[Blueberry]

Hey guys,

I wanted to talk about a spiritual matter that I've experienced called the dark night of the soul and know if some of you have experienced it too.

For the people unfamiliar with this expression here is what it means:

Dark Night of the Soul (Spanish: La noche oscura del alma) is originally the title of a poem written by 16th-century Spanish poet and Roman Catholic mystic Saint John of the Cross.
Saint John of the Cross' poem narrates the journey of the soul from its bodily home to its union with God. The journey is called "The Dark Night", because darkness represents the hardships and difficulties the soul meets in detachment from the world and reaching the light of the union with the Creator.
The main idea of the poem can be seen as the painful experience that people endure as they seek to grow in spiritual maturity and union with God.
The poem is divided into two books that reflect the two phases of the dark night.
The first is a purification of the senses.
The second and more intense of the two stages is that of the purification of the spirit, which is the less common of the two.

Here is what Eckart Tolle has to say about it:
"The “dark night of the soul” is a term that goes back a long time. It is a term used to describe what one could call a collapse of a perceived meaning in life…an eruption into your life of a deep sense of meaninglessness.
The inner state in some cases is very close to what is conventionally called depression.
Nothing makes sense anymore, there’s no purpose to anything.
Sometimes it’s triggered by some external event, some disaster perhaps, on an external level.
Or you had built up your life, and given it meaning – and the meaning that you had given your life, your activities, your achievements, where you are going, what is considered important, and the meaning that you had given your life for some reason collapses.
Really what has collapsed then is the whole conceptual framework for your life, the meaning that your mind had given it. So that results in a dark place.
But people have gone into that, and then there is the possibility that you emerge out of that into a transformed state of consciousness. Life has meaning again, but it’s no longer a conceptual meaning that you can necessarily explain.
They awaken into something deeper, which is no longer based on concepts in your mind. A deeper sense of purpose or connectedness with a greater life that is not dependent on explanations or anything conceptual any longer.
It’s a kind of re-birth. The dark night of the soul is a kind of death that you die. What dies is the egoic sense of self. Of course, death is always painful, but nothing real has actually died there – only an illusory identity.
Now it is probably the case that some people who’ve gone through this transformation realized that they had to go through that, in order to bring about a spiritual awakening. Often it is part of the awakening process, the death of the old self and the birth of the true self."

Actually according to Saint John of the Cross, I think I've experienced the first phase of the dark night of the soul called the dark night of the senses.

But first I'm going to say more about me for my story to be more understandable.
I actually grew up as an atheist with no religious knowledge, as most of the native youth in France.
Since my adolescence, being a really shy and introverted kid, I knew I had to work on myself to become the confident guy that I knew I was deep inside. So I naturally turned to self improvement.
At the age of 23, having improved a lot, I still felt a deep void in my life and a lack of purpose. I started going to Church (catholic church) and tried looking for God, thinking that I have nothing more to lose.
It actually gave me some comfort and I kept going.
Since then I slowly became more and more spiritual and religious.
I witnessed the deep changing in myself being more in peace and finding slowly my path.
And then starting in november 2015, I had to face my inner demons. It's like all my deepest fears and wounds came back at the surface. I actually don't remember a time in my life where I felt so much pain and sadness. It was like a mix of deep depression and melancholia and wondering when all of this will end, but still suicide was in no way in my mind.
What was weird, is that I quickly realized that it was like a purging of my old self, to bring out my deepest fears and finally be at peace.
I'm now in a normal state and thinking back at that experience, I think I've experienced the dark night of the senses.

So any of you guys have experienced something similar and came out more at peace with yourselves?

[Truth Teller]

Yes. It happened to me around this time last year. I woke up next to a girl I was seeing and lay there awake for two hours. I wondered "what am I doing with my life?" until I finally fell back asleep.

It made me challenge a lot of my beliefs and thoughts.

