A Facebook friend posted: “After her walk last night, my elderly, arthritic dog wanted out again, so I let her into the fenced backyard. It was late and dark and I was tired, and I completely forgot she was out there. All night long, I was awakened by quiet barking and couldn’t figure out where it was coming from. Found her curled up in a ball on the brick pavers at 5:30 am. I’m sure she’s not speaking to me. I don’t blame her. Meanwhile, my chihuahua spent the whole night in bed with me, under her Egyptian cotton blanket – laughing it up, I’m sure. She has a competitive streak.” I commented “her dark night of the soul did her good – now she knows she can make it through on her own!”
That’s what a dark night is all about: being left on our own, with no visible means of support, questioning everything and wondering if there’s anyone who really cares or can help. In the dark night, we don’t know, and we don’t know if we can trust what we think we know. We have to rely on faith. Secret magical tip: We’ll have several dark nights, so if we can discipline our minds (through repetitive thought with emotion) to develop faith, next time it happens we’ll surf it easier, and see the light at the end of the tunnel much quicker.
The dark night comes upon us when our soul begins to overshadow our personality. We get restless. It’s the process of examining our motivations and letting go of the habits of aversion and attraction which enmesh us in karmic patterns that generate suffering. The things that used to fulfill us no longer do. Like the Saturn return in astrology or the Uranus opposition , we take a look back at what we’ve been living. If we don’t like what we see, if we don’t want more years of the same, in the dark night of the soul we feel forced to reflect on our past. Old thoughts keep coming up of past crap we now wish we hadn’t done, or would simply do differently now.
These thoughts are not demons, these thoughts are angels guiding us out of the dark night we now find ourselves in. These thoughts are coming to you to be healed and corrected. These thoughts are brought to mind by your soul. You’ve had glimpses of your soul in tender moments, in compassionate moments, but your personality is the more practiced vibration. The soul is the God connection within you. The personality is the combined package of your physical body, your thoughts and memories and emotions. Knowing that, it’s a wonder it ever gets a word in edgewise, right? But the soul will have its say in quiet moments, and you are the one in charge of how often that is.
In fact, it is when you do not give time for the soul to reflect, that is when the dark night comes upon you. It’s like the soul is calling a Time Out, and making the personality sit in the corner awhile. If you’re stubborn and don’t listen the first time, you’ll get the cosmic 2 x 4 followed by the dark night. The cosmic 2 x 4 is always the momentum of your past coming back to you. The magical secret remedy: When you begin listening to the soul, you learn the importance of clearing up the past. Making amends where you can pours a Niagara Falls of holy water over those situations, they are swept away leaving room for your easier future life.
When the soul overshadows the personality, as Natalie Imbruglia sings in Torn: Illusion never changed into something real. You’re wide awake and you can see (what you thought was) the perfect sky is torn. You begin seeing past the superficial crap and things take on deeper meaning. You begin to see things for what they are. The first time I heard this song, a friend was ending a guru/disciple relationship and “seeing the light.” To me this song is all about having false idols tumble and awakening to see things for what they really are. The personality is not always ready to handle our false illusions being dashed, so the emotional body may bonk out for awhile. This can be a dark night indeed. Remembering it is the result of past momentum trains us to be more mindful of our actions in the future.
So the dark night is all about being left on our own, with no visible means of support, questioning everything and having to rely on the faith we’ve developed. And for those who, like my friend’s chihuahua, spend their whole lives safe and comfy and laughing it up at those who struggle, don’t worry, their dark night will come. I’ve had several dark nights of my own.
My galpal in the dog story above just came out of a relationship with a narcissistic sociopath, so she knows what the dark night of the soul is. “Oh,” I think, knowing him, “if only I knew her before they met, I could have warned her and saved her years of pain.” But sometimes we need pain to awaken us to a greater reality. Had I not gone through my own dark night this year, discovering that someone I trusted as a brother on the path was instead maligning me behind the scenes, I would not have been shaken out of my complacency and done some serious soul searching. In doing so, I learned a lot about myself and a lot about cause and effect. The dark night of the soul will do that to you.
