Dark night of the soul way out of depression. After the third stage: the dark night of the soul. Dark nights of the soul
”I mentioned the dark night of the soul… Questions followed, where to get more detailed information.
I am posting a chapter from the book by Pepper Lewis devoted to this issue:
Gaia Speaks: Solutions for a Small Planet
About a year ago I experienced what I call a moment and a year of personal awakening. Many of the positive changes that have taken place in my life are directly related to this awakening. But now, exactly one year later, everything in my life leads me to confusion and confusion. I eat and sleep poorly and I feel emotional instability and spiritual imbalance. Sometimes I have some kind of anxiety and there are temporary bouts of depression. At first glance, nothing seems to have changed, and I can't help but wonder why everything is worse now, and not better than before.
What happened? What has changed anyway? I was recently told about the so-called Dark Night of the Soul. Can you describe this state and say, is this not what is happening to me? If so, are there any remedies for this? Over the years, I have seen the impact Your words have on countless readers. And I pray that they help me too.
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To begin with, it is important to remember and acknowledge that spiritual awakenings, like other worthwhile (and unexpected) events, are not one-time ecstatic experiences followed by a lifetime of insane fame. They are of the utmost importance, transcend all that is ordinary, and then unfold continually within and throughout lifetimes of experience.
But no matter how long such moments last, they are changes in consciousness from one state to the next. In addition to being of immense importance for the growth of your soul and forever imprinted in your cellular memory, they are also of exceptional importance as far as heaven is concerned. But, of course, they are not comparable with the grandeur of your soul's journey on the path of development, a journey that is commensurate with this Universe.
It is only when all these events are tied together that the beauty and brilliance of each individual pearl begins to accurately reflect the wholeness that you are. The expansion of your consciousness happens organically and continuously. It does not require all those moments when you experience a short-term ecstasy, and in fact surpasses them.
Believe it or not, and even if it is contrary to modern opinion, the ordinary affairs of the soul (and its personality) in its daily concerns are more than appropriate. God - unlike people - does not judge or even evaluate how many spiritual and how many worldly actions you perform. As funny as it is, but while you are looking for the meaning of your life, you are already living it. It cannot be otherwise, for All That Is always acts purposefully and is never inconsistent.
An article about the origin of the monad, soul and twin flames.
Whether one likes it or not, it must also be recognized that the immediate meaning is that you first of all practice the skill of being a man, and only then the skill of being a mystic, sage or spiritualist. So much of your experience should reflect this law. Because your Being currently lives in a vehicle of denser light called human body, this law takes precedence over others. At such moments, the principle of the Universal Law takes on special significance, because otherwise it could be quickly refuted.
This means that it is difficult not to be captivated by experiences that seem completely extraordinary. At such moments, the soul rejoices, and the person forgets about his problems and troubles. These joyful experiences are a reminder that there is always a great and a small reality that exist side by side and as one. The soul does not limit itself to these experiences, but they still guide it.
Please note that for the soul these experiences are not as important as for the personality. This reflects the conditionality of a three-dimensional personality by such opposites as good and bad, light and dark, etc. The human personality evaluates, judges and compares opposites according to its own experience, using them if necessary. as differences in a broader context.
Dark night
The Dark Night seems to be a completely human phenomenon, when a man who hitherto considered himself spiritual, and therefore, not subject to the abstractions of everyday life, forced to look at himself a second or third time.
Sometimes the soul (the embodied form of personality) even has to go back in the opposite direction to what it thought it was moving in order to restore the necessary qualities that it missed or left behind. Your soul is interested in uniting the whole and will not settle for less. Everything needs to be unraveled. This unraveling constitutes the Dark Night, which is not excluded even for the most correct and perfect life.
It seems that as this inevitable drama plays out, the spiritually well-read and educated people and those who have sat at the feet of a teacher for one or two lifetimes react especially strongly to this natural law, lashing out at others or injuring themselves. Although this path is difficult and not inspiring confidence, the Dark Night still has its value for the soul. As long as the path is wide, one can imitate the initiate, but when it eventually narrows, only the truly aspiring can endure everything to the end.
That which brought the ecstasy so desired by the personality is now revealed differently - the gift is the same, but it turns out differently. Spiritual awakenings are the result of the small "I" decides to merge with the Higher "I". They make it possible to perceive the true reality, and not an illusion taken for reality.
Let us suppose that a reflection comes out of a mirror for the first time and looks back to look at the reflection that it called itself. Can you imagine what a deep experience this will be for the Higher Self, and how amazing it will be for the little self?
The small self, unprepared for such an experience, sees not a great opportunity opening up, but only the deceitfulness and insignificance of its life, in which it so believed. Both the quality of the Dark Night and its duration are determined by the distance between the small and the Higher Self.
It is now up to the "receptacle" of the soul, or the purified heart, to see its way through the twilight of its human state, until it can see in and ultimately through the darkness. In this state, the small “I” perceives any limitation as final and decisive, losing the ability for creative and original expression. However cruel this transition may seem, in the end the soul and personality will merge into one and once and for all clearly know where the right hand of God is and what moves it.
It happens that on the spiritual path you suddenly stop believing in the voice of the soul and ask yourself: Maybe there are no spiritual mentors, and the voice of the Higher Self is a figment of the imagination? Find out where these doubts come from and how to eliminate them.
Spirit Removal
In this New Era When the insights that come like an avatar and the ability to communicate with the Spirit turn into almost an everyday occurrence, the Dark Night often manifests itself in the disappearance of these familiar phenomena.
The Senior Teachers of the Spirit, as objective ideas of the developed consciousness, become the central factors of help. When, obeying the lofty laws of the Spirit, they leave, they leave a fragrant trace, which very quickly gives way to a wall of impenetrable darkness. Can anything replace such closeness and mutual love of the Spirit and for the Spirit? And very quickly the thought arises that it is so easy to reject only that which is not worthy of love. And the torment begins.
Fine-minded people and people with good intuitive organization take this spiritual loss very hard; absence brings great bitterness, because the presence was very pleasant. Removal is often both personal and impersonal. If, for example, the Dark Night falls for the channel [Pepper Lewis], whose pen is now transmitting the words of Gaia, then, more than likely, her pen will also be silenced.
Far more people fall into the despair described here than can be imagined, clinging to the ego with deplorable results and trying to squeeze conditioned and forced words out of it. When the spiritual connection almost ceases, the small "I" remains to, as it were, resurrect itself from the dead. In desperation, it returns to its simplicity and innocence, sometimes even crying like a child, in a plea not to leave it anymore.
The little "I" must begin, as it were, anew, for even those who think they have nothing have everything from all eternity, and this is precisely what they will have to be convinced of again. Gods and teachers who flatter the little self or soul are not divine enough, so such experiences of deprivation and sorrow are often followed by a more correct understanding of divinity.
Those who consider themselves the most innocent and pure in their thoughts and deeds endure the Night differently. These self-imposed exiles in endless torment are forced to see a constant succession of not the most worthy people who are rewarded for every little thing. To them, who, in their own opinion, deserve God's love and happiness more than others, it seems as if they are in last place - forgotten, bypassed and abandoned.
