then it happens. The holy presence enters your room- sweetly, tenderly. You feel it fulfilling you. Your mind is filled with light. Your heart, your quiet heart, is filled with peace. That peace spreads through your body like a cold source of mountain water. It flows through your spine, your mind, and under your skin. Everywhere.
That presence also moves like a breeze around your numb mind and heart. And then a few days later, you begin to feel the fire of joy as well. And at this point, unable to hold on to anything anymore, your Ego falls away! Your ignorant, arrogant, scary sense of self falls away. You stand in the light – a new being, a free being – transformed.
Believe it or not but the dark night is nothing but a transformation. Your Ego, your limiting part of you, your misconception of who you are, must dissipate.
You recognize that it was your Ego that overshadowed your higher consciousness and your true nature. Your old sense of self was inadequate in relation to your new hopes and condition. Your suffering intensifies due to wrong conclusions. You are too used to thinking the way you have thought in the past. Throughout your life, you have gathered information and reactions from the outside world about who you are and where you are.
And these inputs are integrated into you and into something we call the Ego- your wrong sense of who you are. And as long as you allowed that inappropriate part of yourself to dominate your life, you couldn’t discover your true nature.
Your Ego is very strong — and how could you not when you have invested so many of your thoughts and feelings in it — and your view of life was based on an egocentric perspective.
Your Ego has progressively grown throughout your life because the basis of your thinking about existence and nature, has been strongly connected to the Ego.
And your Ego, because of your suffering or limiting circumstances in life, wants to have more power over the situation and more comfortable life. Our Ego even strives to achieve higher states of consciousness in order to dominate life even more. Not always, but often it is our Ego that persistently seeks a higher state of consciousness. He wants to control, he wants to manipulate events and make life the way he wants it. But as long as your Ego dominates your life, it is always in collision with your true nature and higher consciousness. And then it falls apart. There must be a confrontation at some point if we want our higher consciousness to emerge and if we truly want to know who we are and what human capabilities we possess.
Furthermore – and this is extremely important, especially in understanding the dark night of the soul – your Ego develops from childhood onwards and is convinced that it is he who coordinates life.
Generally speaking, it is your Ego that thinks that it is he who chooses what your mind will think and your heart will feel. He believes that he is the one who chooses the activities and jobs you will perform. Your Ego, believes that he is the one who is the creator, is convinced that he is doing and finishing everything in your life.
Now you can see how the dark night of the soul develops. Your wrong sense of self stood in the way of your enlightenment.
It may happen that until you anchor yourself in your higher consciousness, the dominance of your Ego returns. Sometimes when you are tired or new opportunities are in front of you, you become vulnerable and surrender the reins to your Ego which will again overshadow the higher consciousness until you become aware again of what has happened. And then you bravely and consciously draw out your true nature and confront your old Ego. Otherwise, you are again faced with the dark night of the soul.
A person who is looking for higher consciousness is actually looking for a way to transform the Ego.
He wants to break the tyranny of the Ego and be his own and not be driven by the wrong experiences and emotional inputs we have been filled with since the beginning of our lives. Of course, these experiences also had their value and taught us, but for the most part, they only gave us an illusory experience of ourselves. You are not a mistake and you are not a loser. Even a killer can change and become a new being.
But there is something else to keep in mind.
As you grow toward higher consciousness, your Ego will certainly not modestly wait in the background and transform.
It can happen that you develop a highly developed Ego that is sure that it is he who is responsible for your opening to higher consciousness. Your Ego may be very interested in the characteristics of higher consciousness, meditation, and everything related to enlightened beings. Your Ego feels big and content on the path to higher consciousness. Your Ego may also feel that he will be the one to bring enlightenment and awakening to your life one day.
He is confident that he will achieve higher awareness. Ironically, isn’t it, given that your Ego is standing in the way of light in the dark of night. It stands between you and your fulfillment.
In fact the length of your dark night depends on the cruelty and dexterity of your Ego. He can fight a very long battle if he is afraid that he will be destroyed or he will have to surrender to something much bigger than he can imagine. It is amazing that your Ego wants to be a part of the act of enlightenment. The ego wants to be the one to bring higher awareness into your life in its dramatic way. Convinced that he is the one who is the creator, he still does not surrender – until the moment comes when the dark night of the soul appears and when your Ego becomes aware that it can neither cause nor bring higher consciousness into your life.
The ego can neither by its own will nor by any knowledge create a fulfillment of heart that will stop your deep suffering. In a way, your Ego recognizes in the dark night of the soul that he is that disease. Recognizing its reflection on the mind and heart and in the advanced state of your journey, it recognizes that it has always been a blunt agent and a high stone wall that prevents the entry of light. The ego stands in opposition to the fulfillment of your faith and the realization of your deepest aspirations. Eventually, your Ego has found something it cannot do and in the dark night, the soul becomes convinced that it is incompetent. It cannot cope with your suffering or the fulfillment of your aspirations. Nothing he does thinks, buys or wherever he goes will suffice.
And here in the dark night of the soul, your life companion Ego dies, impotent. He has fulfilled his part but now weak and incompetent he can do nothing but transform himself. You wake up and get rid of the wrong feeling of yourself. And the dark night of the soul ends there.
~ Natalia
