The Dark Night Of The Soul

The ideas of birth, death, and rebirth. For example, going through existential crises (the dark night of the soul process) and the spiritual awakening process. One is the death of the old while the other is the birth of a new life and rebirth of you. They represent your journey through levels of spiritual development.

Spiritual Awakening and the Dark Night of the Soul

All of life moves us through cycles of time. Eons of time. There are seasons that come and go. There are eras and millennia of time that pass us by. Each of these blocks of time provides us with countless histories that survived turmoil, tragedy, inspiration, and transformation. The varying stages stretch us outward and onward toward great lengths of time that flow from small, precious moments up onto great epochs of time.

However, although we carry on and move through these waves of change that gifts us with powerful and momentous events with historical significance, we are but a raindrop within a massive sea of time indefinite called eternity. Yet, within this eternal Universe, we experience three important types of time that invite continual evolutionary changes. These ongoing cycles of time and transformation are death, birth, and rebirth. Continual growth. This happens forever. It’s never-ending and always revolutionizing. And it always begins with the dark night of the soul. An ending before a beginning.

Levels of Spiritual Development

While all of this is true on a universal level, this is also true for the individual. The human being that walks through this life begins it by entering this plane of existence, out of the safety of the womb, and into this world to go upon a long, arduous journey that challenges, from beginning to the bitter (sweet) end.  

We are taken through a process where each phase reflects an archetype that represents a particular stage of life that we find ourselves living in. While that is true for the overall journey that we are taking from the start to finish, as a whole… it is also reflected within these larger time blocks or cycles that we all come to face. Each of these phases represents a stage within our emotional growth and levels of spiritual development.

Ignorance of Spiritual Awakening

 As these are true for the levels of spiritual development that phase in and out of our lives. In the material sense, we are also rolling through these paradigms of time, within our spirit and our consciousness. Yet, we may not always be consciously aware of this higher and more spiritually aware state of being, of a more awakened kind of existence. In fact, most of us will find ourselves blocked and blinded during these various stages of life. 

 Those of us with curious and inquiring minds may get through these archetypal stages by deeply exploring ourselves and life in general, which may open doors to success. While the rest of us, and unfortunately, that is the majority, often take roads that are not for our highest good. These are the paths that often lead to destruction. Much of the time, these choices that are made are due to patterning that has been handed down, generation to generation, by our ancestral heritage. We carry this lineage within the coding structure of our very DNA, at the cellular level.

These behavioral patterns can cause us to lose so much precious time. It may not even be until mid-life when these revelations rise to the surface. By then, so much life has passed us up and we then find ourselves burdened with the aftermath of the karmic, toxic past that needs releasing and surrendering.

But, how do we begin to take our life back, put it back together, and begin a new cycle that is both fresh and freeing? It starts once we encounter the shattering of a previous cycle, the seeds of decay, and the slow decline of a once established way of life that is no longer serving us. It’s the beginning stages of the death process in your life, the dark night of the soul. The essential step on the path to spiritual awakening.

The Process of Death

The death process is not a comfortable one by any stretch. It can manifest at any time period or during any particular scope of time within one’s life. Each of us is unique and this process will be different, look different, start different, and end differently from one another. Even though many do experience strong similarities to each other’s circumstances at times – we won’t always come to the same conclusions and end with the same life lessons.

However, what we will all experience as a collective and on an individual level is our energetic connections and experiences with the process of death, with the dark night of the soul. For the sake of this topic, I am referring to the stages we go through in life that are spiritual, emotional, and experiential, not necessarily the death of a person’s physical body that leaves the earth. The death that I am referring to is one that belongs to the process of soul growth. Otherwise known as the dark night of the soul.

It is the falling away of all that you thought you had known to be true and final for you and about you. The arrival of something that thrusts you into a new situation and has you reevaluating and questioning everything about your reality and who you thought you were in relation to it. This includes those you share your life with and what they have actually represented up until this point of the death process. 

The Dark Night of The Soul

The death process, which causes such upheaval in it’s beginning stages, develops itself into the birth of a new awareness that is not pretty and can be extremely challenging, although enlightening in so many areas and so many vast ways. This new stage of time in one’s life is brought on by crises and deepens into an existential one that pulls a person into a massive, spiritual depression.

This existential crisis and spiritual depression are referred to as a period in one’s life called the dark night of the soul. This period of life can extend from many months into many years of a person’s life journey. There’s incredible suffering in silence for many during this phase of life. It can be a very painful stronghold to endure and even more challenging to articulate. 