Speechless from such a turn of affairs and unable to control themselves, they begin to think badly and talk about generosity towards others and about their well-being. Depressed by their own bad luck, they see bad omens almost every day and run into trouble. It seems that the more good deeds they do, the more they plunge into darkness, from which they see no way out.
At this stage, many begin to believe that God really favors darkness and those who think and care first of all about themselves. When a bad situation turns into an even worse one, they are faced with the choice of whether to live and enjoy life like everyone else, or withdraw from society and live alone in a world that no longer accepts them.
During the Dark Night, the soul purifies itself by realizing its own shortcomings.
Together with the personality, she reviews all her real and imaginary sins. Each particle and atom is magnified many times over so as not to miss any detail. With such an increase, the small "I" cannot but see its insignificance and artificiality.
As the distance between the small "I" and the soul increases, so does the distance between Light and Darkness, Turning the blessings of life into nothing more than abstractions and distractions that fall like a heavy burden on the shoulders, which suddenly became fragile and unreliable.
In this article, we will explain the difference between the state of fear and the state of love, why the instinct of self-preservation has become obsolete and what is coming to replace it.
Endless night
It is human nature to regret what was inevitable and look back on our mistakes, instead of rushing into the unknown and considering good will to be eternal and evil to be transient. There is, however, a great deal of truth in the fact that everything created is temporary and transient. This means that your Essence, which is the presence of your soul, is eternal. The temporal is an aspect of the permanent, but the permanent is not an aspect of the eternal. It is this truth (constituting the Universal Law) that the small "I" (personality) and the Higher "I" (Soul) forget when immersed in the Dark Night.
Permanence is inherent in something that lasts forever or for a very long time. It characterizes everything that never changes or should not undergo significant changes. Constancy is inherent in everything physical. It can be attributed to Stonehenge and to your physical body. It is believed that Stonehenge has been standing for many thousands of years, and one can imagine that even more. It seems almost an eternal structure, but since it was created for a specific purpose, someday, when its purpose loses its relevance, it will cease to exist.
The same applies to your physical body. It seems strong and durable because its existence makes sense. But someday, when it has a higher purpose than today, you will want to leave it or recreate it in a different form. In the meantime, by virtue of its permanence and purpose, it belongs to you.
Eternity is not a physical quality. It is infinite and therefore unaffected by the passage of time. Your soul is made of this eternal material, and therefore it is destined to find its own divinity. One of the paths your soul follows in its destined journey is through the experience of incarnations in human form. The permanent and the eternal are connected in a completely unique relationship. They obey the same laws, but one is their physical manifestation, the other is its opposite. The Lesser Self and the Higher Self follow the same laws, and although they complement each other, people are often most confused by the contrast between them.
This obscure contrast contributes to the division that is most often seen during the Dark Night. Knowing your eternity the soul rejoices in the Dark Night as an opportunity to reconsider what it is most unsure of. She tries to prolong her journey and looks at the Dark Night only as the hour before dawn. And the personal "I", thinking that he has only one life, is afraid of hesitation and even delays.
Personality sees in the Dark Night the result of an unpassed exam, an exam in which it was tested and considered unworthy. She expects only a well-deserved punishment for her sins, but these are just representations of human nature.
Light recovery
The Dark Night lasts only as long as the sins are revealed.
If in a spiritual awakening a person can see no more than a series of eternal moments, then the Dark Night will last no longer than the night itself, you understand? Spiritual awakening is a cause for rejoicing, but it is not a reward that is given only for a day (or a year) and taken away the next day or year. But even so, there is nothing wrong with giving yourself a sumptuous feast once and contenting yourself with simpler food the next day. Day turns into night as inevitably as night turns into day, and this applies to everything that happens to you in the best possible way.
Confusion, confusion and anxiety prevail when separation is felt most forcefully. If you are separated from the breath, you greedily catch the air as you inhale and exhale heavily. If you do not think about your physical condition, then your body's nutritional needs will not be met, and if you are afraid that you will not have the courage to persevere and overcome obstacles, your body will not rest and experience the peace that brings dream.
Emotional stability is the result of confidence in the next moment and the next event, while depression arises as a result of the small self's insistent but impossible claim to control. Without interaction and awareness of both hemispheres of the brain, it is impossible to achieve balance.
Spiritual balance will be restored when strict beliefs are replaced by the recognition of new opportunities.
The Dark Night of the Soul is a phenomenon associated with spiritual awakening and should not be feared. The Dark Night does not necessarily follow or precede spiritual awakening, for both are merely aspects of soul expansion. Nevertheless, beware of those who promise you a path that leads away from your own center and leads to someone else's, for such a path very often leads to various sufferings and pains.
Be patient as you go through this, and surround yourself with like-minded people.
Move carefully and slowly, as your path through this cycle may not be clear.
Feel sorry for yourself a little if you can't help it, but don't wallow in self-pity.
Train yourself to see in a dim light so that you can help others achieve the same if you are asked to.
If what's happening to you today brings you back to similar moments that seem to crawl straight out of your past, acknowledge them as such. Look at them directly and honestly. The sun (son) returns at the appointed hour, and the light will cast its shadow soon enough. When bogged down in a quagmire, do not make sudden movements. Resign to your fate until you have enough buoyancy to make it to shore. You can get dirty, but you won't be defeated.
Your only sin is in forgetting the laws according to which nature dominates in the third dimension. These laws also apply to human nature. The remedy is to remember and forgive where necessary. The light is never absent, but is often identified by the shadow.
Later addition from Gaia:
Benevolent readers, both in body and in spirit, these words are for you and the child within you who still believes in separation, which is nothing but fear, but still real - at least in the sense that what is really felt. It comes from yesterdays, but it will settle in your today and try to follow you into your tomorrows.
Remember that when you design new way, sometimes it turns out to be slow. A new, slower path is better than the well-trodden old one, where there are no new views and horizons. If your biggest concern is not knowing which direction to go, then start with the Valley of Peace.
In search of the shortest path to Shambhala, many skipped this oasis in order to return later on in their own footsteps, when they most of all wanted to be in its healing meadows. Maybe I will come to you there, and we will sit there together, because this is my home too.
At the peak of spiritual success, something often happens that we least expect. It usually happens between the ages of thirty and fifty. Followers multiply, people get blessings, recognition comes. And suddenly something very unpleasant happens. This personal crisis is often referred to as the dark night of the soul. The confidence we had in the past is not enough. We question everything we've ever believed, everything we've ever done. We feel like failures. We feel like we can't do anything right. We are broken. Our world is crumbling. The faith that has successfully sustained us so far is evaporating somewhere. All our answers turn into questions. God is either out of sight or out of the comfortable packaging we have kept Him in for years. We sink to the bottom of despair, it seems to us that everything is over. We hit a blank wall. There seems to be nowhere to go. The spiritual path led to a dead end. We have saved others, but we cannot save ourselves. We feel complete loneliness and God-forsakenness.
