Emergence from the dark night?

"The dark night is a certain inflowing of God into the soul which cleanses it of its ignorance’s and imperfections, habitual, natural and spiritual..."

26 June 2008

The medication is working: thank you psychiatrist. The therapy is working: thank you psycho-therapist, the divine healing energy is working: thank you guides, gods and angels.

Life is more or less working once again.

I have emerged from the dark of night. While I was in it I was otherwise unaware, literally nothing; no-one. The detoxification from drugs, the predisposition, the former depression and the new anxiety all made the break-down weeks so complicated as to what was happening. Losing all sense of self and reality is a very scary event, terrifying even. This text will be a reminder for later.

Now I am clambering upwards with great optimism, sometimes not daring to believe I am secure again, sometimes doubting if I am really stable. The medication is making me believe. At any rate I needn’t worry whether or not I am fully recovered because I trust. I believe (mirtazapine or not).

22 June 2008

They say you first need to know the darkness in order to know the light, and in order to appreciate the duality and to rise above it into unity you must go through it. Well I am in that darkness now and although I thought before that I had known it, I reckoned that I had been through the worst and defined that darkness, I know now I had only flirted with it and stayed somehow safe all the past while.

Now I am plunged into the abyss of hell residing inside me, this desert of human malice, and every cruel twisted thing within my psyche. My subconscious plays tricks on my conscious, torments it gradually and this is where the battle is being fought out, I say battle in order to illustrate the struggle and I give it some poetic, heroic feel as I must if I would stay sane. It is torture but even greater the reward right? It’s as if I am being shown what I could become, what evil is, what the duality entails.

28 June 2008

I am seeking to define and interpret the recent events in my life from a spiritual perspective and today I came across these extracts describing the so called ‘dark night of the soul’ and I find the similarity with my experience these past weeks rather uncanny:

http://www.nor.com.au/community/spiritualemergence/page5.html

Expanding and Dissolving the Self: Dark Night and Rebirth

The Dark Night can arise as a stage in a particular spiritual practice or as a result of life circumstances that challenge one's sense of identity, self-image or status. These might include illness, death of a loved one, divorce or separation, loss of job or financial status, mid-life crisis, or an existential crisis triggered by the growing discrepancy between one's inner spiritual needs and the prevailing materialistic emphasis of our society.

"The description of death and rebirth as a "dark night" comes from the writings of the great mystic St. John of the Cross. In an eloquent way, he describes the dark night as a long period of unknowing, loss, and despair that must be traversed by spiritual seekers in order to empty and humble themselves enough to receive divine inspiration... Traditionally the dark night arises only after we have had some initial spiritual opening."

Extracts from The Stormy Search for the Self, by C.Grof and S. Grof:

"During the existential crisis, one feels cut off from the deeper self, higher power, or God -- whatever one depends on beyond personal resources to provide strength and inspiration. The result is a most devastating kind of loneliness, a total and complete existential alienation that penetrates one's entire being ... This deep sense of isolation appears to be available to many human beings, regardless of their history, and is often a central ingredient of spiritual transformation. Irina Tweedy, a Russian woman who studied with a Sufi master in India, wrote in The Chasm of Fire:

"The Great Separation was here ... a peculiar, special feeling of utter loneliness ... it cannot be compared to any feeling of loneliness we all experience sometimes in our lives. All seems dark and lifeless. There is no purpose anywhere or in anything. No God to pray to. No hope. Nothing at all...

"This sense of extreme isolation is reflected in the desolate prayer of Jesus on the cross: "My God, my God. Why hast Thou forsaken me?" People who are lost in this place frequently cite the example of Christ's darkest hour in an attempt to explain the extent of this monumental feeling…"

Extracts from Spiritual Emergency, by C. Grof and S. Grof:

The preceding conflicts and sufferings, with the psychological and physical symptoms which they generated, vanish sometimes with amazing suddenness, thus confirming the fact that they were not due to any physical cause but were the direct outcome of the inner strife. In such cases the spiritual awakening amounts to a real resolution.

"But in other cases, not infrequent, the personality is unable to rightly assimilate the inflow of light and energy. This happens, for instance, when the intellect is not well coordinated and developed; when the nervous system is too sensitive; or when the inrush of spiritual energy is overwhelming in its suddenness and intensity. In extreme cases, the reaction can be so intense as to become pathological, producing a state of depression and even despair, with suicidal impulses. This state bears a close resemblance to psychotic depression -- once called "melancholia" -- characterized by an acute sense of unworthiness, a systematic self-depreciation and self-accusation, which may become so vivid as to produce the delusion that one is in hell, irretrievably damned. There is also an acute and painful sense of intellectual incompetence; a paralysis of the will-power accompanied by indecision and inability to act.

"But in the case of those who have had an inner awakening or a measure of spiritual realization, the disturbances should not be considered as a mere pathological condition, they have different, far deeper causes, as has been indicated by both Plato and St. John of the Cross with similar analogies."