[debeguiled]

(01-15-2016 01:19 PM)Blueberry Wrote:  

Dark Night of the Soul (Spanish: La noche oscura del alma) is originally the title of a poem written by 16th-century Spanish poet and Roman Catholic mystic Saint John of the Cross.
Saint John of the Cross' poem narrates the journey of the soul from its bodily home to its union with God.

This is a thoughtful and honest post, and you should be happy that you are staying true to yourself and following the path in life that seems right to you on a gut level, even if you are moving away from views you have held in the past, views that are comfortable.

That said, it is important to remember that the Christian tradition is not a knowledge tradition, in the same way that most intellectual traditions of today are, or at least consider themselves to be, hewing to an 'information wants to be free' spirit.

Christianity is a Wisdom tradition, and wisdom is more than just knowledge or know how or data. Wisdom is knowledge combined with love, knowledge that only seeks to do what is best for the self and for all mankind. As such, in a wisdom tradition, there is no sense, as say, on the internet, that everyone has a right to know everything. In a wisdom tradition, we are only allowed to know as much as is good for us, or as much as we can handle, and only when we are ready to know it.

This is why in the New Testament in his letters, Paul alludes to seeing through an obscured mirror; he is indicating that we don't know everything now, though in the future, that is, when we are ready, we will:

Quote:

1 Corinthians 13:12King James Version (KJV)

"For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known."

All of this is only to say that, even though I may not know your personal circumstances, and everything you relate may be actually as you have related it, it is always wise to err on the side of caution when speaking of spiritual matters and concepts.

Remember that John of the Cross was a monk, and had been a monk for many years before he embarked on his calling to find a mystical union with God. He joined religious orders in 1563, and studied and practiced his faith, and changed orders, and didn't even write his famous poem until 1577 when he was imprisoned on charges relating to trying to reform his order. During all of this time, he was a monk under the authority of his elders in the order and undoubtedly had a spiritual director who would correct him if his spiritual ideas moved too far from tradition.

The point here is that even if someone is called to the religious orders, they may not be called to mystical direct union with God, and yet John was called to both of these, and struggled internally, and through his poetry, to make sense of his experiences, and out of this struggle came the poem that gave us the phrase, "Dark night of the soul."

So I would say, with respect, because you may be perfectly describing what you have experienced, that it is kind of a big leap to go from being an atheist directly to experiencing the same things as a venerated mystic.

The value in what you experience is that you are doing your best to figure out the world, and your place in it, and it doesn't need a fancy title like "Dark Night of the Soul," or anything else.

The value is the intrinsic experience, and nothing is added to it by giving it an exalted name.

Like many things in this world, a phrase like this becomes colloquial, and once that happens it gets watered down, and no longer becomes a description of the experience of someone who has worked many years at the mystical task, and come across a difficult hurdle in his passage towards union with God.

We all reach plateaus in our lives, and pass through depressions, and have struggles. To label all of these as "Dark Nights of the Soul" removes the power from the term, and takes it from the near epitome of religious experience, that is, the last stage before union with God, and turns it into an everyday term that can be applied to even trivial experiences.

In a similar vein, you can take the term "Epiphany," which in the Western Christian tradition originally meant the revelation of Jesus to the world, and then old Jimmy Joyce got a hold of it, and from there graduate students in English Literature, and then it got popularized, and nowadays, people, even Youtube stars, are having epiphanies all over the place!

So this is a caveat, or even a bit of a warning, to remember that Spiritual traditions have their own kind of progression to them, and are very different from what we talk about all day on the web in how they come to know things, and if you are only now starting to see a spiritual dimension to things, you are only at the beginning of a journey that John of the Cross was near the finish to when he wrote the words of his famous poem, and it might be a not too bad idea to be very circumspect before you start saying definitively that you are experiencing the same things as John of the Cross.

And take Eckhart Tolle with a grain of salt, he is a popularizer after all.


Last bit here. By all means study mysticism like John, and pray too, for there is no way to know if it is your personal path without talking to the big guy.