There are many examples of this phenomenon in the Bible. The classic example is Job, who did nothing to deserve to have a terrible tragedy happen to him, and at the same time an internal crisis broke out that gave rise to depression on the verge of suicide (Job 3:1-26). I remember Jonah, whose prophetic career was going well until, at the command of God, he was swallowed up by a big fish. I think of Elijah who, after his greatest triumph on Mount Carmel, suddenly plunged into the deepest despair (1 Kings 19:3-4). I think of Jesus, who was just revealed to His glorious mission, but ended up in the wilderness for forty days, tempted by Satan.
It seems that the dark night of the soul is the end of all spiritual aspirations and aspirations. But it's not. It is actually an invitation to a deeper relationship with God. It shows that all our accomplishments, all good deeds, were dictated to a sufficient extent by our ambitions, selfishness, or the desire to please others. We discover that our clear vision of purpose was someone else's vision, borrowed from other people and/or the church rather than given by God. We understand that although the God we knew before was real, we now need to get to know Him again as if we had never known Him.
The dark night of the soul can be caused by various reasons. It may simply coincide with a period in life that many refer to as a "mid-life crisis." It usually happens to people between thirty and fifty. It can be triggered by an external event such as a naughty child, job loss, death. loved one. Sometimes it starts with an internal problem, such as an illness, or the reopening of an old emotional wound that, up to that point, seemed to be in the past. The dark night of the soul can simply come from the feeling that God has gone out of our lives. We seek Him and cannot find Him.
A young psychiatrist once asked me, "What's the difference between a dark night of the soul and clinical depression?" I agreed that there is such a condition as clinical depression, a very gloomy condition caused by an imbalance in the chemical balance in the body or other disorders. But the dark night of the soul is such a depression that comes as a call from God to deepen your relationship with Him. It may be accompanied by clinical symptoms of depression, but also includes such an important component as a spiritual crisis.
Most spiritual people worry about this condition. They believed that God's presence should calm the soul, subdue fears, and bring joy to the life path. The dark night of the soul seems to them a turn in the wrong direction, a sign that they have gone astray somewhere on the spiritual path. They are tempted to "get over it", to go back to the previous state. Their "I" rebels and resists this experience. They may feel guilty and ashamed, feel that they deserved this experience. They may indulge in self-flagellation and, in a sense, savor their grief.
Spiritual leaders believe that the dark night of the soul is the lot of others, it has nothing to do with them. They are expected to have strength and confidence in God. They feel they must hide these dark experiences from others and even from themselves. They may feel incredibly alone, as if no one else has experienced the experience before. But no matter how a person feels, this gloomy state is actually a call from God. This is a good sign. This is a sign that God is deeply involved in our lives. While doubt can be a negative factor for spirituality, the dark night of the soul is doubt leading to deeper faith.
It is impossible to pass the dark night of the soul by working 60 hours a week or trying to ignore it. These painful feelings come into our lives for a purpose. God uses this bitter cup so that people will drink it completely and learn the necessary lesson from it. Most the best medicine from the dark night of the soul - this is frequent solitude, which makes it possible to hear the voice of God, understand what He says, think and meditate. A high-level mentor can also provide valuable assistance during this period. It must be a person who has survived the dark night of the soul and moved on, having learned the lessons that God wanted to teach him through it.
There are two dangers that would-be mentors of those who are experiencing the dark night of the soul should be aware of. First, they are tempted to avoid this experience and go back to the third stage. There was success, everything was going great there. There, it seemed, God was close. There is a temptation to reject the dark night of the soul and return to where you have been successful. And it might even turn out well. You return to the activities that you were successfully engaged in before. You are doing the same as before. And most people may not even notice the difference in your ministry. The problem is that you, deep down, will know that God called you, but you said no. Man becomes what I call a "barren tree." He sails the waves of leadership and success, but something is missing in him. He fell into the trap of success, and the essence of spiritual life disappeared. Based on my experience of training thousands of pastors over the years, I can estimate that 50-60% of pastors have gone through this path and this is probably one of the reasons why many churches are spiritually dead.
Approximately 25% of spiritual leaders went in the other direction. They view the dark night of the soul as an experience that calls into question their entire spiritual path that they have walked before. They believe that this dark night is not a call from God, but because the religious direction they joined in the second stage is wrong. The dark night of the soul shakes the foundations of the confidence inherent in the second and third stages. All illusions can dissipate, and there is no trace of certainty left. Generally, disillusionment is a healthy process. But the dark night of the soul ends with a retreat, if a person leaves everything he believes in and rejects his entire previous spiritual path, mistakenly believing that another religious movement is devoid of such spiritual shortcomings. I do not want to say that the transition from one religious movement to another cannot be productive. Just such a transition should be dictated by the right reasons. In my experience, about a quarter of pastors leave the church during a dark night of the soul. Unable to find a suitable mentor, they interpret this call of God as a call to change one denomination to another, or to leave all faith altogether.
Approximately ten or fifteen percent of those who follow the spiritual path remain in the church, having learned the lessons of God that He wanted to teach them, and move on to the fourth
stage. With the help of high-level mentors (stage four and above), they begin to understand more and more that their entire ministry has been centered around themselves. They realize that all of their spiritual efforts to this day have been dictated to a large extent by their selfishness or the expectations of others and the church. During the dark night, they learn to hear the call of God to give up their "I" and enter into a relationship with God in such a close relationship that they never thought of before. They learn to see themselves the way God sees them and to accept the fact that they are only human and limited. They begin to learn to forgive themselves and others. Their love for themselves grows deeper (as they discover how much God loves them) and with it their love for others grows. Previously, they knew all this at the level of the mind, but now they deeply absorb these truths in their hearts and absorb them into themselves, becoming more and more whole people.
How can you serve someone who is going through a dark night of the soul? This must be done very patiently. High-level mentors are very valuable during this period. Suffering people will pour out their pain, disappointment, anger and loneliness on you. Do not offer them answers, as Job's friends did. Just be there. Avoid shock therapy, just listen and empathize with their struggles with painful memories and grief. Share with them the experience of your dark night of the soul (if you have not gone through it, you may not be able to help them much). Reassure them that what they are going through is normal in living with God. Meditate with them on the stories of Elijah, Job, Peter, and Jesus. Let acceptance flow from you, becoming a sign that God accepts them. Forgive them where necessary and encourage them to experience God's forgiveness. In most cases, the day comes when the darkness of the night dissipates, and they can go forward. It may be that some people have to experience the dark night of the soul more than once in order to achieve the desired result, but if they do not go astray, they can go further.
On the pages of the site, I recently covered when a series of unpleasant events occurs in life, knocking the ground out from under your feet and giving very difficult emotional states. The article was an answer to a specific question, because each situation is purely individual, and in the article I tried to find common components and give practical advice to help those who find themselves in a similar situation.
After that, we worked for some time with the writing reader with her situation. Her key moment was destroyed personal relationships.
