Dark Night of the Soul
This is a very popular subject matter among “spiritual seekers” because it sounds important and dramatic. And, for the form it can be one hell of a ride…
But it’s not important. Not to the Absolute. Not to YOU.
Essentially there’s a point in a serious spiritual practice where the ego gets that “the jig is up.”
It finally understands clearly that all of its ideas that it is going to “attain something” from this spirituality are VERY wrong.
It is a lot like when a group of cannibals are sitting around trying to figure out what to eat and then, at some point, when they all look at you with mouths watering, you get the point – YOU are dinner.
At the beginning the ego LOVED spirituality.
It enjoyed the brief “spiritual moments” where there was a lifting of suffering that often comes from a new practice.
It LOVED feeling special and superior to others because it was “in the know” and all those other “egoic dopes” were just ignorant and lost.
It LOVED the idea that it might attain some “spiritual state” that in its expectations will be “all joy and no pain.”
And then it happens…
It finally hears the spiritual teacher clearly talking about its demise.
Or, it finally sees that those “gaps of spiritual bliss” did not include it…
Or it pushes back against the guru over and over to get the guru to stay away from its “hidden identity” and the guru doesn’t go anywhere…
At some point, the ego finally gets that its death IS the liberation in the spiritual journey.
And at that point it doesn’t fight fair.
Why should it? It believes it is fighting for its life.
Also, inside of us, are many trapped and suffering children and former selves. These are the voices and sensations of our Pain Body.
So part of how the ego does not fight fair is it lies to those children, to our former selves, and tells them that they are going to die too…
It has often built an entire “self identity” from those very “stories of suffering” and tells those children that if IT goes, so must they…
And it’s a complete lie.
The children we heal. And the healed versions of them we take with us, or set free, their choice.
The ego has nothing to do with it.
But if we “crack first” like they do in Zen, well then the ego goes into “survival mode” and brings up as much darkness as it can find. It hopes to “punish us” and frighten those former child selves into “stopping all this spiritual nonsense.”
If we do the “slower method,” just as we approach the end of “stage three” of the “seven stages of liberation” called “Tenuous Mind” it does the same. It goes out of its way to do ANYTHING and EVERYTHING it can imagine to get us to stop the practice that it fears will kill it.
And it very often works.
In fact this is the phase that is the MOST responsible for people ending their spiritual paths…
Well, pausing them anyway.
Because as Adyashanti likes to point out “at first we seek God, then, after awhile she seeks us.”
We asked for the truth.
The Goddess won’t stop until she shows us in full.
And in full, in the relative, this truth is EQUAL parts light and dark.
And the way out is through.