The writer Evelyn Underhill has done much to distill many of the experiences of Christian mystics into principles and steps, and you can find many of her works free online, with even audio recordings on Librivox for free.

Here is a good breakdown of her description of the steps of the mystic's path to union with God:

http://web.csulb.edu/~plowentr/underhill.htm

I know I have gone on a length here, and I hope it has been of value, but spiritual zeal can get you thinking you are moving faster than you are, and this can get you in a lot of trouble.

Don't ask me how I know.

[Quintus Curtius]

Many people go through these spiritual crises...sometimes they are even called nervous breakdowns. It's interesting to see how different people deal with them. Some people completely change the direction of their lives.

[RexImperator]

Quote:

So any of you guys have experienced something similar and came out more at peace with yourselves?

Yes, absolutely. Another name for this is "ego death".

Of course the ego will tend reconstitute itself. You might create a new "spiritual" identity so be aware of that. Such things are just creations of the mind which you learn to ignore.

I started a thread on Tolle. His teachings are excellent in my opinion and they helped me make sense of what was happening.

[Blueberry]

Debeguiled, I appreciate your reply and your feedback on the subject.
Your comment made me realize my hastiness in trying to figure out and put words for what was happening to me.
There's a part of me that need to know and rationalize what's going on.

Anyway far from me the idea to claim that I've had the same experience as St John of the Cross and other saints like Mother Teresa who experienced the dark night of the soul.
I actually know that I'm at the beginner stage and it's probably not even finished yet, that's what I said that I "think" I experienced a dark night of the senses, which is the first stage, and not the dark night of the soul.

[debeguiled]

(01-15-2016 05:55 PM)Blueberry Wrote:  

Debeguiled, I appreciate your reply and your feedback on the subject.
Your comment made me realize my hastiness in trying to figure out and put words for what was happening to me.
There's a part of me that need to know and rationalize what's going on.

Anyway far from me the idea to claim that I've had the same experience as St John of the Cross and other saints like Mother Teresa who experienced the dark night of the soul.
I actually know that I'm at the beginner stage and it's probably not even finished yet, that's what I said that I "think" I experienced a dark night of the senses, which is the first stage, and not the dark night of the soul.

You make a great point about Mother Theresa. Many have taken this statement she made as proof there was no God:

Quote:

“In my soul I feel just that terrible pain of loss,” she wrote in 1959, “of God not wanting me — of God not being God — of God not existing.” According to the book, this inner turmoil, known by only a handful of her closest colleagues, lasted until her death in 1997.

Perhaps she was experiencing her own dark night, and persevering nonetheless, without even being sure there was a point to it.

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/29/opinio....html?_r=0

[malakaix]

(01-15-2016 01:19 PM)Blueberry Wrote:  

So any of you guys have experienced something similar and came out more at peace with yourselves?

I came into contact with this head-on about six to seven years ago through an extremely powerful n'n-DMT experience that really shattered my entire concept of reality. It took me straight to the source of interchangeable light and void. It wasn't a randomly spontaneous event, as I had been leaning in this direction for a couple of years prior but the impact was substantial to my overall awareness of self.

The resulting effect was many years of what could be described as a Dark Night of the Soul. I was definitely catapulted into an existential crisis that still continues to this very day; and it will most likely never end. But that's the point, you are forced to be acutely aware of the objective meaninglessness of life in order to realize that you are the embodiment of universal conciousness.

When I think of the phrase 'Dark Night of the Soul' I'm drawn to a famous verse from the Bible that is commonly misunderstood because it draws on metaphorical understanding, as do most passages of wisdom.

"Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.""

And I believe this is a life-long journey.. ever increasing detachment, in the beginning I believed there was a line to be crossed and once crossed it would mark the end of such an experience, but these days I now see it as an on-going process that only becomes deeper and deeper over time.

[Blueberry]

Malakaix, i'm not familiar with n'n DMT experience. I did some research, is it ayahuasca?
Anyway thanks for your comment!