And in the comments to the article "", one reader wrote the following:
How does God give us trials according to our strength? people go crazy over them, they commit suicide! when they say act, and life keeps saying that at the moment it is useless to fight, whatever you do, everything is bad (I faced this situation in my life for half a year) - whereas? when he helped people in life, and life is for you “with your own fat for ....” and there is nowhere to wait for help, white turned into black
And I would like to answer a separate article to clarify some of the nuances.
Firstly, God really gives tests according to our strength, and no matter how unfair it may seem to you, what happens to us is exactly what should happen, what is planned by our soul in order to solve certain problems.
« while you are looking for the meaning of your life, you are already living it.
The fact that not everyone copes is already the weakness of the human personality and the inability to cope with the situation, the voluntary choice of the soul is to stop its stay on Earth and leave here. We have free will and if a person makes a decision, the Universe silently obeys him. We always have the right to choose whether to fight or give up, accept or reject, go or stand.
The next moment is about pauses in life. I have an article about "" - there are moments in life when you really need to pause and do nothing, but this does not mean that you need to stop trying to transform the situation. Or just sit and wait for Manna from heaven or a helping hand. First of all, you still need to ask for this help. If not individuals to whom you can turn for support, you can turn to Guardian Angels, Higher powers, God - go to church and pray, go to the park and wander aimlessly through the streets, feed the ducks in the pond and pigeons in the squares. And mentally ask to let you understand what you should do now.
Wait for the decision, insight, understanding to come. Meditate and allow yourself to spend a lot of time alone, or rather, solitude - contemplate nature and beauty, listen to music, pay attention to the body - take care of it, baths, a warm blanket and on the sofa, hot tea with your favorite cake and watch your favorite movie, make something that you love, sports and body exercises, dancing - you need to disperse stagnant and negative energy.
These times need work with internal states rather than external situations.
It is clear that at such moments a person has gone into a minus. I specifically wrote in the title about the hopeless life, that is, the life from where the LIGHT left. It seems to a person that "the Gods have abandoned him."
And here I recommend to study the material about Dark Night Soul- the article itself is written in a rather complicated language, it is channeled, so it is difficult to read. Here I will try to explain it more simply and give quotes that you need to pay attention to.
This phenomenon concerns the evolutionary development of a person, at some moments a person may feel that he is left alone - his angelic support has ceased to function, the Spirit has moved away from him, and this pause has its own meaning.
The Dark Night seems to be a completely human phenomenon, when a person who until then considered himself spiritual, and therefore not subject to the abstractions of everyday life, forced to look at himself a second or third time.
Sometimes the soul (embodied form of personality) one even has to go back in the opposite direction to what she thought she was going,to restore the necessary qualities,that she missed or left behind... Everything needs to be unraveled. This unraveling constitutes the Dark Night, which is not excluded even for the most correct and perfect life.
It seems that when this inevitable drama is played out, spiritually well-read and educated people and those who have sat at the feet of a teacher for one or two lives, react strongly to this natural law by lashing out at others or injuring themselves. Although this path is difficult and not inspiring confidence, The Dark Night still has its value for the soul. As long as the path is wide, the initiate can be imitated, but when it eventually narrows, only the truly aspiring can endure everything to the end.
.. Both the quality of the Dark Night and its duration are determined by the distance between the small and the Higher Self.
It is now up to the "receptacle" of the soul, or the purified heart, to see its way through the twilight of its human state, until it can see in and ultimately through the darkness. In this state, the small “I” perceives any limitation as final and decisive, losing the ability for creative and original expression. As brutal as this transition may seem, in the end soul and personality will merge into one and once and for all know clearly where the right hand of God is and what moves it.
The Senior Teachers of the Spirit, as objective ideas of the developed consciousness, become the central factors of help. When, obeying the lofty laws of the Spirit, they depart, they leave a fragrant trail, which is very quickly replaced by a wall of impenetrable darkness. Can anything replace such closeness and mutual love of the Spirit and for the Spirit? And very quickly the thought arises that it is so easy to reject only that which is not worthy of love. AND the torment begins.
Fine-minded people and people with good intuitive organization take this spiritual loss very hard; absence brings great bitterness, because the presence was very pleasant. Removal is often both personal and impersonal.
Far more people fall into the despair described here than can be imagined, clinging to the ego with deplorable results and trying to squeeze conditioned and forced words out of it. When the spiritual connection almost ceases, the little "I" remains to like resurrecting yourself from the dead. In desperation, it returns to its simplicity and innocence, sometimes even crying like a child, in a plea not to leave it anymore.
The little "I" must begin, as it were, anew, for even those who think they have nothing have everything from all eternity, and this is precisely what they will have to be convinced of again. Gods and teachers who flatter the little self or soul are not divine enough, so behind such experiences of deprivation and sorrow often a more correct understanding of divinity follows.
Those who consider themselves the most innocent and pure in their thoughts and deeds endure the Night differently. These self-imposed exiles in endless torment are forced to see a constant succession of not the most worthy people who are rewarded for every little thing. To them, who, in their own opinion, deserve God's love and happiness more than others, it seems as if they are in last place - forgotten, bypassed and abandoned.
Deprived of the gift of speech from such a turn of affairs and unable to control themselves, they begin to think badly and talk about generosity towards others and their well-being. Depressed by their own bad luck, they almost every day they see bad signs and face trouble. It seems that the more good deeds they do, the more they plunge into darkness, from which they see no way out.
At this stage, many begin to believe that B God indeed favors the darkness and those who think and care first of all about themselves. When a bad situation turns into an even worse one, they are faced with the choice of whether to live and enjoy life like everyone else, or withdraw from society and live alone in a world that no longer accepts them.
During the Dark Night, the soul purifies itself by realizing its own shortcomings.
Together with the personality, she reviews all her real and imaginary sins. Each particle and atom is magnified many times over so as not to miss any detail. With such an increase, the small "I" cannot but see its insignificance and artificiality.
As the distance between the small "I" and the soul increases, so does the distance between Light and Darkness, Turning the blessings of life into nothing more than abstractions and distractions that fall like a heavy burden on the shoulders, which suddenly became fragile and unreliable.
.. . Knowing your eternity the soul rejoices in the Dark Night as an opportunity to reconsider what it is most unsure of. She tries to prolong her journey and looks at the Dark Night only as the hour before dawn. And the personal "I", thinking that he has only one life, is afraid of hesitation and even delays.
Personality sees in the Dark Night the result of an unpassed exam, an exam in which it was tested and considered unworthy. She expects only a well-deserved punishment for her sins, but these are just representations of human nature.
The Dark Night lasts only as long as the sins are revealed... there is nothing wrong with giving yourself a sumptuous feast once, and the next day being content with simpler food. Day turns into night as inevitably as night turns into day, and this applies to everything that happens to you in the best possible way.
Confusion, confusion and anxiety prevail when separation is felt most forcefully. If you are separated from the breath, you greedily catch the air as you inhale and exhale heavily.