A Time of Inner Turmoil

The dark night of the soul can be a time when a person is at a total loss for answers and for who they think or maybe once thought they were in life. Many begin questioning everything about life. This time is one of extreme isolation, alienation, disconnection, with such powerful feelings of emotional pain. The heaviness from this time can be palpable and many times it can feel so unbearable and smothering to the mind even. There are many, many fears that draw up to the surface and it’s beyond overwhelming. In fact, there’s a tendency for over-analyzing and a constant underlying anxiousness that keeps one up at night with thoughts that are heavy, profound, deep, and can be quite dark. 

Symptoms of The Dark Night of the Soul

The feelings of grief, pain, loss, and possible tragic circumstances surrounding it can greatly enhance this already formidable time. Just physically, this can be so taxing on a person as they face their day to day life. What’s more, is that the care of good health practices can be ignored. Bad dietary habits, neglect of mental health and even ignoring and putting off self-care routines that keep up with good hygiene. Feeling very chronically fatigued, mixed with a foggy mindedness can and does occur during these heavier times within one’s life as they go through this phase.

Life can feel very cloudy and uncertain with so much fear that overpowers the ability to correctly lead one’s life with clarity and strength. Making it impossible to get out of stuck and stagnant situations that lock you down in place with a sense of feeling imprisoned within your mind and even closed off within the heart space. It can feel as though you’re living in a continual state of fear, uncertainty, insecurity, pain, anxiety, unworthiness, and lack. No doubt, this is a time that severely tests the strength and will of one’s character. It can be looked at as the death of the ego. Meditation and chakra cleansing can help to alleviate these symptoms and foster more positive mental, emotional, and energetic states.

What Causes the Dark Night of the Soul?

There are many reasons as to why the dark night of the soul rears itself into one’s life. But generally, it is set off due to an event or time in one’s life that marks a great loss, a huge change, a traumatic event, having a powerful moment of realization or spiritual awakening that brings about an epiphany of some sort. Even something that seems rather small and insignificant at the time but may propel one into spiraling out of control in terms of mental health because of the weight of the spiritually driven nature of such a powerful depression. 

The dark night of the soul can make it’s appearance more than once during a person’s life. The reasons for this can be because of the deepening of the soul’s growth during the many levels of spiritual development. Or, it can be caused by revisiting an area within life that needed a longer and deeper review in order to reemerge from the situation with a more whole and integrated outlook on the direction of your life. 

Misunderstandings

The dark night of the soul can often be misunderstood and treated as though it were a mental illness or mood disorder. This does such a disservice to the person that is going through such a powerful and profound time. In an age where we all desire to have it all and have it all yesterday, we do not allow ourselves the time and opportunity to go through the process of spiritual development. Instead, we often end up at the doctor for a prescription medication that is not right for us and only serves to dull out our senses. Such medications are created for those suffering from true chemical and hormonal imbalances.

A Sacred Gift of the Soul

The dark night of the soul, however, can be looked at, with the right mindset, as something like a sacred gift of the soul that breaks open the heart space and brings immense change and such incredible transformation that goes along with it. Once such a breakthrough occurs, it can feel like such a strenuous, grueling, and trying time that you had to endure, actually was something very much worth having to go through. Once you understand how enormously empowered you feel afterward, you may view this time that seemed so horrendous as a gift from God. A. gift that begins a new awareness of yourself and a new awakening to the beauties of life.

The Spiritual Awakening

The spiritual awakening process is one that not only unfolds information and creates total transformation but it also expands one’s awareness to the needs for a more global transformation. However, this spiritual awakening often indicates that the dark night of the soul has ended the old sense of the egoic self and old ideas of reality that have broken down and then emerges without the old indoctrinations and falsehoods about the way things actually are on the planet. 

Discovering Your Purpose

The spiritual awakening process can open you to discovering your deepest purpose in life. Once it begins, it’s a process that opens your heart and your life to insights, lessons, understandings, and revelations that create powerful bonds. These lessons encourage a prosperous, blossoming within you that develops a self-actualized life with a greater sense of inner peace, harmony and sacred simplicity. You begin to see the beauty within yourself and within the world around you, despite knowing the darkness that is out there. 

A Deeper Search for Truth Begins

Once the spiritual awakening begins within your life, you can never go back to a place of ignorance. Once you awaken and can see with spiritual eyes, and have experienced spiritual healing within the heart space, all of the past illusions that you once had held prior have broken. This clear vision enables a deeper search for truth and wisdom that can reveal the most sacred mysteries of life.

If you have any questions about your spiritual journey, feel free to reach out to us. You can either ask them in the comments below or in our Sacred Circle forum. We are here to help and support you.