[Beyond Borders]

(01-16-2016 01:29 AM)malakaix Wrote:  

When I think of the phrase 'Dark Night of the Soul' I'm drawn to a famous verse from the Bible that is commonly misunderstood because it draws on metaphorical understanding, as do most passages of wisdom.

"Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.""

Can you explain how that passage is misunderstood and what about it relates to "dark night of the soul?"

Personally, I'm not seeing the connection, so perhaps I'm still among those who misinterpret it.

[debeguiled]

^
^

Wouldn't mind hearing that either.

The main problem most people have with that verse is that they don't want it to apply to them.

[RexImperator]

There are a few different interpretations of that verse. One is that it might refer to a small gate for entering the city of Jerusalem that was known as "the needle's eye." The gate in the city walls supposedly had a low opening which would require a camel to stoop down quite low. In which case this is something not totally impossible but something which requires humility or a lowering of oneself.

I think it may refer to the fact that in order to dissolve the ego, you typically have to have failed deeply, given up hope, or reached a point of suffering where you have had enough and are then are willing to let go of everything you think you know about yourself.

This may be hard for a "rich" person, unless they reach a point where they get everything they want and then find it doesn't fulfill them.

Yet another thing to consider- at other times Jesus says blessed are the "poor" in spirit and he is not referring to money.

[General Stalin]

The phrase "Dark night of the soul" will always remind me of one of my favorite songs by one of my favorite bands:

It is about this exact thing. Darkness corrupting and consuming you. The final lyric is "dark night of my soul."

I agree with QC that this is something many people go through. Life is full of ups and downs and everyone at some point will experience a perceived "lowest point" that often becomes a redefining experience.

[malakaix]

(01-16-2016 05:01 AM)Blueberry Wrote:  

Malakaix, i'm not familiar with n'n DMT experience. I did some research, is it ayahuasca?
Anyway thanks for your comment!

Yeah it is, the difference is in how it's taken.

Ayahausca is a mixture of n'n-DMT containing plants with the b. caapi vine.. the vine contains a MAOI which activates the effects of n'n-DMT. It's made into a brew which you drink, the onset is slow and the duration lasts between 6-8 hours accompanied with a purge (vomiting).

Extracted n'n-DMT mixed with a MAOI and herbs is known as Changa and it's vaporized. Instead of drinking a mixture, you smoke it. The difference is the onset is extremely fast, less then 30 seconds and the intensity is ultra extreme. It only lasts for around 5 minutes and there's no physical side-effects or discomfort.

(01-16-2016 06:01 PM)RexImperator Wrote:  

I think it may refer to the fact that in order to dissolve the ego, you typically have to have failed deeply, given up hope, or reached a point of suffering where you have had enough and are then are willing to let go of everything you think you know about yourself.

This may be hard for a "rich" person, unless they reach a point where they get everything they want and then find it doesn't fulfill them.

Yes, this is exactly it.

My understanding of what's described and known as The Dark Night of the Soul is it's a process of continual letting go of everything you think and believe you are. To pass through the eye of a needle one must be stripped of all conceptual ideas of self and identity, as long as ego holds onto the idea of self the illusion of separation remains which perpetuates the pain of the dark night.

There was a teacher known as Adyashanti which helped me tremendously in understanding much of this experience years ago. But in the end, it's all shades of the same colour, from Alan Watts to Terrance McKenna to Maharshi and so on.

(01-17-2016 12:52 PM)General Stalin Wrote:  

The phrase "Dark night of the soul" will always remind me of one of my favorite songs by one of my favorite bands:

Glad to see another Fear Factory fan, they made an alternate version of this song, aptly named Timelessness 2.. but it has nothing on the original.

[Suits]

I opened this thread hoping to learn about Little Dark Night of the Soul. Left disappointed.

[debeguiled]

(01-18-2016 04:57 AM)Suits Wrote:  

I opened this thread hoping to learn about Little Dark Night of the Soul. Left disappointed.

"I Was in a Huge Fight Against Demons with Clubs"