Spiritual balance will be restored when strict beliefs are replaced by the recognition of new opportunities.
Dark Night of the Soul - uh that phenomenon associated with spiritual awakening, and this phenomenon should not be feared. The Dark Night does not necessarily follow or precede spiritual awakening, for both are merely aspects of soul expansion.
Be patient as you go through this, and surround yourself with like-minded people.
Move carefully and slowly, as your path through this cycle may not be clear.
Feel sorry for yourself a little if you can't help it, but don't wallow in self-pity.
Train yourself to see in a dim light so that you can help others achieve the same if you are asked to.
If what's happening to you today brings you back to similar moments that seem to crawl straight out of your past, acknowledge them as such. Look at them directly and honestly. The sun (son) returns at the appointed hour, and the light will cast its shadow soon enough. When bogged down in a quagmire, do not make sudden movements. Resign to your fate until you have enough buoyancy to make it to shore. You can get dirty, but you won't be defeated.
Your only sin is in forgetting the laws according to which nature dominates in the third dimension. These laws also apply to human nature. The remedy is to remember and forgive where necessary. The light is never absent, but is often identified by the shadow.
Remember that when you develop a new path, sometimes it will be slow. A new, slower path is better than the well-trodden old one, where there are no new views and horizons.
That is, at such moments we have a chance to get closer to God, but there is also a danger of moving away from him - we must always go to the Light. Knowing that the period of the night will surely change in the morning and patiently wait for the dawn.
And lastly, these are personal astrological influences - the reader who asked the first question had a second Saturn Return, and the reader who left the comment most likely had her own transit and planetary influences, which it makes sense to study and discuss during such pauses with an astrologer to clarify what is happening.
Dark night of the soul
Dark Night of the Soul also described in the works of the famous psychologist and psychiatrist Stanislav Grof - read the links below two good material on this topic
If you are in a similar situation, when everything in your life is collapsing and you need professional support and support, we have the opportunity to contact a specialist on our website - a Psychologist and Psychotherapist with many years of experience. To order a consultation and get detailed information, please follow the link below:
Categories: , // from 22.10.2015Make it through the page
"Dark Night of the Soul" is an old term used to describe the loss of meaning in life... the intrusion into your life of a deep sense of meaninglessness. Wherein internal state similar to depression. Nothing else makes sense, nothing more to strive for. Often such a state is caused by an external event, such as some kind of catastrophe at the internal level. Such a condition can cause the death of a loved one, especially premature; like the death of your child. Or if everything that you have given meaning to in your life suddenly collapses.
It can also happen when something happens for which you can't find an explanation, and which makes the whole meaning that you have given to life erroneous. In this case, the whole foundation of your idea of life collapses, and you find yourself in darkness. But when people find themselves in such a situation, they have the opportunity to get out of it by moving to another level of consciousness. If this happens, then life regains meaning, but now this meaning is difficult to formulate in words, as there is a deliverance from the speculative perception of reality.
People wake up in something deeper that has no conceptual basis. A deeper sense of meaning and connection to a higher life that does not depend on explanations or anything conceptual at all. This is a kind of rebirth. “The dark night of the soul is a kind of death that you experience. But only your ego dies. Of course, death is always hard, but in this case, nothing really dies - only illusions. Therefore, people who have gone through such a transformation understand that it was necessary for spiritual awakening. This can be called the death of the old self and the birth of the true self.
There are practices of conscious entry into the "dark night of the soul" in order to further spiritual awakening.
Nothing in this room makes sense. You look around the room and say to yourself "nothing here makes sense", "nothing here is important". In this way, you recreate the situation of the “dark night of the soul”, depriving your world created by your mind of meaning. It is self-denial of the meaning that your mind has created. Then you keep telling yourself “I don’t know what this means”, “this doesn’t mean anything”. Thus, you erase everything that was written on your board. "Dark Night of the Soul" destroys everything that your mind has created.
You have arrived at the point of conceptual meaninglessness. Or, to put it another way, into a state of ignorance where things lose their meaning that you used to give them; this, in turn, has always been conditioned by something, be it culture, living conditions, and so on. Then you look at the world without imposing your own semantic template on it. It seems that now you do not understand anything. It looks very frightening when it happens involuntarily. But you do it on purpose: you discover the universe as it is, without forced interpretations. You look at events, people, etc. with a keen sense of reality. You feel pure reality through your deep sense of reality, but you no longer try to fit your experience into mental patterns.
The shadow of death, suffering and torments of hell is felt especially sharply, and this comes from the feeling that you are abandoned by God... and a terrible foreboding arises in the soul that it will always be like this... The soul sees itself in the very center of the most diverse forms of evil, among the miserable imperfection, devastated, thirsty for understanding and thrown into darkness.
San Juan de la Cruz, "Dark Night of the Soul"
Failures are not evidence of illusory weakness or incompetence, they are the catastrophe of the ego. This is their spiritual meaning.
Stanislav GROFF
DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL (excerpt)<
The following pages will describe some of the most common critical and embarrassing types of experiences that come to the surface from the complex and confusing inner world of the individual during the process of transformation and that are familiar to us both from our own experience and from the reports of other people. We hope that we will not discourage the reader by starting now to deal with these difficult experiences. The dark night of the soul is just one aspect of the spiritual journey, and there are many more that are much more enjoyable.
The purpose of our study of this topic is, firstly, to express the unusual sequence of states during the process of transformation. Although there are many exceptions, most people who experience a spiritual crisis still have to dive into and through dark areas before they reach a state of freedom, light and peace. For those who undertake this path, the positive experiences often seem more meaningful and intense afterwards, in contrast to the difficult experiences they had to deal with earlier. Just as the sunrise is perceived as particularly bright and hopeful after a long winter night, so joy seems especially strong after pain.
With this in mind, we can ask the following question: what are the dark areas through which a person may have to pass? What do they look like? And what kind of conflicts can arise there?
For some people in a spiritual crisis - both in its dramatic and milder forms - the task of getting through one more day, the task of maintaining the ability to act in the usual way, can be a serious challenge. Normal, seemingly simple activities that are part of everyday life can suddenly become difficult or depressing. Often, individuals in crisis are filled with inner experiences that are so saturated with emotions, power and energy that it is difficult to separate the vivid and vivid images of the inner world from the events of external reality. In such situations, it is often difficult to maintain concentration, and this can cause great difficulty for people going through a crisis. Panic can also be caused by rapid, frequent changes in states of consciousness. Unable to function in their usual way, people in this situation feel powerless, ineffective, and guilty.
One woman described her problems as follows: “I could see and understand that there were things that needed to be done around the house, but I had the feeling that there was some kind of wall between me and these things that I used to do without any effort. I remembered that I had to go out to do some garden work and knew that this activity could be useful, but I got the feeling that if I went that far, I might explode.At all those artistic and creative projects, which made me so happy before, now it was too hard to focus. And even playing with my children seemed too much for me. challenging task. The only thing I could do at that time was take care of myself somehow."