In fact, in reviewing the timeline, I discovered just how I attracted it. My galpal above, who left her dog out overnight, was involved with a sociopath named Ket. I recalled that just months prior to encountering my own unbalanced friend, I’d been consulted by several women who all thought they were in a serious relationship with Ket. So for several months I am in weekly sessions with women who are focused on being deceived by someone who appears one way at first and then goes all Jeckell and Hyde on them. I’ve never experienced that in my personal life. I was about to. It coincided with Saturn entering my 7th house. I prided myself on being a good judge of character. Pride goeth before a fall. By vibrating in harmony with their stories for months, I stayed there long enough to attract my own situation.
My situation took the form of (what I thought was) a spiritual brother on the path. We’d spend hours a day discussing metaphysical concepts and relating personal experiences. He was recovering from a life challenge, we’d review what we’d learned, what we practiced and what we allowed ourselves to fall back into out of spiritual laziness. A year later he blew up unexpectedly over an imagined slight, turning into someone I didn’t know. He went from meek truth seeker to arrogant bravado, culminating when I found him telling someone that I’m not what I seem, that I say one thing and do another, and denying any relevance I had in his life. The same thing he told me about his wife, his mother, his daughter when we first met. My eyes opened in that moment. The veil lifted. All the puzzle pieces clicked in place. I apologize to anyone I ever judged based on his words.
THE DARK NIGHT. The next several months were as though wandering a maze, contemplating WTF? At first I beat myself up for attracting it, but each lap around the maze became easier as I contemplated and understood more. That’s how the dark night can be: we practice going over our steps, seeing cause and effect in our thoughts and our actions, clearing up past karma and not creating new karma. Then we just wait for the evidence of past momentum to end. That way, when the dark night comes around again, there won’t be so much unknown about it. We will make it through easier, or guides will be sent to walk alongside us on the journey.
That’s what happened during my first dark night of the soul at age 31. I lucked out because at my side was someone more blind than I. I encountered many personal fears during that time including spending many months out at sea with a huge fear of water, a blind lover teaching me to sail and a grumpy captain. To cope with actual fear, I allow myself the illusion of it being my job to comfort and encourage those around me who don’t see what I see (hope, optimism, delight.) Little did I know at the time that I was going through my Saturn return, an astrological time for lessons of restriction, confinement, discipline.
Also unbeknown to me, as a criminal defense paralegal I was already fulfilling one of the remedies for the Saturn return – I was helping those who faced restriction, confinement and discipline. I knew nothing about astrology back then, but apparently when you apply the remedy, it eases the amount of struggle you find yourself wading through. My job as a criminal defense paralegal helped me do that, so the Universe was looking out for me ahead of time, guiding me to crave the career path I choose.
My next dark night came at age 40 at the time of my Uranus opposition, which coincided with Saturn opposing my natal Pluto. Translation: enter my soon to be husband who was shortly thereafter confined out of state and passed away four years later. That dark night may have lasted four years but once again I applied the remedy of helping someone who is more confined than I, encouraging someone who has less freedom than I, whether in his mind or in real life. Applying the remedy always eases the journey, so my second dark
night of the soul was made much easier by that.
The Universe gives you the dark night of the soul to give you opportunities. We can make it easy or we make it hard. It’s usually just our struggle with the ego, or the personality, that makes it hard on us, pride keeping us stuck in past baggage. The answer is to drop as much of it as you can as soon as you can.
Don’t fear the dark night of the soul, welcome it. Know that you will always have someone sent to walk you through it and the the remedy is always seek out someone to help. In lightening their load, yours will be so much lighter.
Make peace with the past to quelch the fire
Come clean and see what the Universe rewards you with
Put only kindness in motion from this point forward
Her effort to clear up the past gave her a clean slate
The board does not lament the loss of the diver