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
Many who know me remember that I was raised Roman Catholic, and at one time in my life even seriously considered becoming a Benedictine Nun.... time, circumstances, truth and the hand of the Universe led me along a different path and yet I still remember my Christian teachings and the pagan foundations on which they were built. It is because of these teachings and my deep abiding belief in the Natural Order and the power of God and goddess that I understand where I am at this point in my life.
I have lost the love of my life primarily to addiction and the subsequent problems that follow those; heart disease and cancer. I have lost much of my body to cancer and continue to wage a war with chemicals that are creating new problems, meditation, and faith. I have lost the love of my beloved daughter and son... and the companionship, laughter, and light of a precious little one. A deep part of me has entered that painful yet illuminating pathway that was referred to in my Catholic days as the Dark Night of the Soul... Sounds scary doesn't it? In some ways... oh yes.
However in my pagan beliefs, which honor the path of Nature and spirit, this is also a learning and healing process that is meant to guide me.
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 me and the world are faced and embraced, eventually the heart-beat of love is freed to express its many rhythms of service to others, to the Universe, and finally to self which allows all to become one and the same. However, I also know that I can only enter the dark corridors of this purification of consciousness if I accept the courage that comes from Spirit. Courage sustains my mind and body on this journey through the deepest agony, suffering and pain that the Universe has ever sent me.
The Dark Night of the Soul is entering a plane of unknowing, through which profound illumination in consciousness may emerge if I do not close myself off or fear. 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. This is also the basis for a great deal of Buddhist belief.
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. Presently, I feel that I am caught between two worlds, the perceived painful world where I and other people helplessly suffer, and the enlightened world where unlimited higher consciousness and Divine Love reigns. Truthfully, I admit that my ego knows nothing of "let go, let God," and during the process of the cancers and family difficulties, 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 me perceiving a hopeless never-ending battle between these worlds. I feel my whole ego system is in the process of being shattered as I slowly recognizes that the ego's many strategies are from the ways of the world, not the love of Spirit. All the discordant noises, disharmonious rhythms, repertoire of illusions, cacophony of prejudices, preconceptions, conditionings, socializations, false images of self, friends, family, and others are being called to task by the higher consciousness. I feel my ow own voice is unsupported by the Universe and simultaneously unheard in the wilderness of the people and politics. This mist of unknowing is antithetical to my ego that desperately fights and wants to remain part of me as the dark night I have enetered seeks 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, I am beginning to find remnants of the wisdom of living purely for virtue's sake, free of the previous distortion that everything I do must be perfect and must be totally for others or at least rewarded. Hopefully, the feelings of alienation and rejection by the world will eventually subside and I will no longer be between two worlds, but start to come home; a true spirit of the Universe.
A lucid illumination begins that all compassion and service are for the Spirit, my relative self, Spirt, and every one. It is through this state of real being, that I hope to more fully realize that I can be in the world, not of the world. As cancer and loss pervade, I 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. (This is where I feel I now am.) But, 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 you, like me, 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. (Again, this is where I believe I am now.)
Sadly, 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. In the New Testament of the Bible, 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.
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, I have the insight that the ego never was my true Self, but this provides no emotional relief from the feelings of emptiness during this ongoing process. This state is like living in a cloistered convent surrounded by spiritual sightedness with no comforting insight within as to what is happening to one's self. (One of the reasons Monsignor Gulnderich once said I would not be allowed to enter the convent) The Self has never fully emerged independent of the ego and the ego provocatively generates terror and fear in this state of uncertainty. How tired I am of being afraid. Of walking on egg shells around everyone. It is time I began living life as my own truth.
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. My mind is in a composition phase for its understandings of a new EPIC poem with full un-impeded heart-felt beat in its walk with Spirit, and I know that my mind will soon stabilize and equalize to have healthier biorhythms within my broken body again.
One of my heroes in this life has been Mother Theresa. Mother Theresa was in a dark night of the soul the later half of her life up to her death. She even argued with the Pope!!!
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. She knew the heart of Spirituality with her consciousness and that the ego attempts to bribe us by offering its illusion that the process of enlightenment and salvation "feels so good."
Many today, through the lens of ego perception, would like us to fantasize that Mother Theresa was in a state of spiritual ecstasy, high on God that made her immune to placing her self in situations among those living in agonizing poverty and suffering. There were no spiritual endorphins that lifted Mother Theresa away from compassionately feeling the suffering of those she was serving. She was not held up by any spiritual opiated state. Her mystical consciousness was arrived at by entering poverty of Spirit within herself, seeing it in others in the world and through her consciously continuing service to the destitute and dying. She knew the many expressions of Dark Night of the Soul, within herself and in those she served in the world. She exemplifies what has been called the consciousness of the mystics. 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 become a part of the Universe with ego. 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.
I believe that love is the only way in which we see God. Love itself is the understanding. St. John of the Cross in his Dark Night of the Soul, said that he felt closer to God during his passing through the dark night. I understand that all too well now.
We each can know the deepest joy by embracing the greatest sadness consciously with love. We can send light and love to others and let it go... knowing they will receive it in some fashion even through time, distance, and space.
The dark night of the soul is offered as a gift of illumination to every single person.
I will walk this journey set before me... with so many wonderful people both here and gone one before, lighting candles for me along the way so I do not stumble.
Blessed be.
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