Among the most difficult and disturbing conditions that a person experiencing a spiritual crisis usually has to face are feelings of fear, a sense of his own madness and preoccupation with death. Although these states are often inevitable, necessary, and central parts of the healing process, they can become frightening and overwhelming, especially when there is no support from others.
From the opening gates of the unconscious, a wide variety of repressed emotions and memories burst to the surface. When a person is faced with specific memories or experiences from personal or transpersonal, transpersonal, areas, he may have experiences associated with fear, loneliness, insanity and death. A person can recall memories of experiences serious illnesses, life-threatening cases or other disturbing events from infancy and childhood. Biological birth, with all its complex, chaotic and dynamic manifestations, can also be re-experienced.
A person may also experience fear, loneliness, insanity, or death during transpersonal states arising from the collective unconscious or even from universe-wide realms. The transpersonal realms contain both light and dark elements; fear can cause both those and others, "positive" and "negative". Someone may fight a monstrous mythological demon or relive a battle that was in another era - feelings of anxiety and fear in such situations are inevitable. The fact that a feeling of fear sometimes arises when an individual moves into the realm of light and beauty may be puzzling. In the next chapter, we will discuss the challenge of "positive" realities.
Many people spend years feeling that their familiar world is well organized and that they have complete control over their lives. When they discover that they are by no means in complete control of the trajectory of their being, they may experience a sense of extreme freedom. But it happens that people are afraid of this, especially if they completely identify themselves with their lifestyle full of constant stress. They will ask themselves: "If I am not in control of my life, then who is? And is he, she, or it - that which controls my life - completely trustworthy? Can I give myself to some unknown force and know that this power will take care of me?"
Faced with the fear of losing control, the mind and ego become very sophisticated in their efforts to cling to anything; people in these situations can create complex systems of rebuttal by convincing themselves that the way they are living is absolutely wonderful and that there is no need for any change, or that the changes they feel are just illusory. . These people may try to intellectually interpret the states of mind they experience, creating sophisticated theories to explain them. Or they may simply be trying to avoid these states altogether. Sometimes the feeling of anxiety itself becomes a defense: when a person clings to his feeling of fear, this can quite successfully prevent him from growing too fast.
There is another form of loss of control, far less gradual and more dramatic. Being in a spiritual crisis, a person may feel overwhelmed by powerful episodes of experiences during which he completely loses control over his behavior. In such situations, the individual may explode with anger, burst into tears, tremble violently, or scream in a way that has never been done before. This unhindered release of emotions can be extremely liberating, but before it occurs, the person may experience extreme fear and resistance to the power of their feelings. After such an explosion, the individual feels frightened and ashamed that he allowed his expression to manifest with such force.
LONELINESS.
Loneliness is another integral component of a spiritual crisis. It can be experienced in - a wide range - from a vague and indefinite sense of one's separation from other people and from the world to a deep and complete absorption in existential alienation. Some of the feelings of inner isolation are due to the fact that people during a spiritual crisis come face to face with unusual states of consciousness that are different from the daily experiences of their friends and family members, and they have never heard anyone describe anything. similar. However, existential loneliness seems to be something that has very little to do with any personal or other external influences.
Many people going through the process of transformation feel isolated from others due to the very nature of the experiences they are experiencing. Since the inner world becomes more active at this time, the person feels the need to temporarily be distracted from daily activities, being preoccupied with his intense feelings, thoughts and internal processes. The importance of relationships with other people may fade, and the person may even feel disconnected from his usual sense of who he is. When this happens, a person experiences a completely absorbing sense of separation from himself, from other people and from the world around him. For those who are in this state, ordinary human warmth and support are not available.
A young teacher told us about the feeling of loneliness he experienced during a spiritual crisis: “Although I habitually went to bed at night with my wife, I felt complete and unconditional loneliness. Throughout my crisis, my wife was a great help and tried to create comfortable conditions for me. But during the period when I felt alone, everything she did did not help me - not affectionate hugs, not any degree of support.
We have often heard individuals going through a spiritual crisis say, "No one has gone through this before. I'm the only one who feels it!" Such people not only feel that this process is unique and unrepeatable for them, but they are also convinced that no one in history has experienced anything like it. Perhaps that is why they are so convinced of the specificity of their experiences that only some trusted therapist or teacher is able to sympathize and help them. Strong emotions and unfamiliar sensations in such people sometimes take them so far from their previous existence that they can easily assume that they are not normal. They feel that something is wrong with them and that no one can understand them. If such people turn to those psychotherapists who mystify them, then their feeling of intense isolation only increases.
During an existential crisis, a person feels his isolation from his deepest essence, from higher power, from God - and a person, be that as it may, depends precisely on something that is beyond his individual resources and provides him with strength and inspiration. The result of this is the most devastating kind of loneliness, a total and complete existential estrangement that permeates the entire being of man. This was expressed in the words of a woman who was experiencing a spiritual crisis: “I was surrounded by great loneliness. I had the feeling that every cell of my being was in a state of utter loneliness. I imagined myself standing on a rock, pierced by the wind and looking into the black sky yearning for a sense of oneness with God, but in front of me was only blackness. It was something more than human abandonment; this feeling was total. "
This deep sense of isolation can come to many people, regardless of their personal history, and is often a major component of spiritual transformation. Irina Tweedy, a woman from Russia who studied with a Sufi master in India, wrote in her book The Abyss of Fire:
"There was a great separation here ... a strange, special feeling of complete loneliness ... it could not be compared with any of those states of loneliness that we encounter in our daily life. Everything seemed dark and lifeless. Nowhere, in nothing there was no meaning, no purpose. There was no God to pray to. There was no hope. There was nothing at all."
This feeling of utter isolation was expressed in the lonely prayer of Jesus crucified on the cross: "My God, why have you abandoned me?" People who find themselves in this state, trying to explain the extent of their fundamental feeling, often cite the example of Christ at this most difficult moment of his life. They cannot find any connection with the Divine and are instead forced to endure the painful feeling of rejection by God. Even when such a person is surrounded by love and support, he can be filled with deep and painful loneliness. When a person descends into the abyss of existential alienation, then human warmth, no matter how great it may be, is not able to change anything.
Those facing an existential crisis not only feel their isolation, but also feel their utter insignificance, like useless specks of dust in a vast cosmos. The whole universe seems absurd and meaningless, and any human activity seems trivial. These people may perceive the whole of humanity as immersed in an insignificant, mouse-like existence, which has neither benefit nor meaning. When these people are in this state, it seems to them that there is no cosmic order, and they have no contact with the spiritual force. It seems to them that there is no way out of their insignificant state.
ISOLATIONAL BEHAVIOR
A person during a spiritual crisis may try to be "different" for a while. In our culture of fixed norms and rigid calculation, a person who begins to change internally may not seem completely healthy. He may one day manifest his condition, starting at work or for dining table talk about your new ideas or discoveries - for example, about your feelings related to death, or ask questions about your birth; can talk about memories associated with long-hidden details of family history; about unusual prospects for solving the world's problems or about the fundamental nature of the universe.
The abstractness of these problems and the insistence with which a person talks about them can lead to the fact that colleagues, friends and family members begin to feel alienated from him, which will only increase the already existing feeling of loneliness. A person's interests and values may change, and they may no longer want to participate in any activity. Or, for example, he may no longer be attracted to the idea of spending an evening with friends over a bottle, which will lead to the fact that he may make an unpleasant impression on others.
People in this situation experience very unusual feelings related to the very nature of the experiences they go through. They may feel growing and changing, unlike the rest of the world, which is so frozen in place that no one can follow them. Or these people may get carried away with activities that are not supported by their loved ones. A person may suddenly develop an interest in prayer, in meditation, in some esoteric systems such as astrology or alchemy, which will seem "strange" to family and friends and will only increase their desire to turn away from such a person.
People who are in the transformative process can dramatically change their appearance. They can shave their heads or, conversely, grow their hair; may express attachment to clothes that are clearly different from the norm. A number of examples of this can be found in the psychedelic culture of the sixties and seventies, when many had spiritual insights, but did not express them in ways acceptable to society, but preferred to direct these insights to the formation of a separate "counterculture", with its characteristic expressive clothing, jewelry, long hair and even brightly colored cars.
Other examples can be found in various religious groups. Initiates in Zen Buddhism can shave their heads and live in demonstrative simplicity.
The followers of Guru Rajneesh not only wear a certain color of clothing, but also wear a rosary with a portrait of the teacher in the middle, called a mala, changing their usual names to Indian-style names. Followers of Orthodox Judaism often wear yarmulkes and long beards, leading a strictly religious lifestyle. Those who identify themselves with a community of followers of spiritual practice will tolerate or even encourage such forms of behavior. However, those who make a sudden decision to follow such overtly expressive behaviors will find themselves in a situation where they will be deprived of all support for a while and may feel even more isolated.
For many who are experiencing a spiritual crisis, the transformation occurs without such drastic outward manifestations of their alienation. But there are also obvious changes in behavior. For some, these new ways of behaving are a temporary stage of spiritual development, while for others, they can become a permanent part of their new way of life.
EXPERIENCE THE STATE OF "MADNESS"
During a spiritual crisis, the role of the logical mind often weakens and the multi-colored, rich world of intuition, inspiration and imagination begins to prevail. Common sense becomes a limiting factor, and real revelations begin to come from something beyond the intellect. For some individuals, these journeys into the realm of visionary experience can be spontaneous, exciting, and creative. But more often than not, all this, obviously not related to those conditions that are considered normal, leads many people to the conclusion that they are going crazy.
The weakening of rationality - a natural part of spiritual development - often results in the disappearance of the old limitations of traditional thinking, and this can sometimes foreshadow the emergence of a new, wider understanding and greater inspiration. At the same time, what disappears is in fact by no means the ability to reason sensibly - although sometimes it may turn out to be so - but only those limitations in knowledge that keep a person in a state of constriction and inability to change.
While this is happening, coherent thinking sometimes seems impossible, and the person is mentally preoccupied with his conscious mind being overwhelmed by the release of the unconscious. Unexpectedly strange and disturbing emotions can arise, and rationality, once so familiar, is useless in trying to explain what is happening. This moment in spiritual development can be very frightening. However, if the individual is really involved in the process of self-disclosure, then all these worries will soon pass, and this moment itself can be a very important stage of transformation.
Some spiritual traditions offer an alternative vision of this kind of "madness". "Holy madness" or "divine madness" is known and recognized by various spiritual teachings, and is considered by them to be different from ordinary madness, perceived as a form of intoxication with the Divine, which gives a person extraordinary abilities and spiritual instructions. In traditions such as Sufism and the culture of the American Indians, the sacred figures of fools, or jesters, are the embodiment of this state. Revered seers, prophets, and mystics are often described as being inspired by just such madness.
Divine madness was described by the Greek philosopher Plato as a gift from the gods:
"The greatest blessing comes through madness, as if madness is indeed a message from heaven. It is in a state of madness that the soothsayers in Delphi and the priestesses of Dodona achieved what they are grateful for in Greece and the states, and individual people. When these soothsayers are in of sound mind, they can do very little or even nothing at all ... therefore madness is a divine gift that comes by the grace of the gods.
In the culture that exists on the island of Okinawa, this state is called kamidari. This is the period during which the spirit of a person suffers, a time of trials when a person cannot act rationally. The community supports such individuals, recognizing that their unusual condition is a sign of closeness to God. In addition, this person is revered as having a divine mission - perhaps the mission of a healer or teacher.
ENCOUNTER WITH SYMBOLIC DEATH
Confrontation with the manifestations of death is a central part of the transformation process and a unifying component of most spiritual crises. It is part of a powerful death-rebirth cycle in which what really dies is the old way of being that has held back the growth of the individual. From this point of view, everyone in one form or another dies many times during their lives. In many traditions, the very idea of "dying to death" is fundamental to spiritual development. Understanding that death is part of the continuous sequence of life frees a person from the fear of death and opens up to him the possibility of experiencing immortality.
In the 17th century, the Christian monk Abraham of Santa Clara wrote: "A person who has died before his death does not die at the time of death."
A description of the encounter with one's own death is given in The Game of Consciousness by Swami Muktananda. He vividly describes not only the experience of dying, but also the movement towards rebirth:
"I was terrified of death. My prana (breath, life force) stopped moving. My mind could no longer function. I felt my prana leaving the body ... I lost all the strength of my body. Like a dying man whose mouth opens, and my arms stretched out, I made a strange sound and fell to the floor ... I completely lost consciousness. I came to myself after about an hour and a half, and it seemed funny to me to say to myself: "I died not so long ago, but I'm alive again!" I stood up feeling deep peace, love and joy. I was aware that I had experienced death ... Now I knew what it meant to die, and death was no longer scary to me. I became completely fearless. "
The encounter with death can manifest itself in various forms. One of them is a confrontation with one's own mortality. One who avoids topics related to death will most likely have difficulty in gaining a deep inner experience that shows the person that his life is transient and that death is inevitable. Many people unconsciously retain a childlike notion that they are immortal, and when faced with the tragedies of life, dismiss them with the usual statement, "It happens to other people. It won't happen to me."
When a spiritual crisis brings such people to an essential understanding of their mortality, they experience extreme resistance. They will do anything to avoid what scares them: perhaps they will try to stop the process that is happening to them through hard work, excessive sociability, brief and casual relationships, or through the use of depressant drugs or alcohol. In conversations, they may avoid the topic of death or try to ridicule it by moving on to relatively safer topics of conversation. Others may suddenly become acutely aware of the aging process, both their own and those of others close to them.
Some come to a sudden realization of the fragility of life, as in the case described by one patient, a teacher by profession: "For some time I was not serious about the idea of my own mortality. I was familiar with some of the ideas of Christianity and Buddhism about the continuity of everything that exists, but I never took it as something that applied directly to me.Then the day came when the spaceship Challenger exploded.I watched it on TV and saw how seven astronauts waved goodbye and climbed into the spacecraft, which became their death trap, they had no way of knowing what it was. last minutes their lives. In that moment, they were all confident in their lives, which were soon cut short. Watching this terrible drama, I seemed to experience it myself. Philosophers wrote the truth: our life is ephemeral, and we all really have only a moment of the present. No past, no future, just the present."
Such a revelation can be devastating for people who are unwilling or unwilling to face their fear of death, but it can also be liberating for those who are willing to accept the fact of their mortality, as the full acceptance of death can free them to enjoy every moment of life.
Another type of such experiences is the death of a limited way of thinking or way of life. When a person begins to change, he may find it necessary to drop some of the limitations that hinder his growth. Sometimes this happens almost of their own free will, through very regular therapy or spiritual practice that forces the person to consciously release old restrictions. It happens that it generally happens by itself, as a natural part of the development of this person.
However, for many people experiencing a spiritual crisis, this process is quick and unexpected. Suddenly, they feel their comfort and security disappear, as if they have received some kind of push in an unknown direction. Familiar ways of being no longer seem appropriate and are replaced by new ones. The individual to whom such a change occurs feels unable to cling to any manifestations of life, feels fear and cannot return to the old behavior and old interests. A person may feel that everything that he once was, to which he paid attention, is now dying. And this process is irreversible. Thus, a person can be consumed by a great longing for his dying old self.
The state of liberation from various roles, relationships, from the world and from oneself is another form of symbolic death. This is well known to various spiritual systems as the primary goal of inner development. Such liberation from the old is a necessary event in life, and it naturally occurs at the moment of death - at a time when every human being fully understands that we cannot take with us those material things that belong to us, our earthly roles and all our relationship with the world we leave. The practice of meditation and other forms of self-examination lead seekers to face these experiences even before the moment of physical death arrives. Such experiences give people the freedom to enjoy more fully all that they have in life.
Poet T.S. Elliot wrote:
Trying to have what you don't have
You will have to walk the path of liberation from possession.
In striving to where you are not,
You will have to follow the path where you are not yet.
In Buddhism, attachment or addiction to the manifestations of the material world is considered the root of all suffering, and the rejection of this attachment is the key to spiritual liberation. There is a similar idea in other traditions, and it was also expressed by Patanjali in the Yoga Sutras: "By the absence of any self-indulgence, at the moment when the seeds of attachment to suffering are destroyed, pure being is achieved."
More or less radical detachment occurs regularly during the spiritual crisis process, and if it does, it can lead to increased stress and confusion. When a person begins to change, his attitude to loved ones, to activities, to familiar roles in life also begins to change. A man who believes that his family belongs to him suddenly discovers that attachment to his wife and children only brings him great pain. He may also have the insight that the only permanent thing in life is change and that he may be losing everything he thought was his.
Discoveries of this kind can lead to the realization that death ultimately equalizes everyone, and even if a person denies its reality in his life, he will still have to pay tribute to it sometime. While going through these experiences, individuals have to undergo a painful condition, an inability to engage in the daily activities to which they are attached, which they seem to perpetuate their suffering. The process of detachment is in itself a form of death, the death of attachments. In some people, this impulse to detachment is very strong, they become afraid that in this way they are really preparing for death hanging over them.
Individuals at this stage of spiritual self-manifestation often have the misconception that the completion of the changes that are happening to them will mean a complete departure from the connections that are significant in their daily life, and this will lead to confusion of this new need for internal detachment with external manifestations of detachment. Such people may feel an urgent inner need to be released from all conditions that limit them, and if they do not have the revelation that this process of renunciation can be completed completely on the inner level, they mistakenly begin to transfer this into their daily lives. In the sixties and early seventies, many of those people who reached this stage through experimentation with mind-altering techniques and psychotropic substances also manifested it in external forms of behavior, indeed leaving their family and social roles, thus creating a counterculture, trying to embody their newfound understanding.
At one of our seminars there was a lawyer who had reached a similar critical point during his spiritual journey and, addressing us, asked in desperation, “Does this mean that I have to leave everything that I have worked for all this time? I love my family and my job.I have been married for twenty years and very attached to my wife.My law practice is thriving, I enjoy doing what I do.But everything inside me tells me that I should come to the point of giving it all up "Maybe I'm close to death? What should I do?"
After discussing this, he admitted that there was no need to give up his quite good and productive lifestyle and that the process of his spiritual unfoldment did not lead him to physical death. On the contrary, he reached the usual and quite natural stage of detachment, in which he had a need to give up emotional attachment to certain important elements own life. He was able to understand that all that needs to die at this stage is only his limited attitude to the roles that he is accustomed to, and that the internal rejection of them can liberate him to the highest degree in order for him to function. more effective.
An important way of experiencing symbolic death during transformation is the death of the ego. During the process of spiritual self-manifestation, a person moves from a relatively limited way of being to new, wider conditions. Sometimes for the fullness of this shift it is necessary that the old forms of existence "die", opening the way for the manifestation of the new "I" of man; the ego must be destroyed before a new, larger self can be made possible. This is called the death of the ego. It is not really the death of that "ego" that is necessary to function in everyday reality; it is the death of old personality structures and ineffective ways of being in the world that is necessary to achieve a happier and freer existence.
Ananda K. Coomaraswamy wrote about this: "There is no such being who could reach top level existence without ceasing its ordinary existence.
The death of the ego can happen gradually, over a long period of time, or it can happen suddenly and with great force. Although this is one of the most rewarding and most healing moments in spiritual evolution, it can be seen as a disaster. During this stage, the process of dying can sometimes be very realistic, as if it is no longer a symbolic experience, but a real biological catastrophe. As a rule, at the same time, a person cannot yet see what is on the other side of what is perceived as a total destruction of the "ego" and what is a wider, all-encompassing sense of one's true essence. The following lines from D. Lawrence's "Phoenix" reflect the nature of this devastating yet transformative process:
Do you want to be a squeezed sponge
cleansed to the limit, expunged from life,
become nothing?
Do you want to be nothing?
Sink into oblivion?
If not, then you don't really want to change.
When people go into the ego-death process, they often feel so overwhelmed and empty of these experiences that everything they are or have been seems to them to have shrunk to a point with no hope of any renewal. As all identities are destroyed in these individuals, they lose their confidence in their place in the world, in being truly parents, workers, and generally effective human beings. Old interests become irrelevant, ethical beliefs change, friends leave, and the person himself loses confidence that he can function effectively in everyday life. In the inner world, they may experience a gradual loss of identity and feel that their essence is on the physical, emotional and spiritual levels destroyed by an unexpected force. Such people may feel like they are actually dying, suddenly confronting their deepest fear in the process.
Through therapy, spiritual practice, and other forms of self-exploration, it is possible to complete the symbolic process of dying on an inner level. A person can die internally, while remaining alive and healthy.
