The Dark Night of the Soul is what happens after the experience of awakening. It is a spiritual initiation that is the beginning of the unraveling of your personal perception of reality. It is not a good time.
The experience of awakening is beautiful. Well, mine was euphoric, to be truthful. My heart opened in such a way that I remember a person came up to me and asked curiously, why are you so happy? I didn’t have an answer for him. The heart expansion that I was experiencing was beyond any mental comprehension. I stared at him blankly and replied slowly, ‘I’m not sure’.
He walked off and I sensed he felt lighter somehow. What happened there? I didn’t know that answer either. So I let it go and continued with my day.
Months passed by as my personal lens of perception continued to show me a different interpretation of reality. I didn’t have any context to what was happening until nearly two years later.
Almost twenty years have passed since I had my first Dark Night of the Soul. Many have happened since that moment and although they were a challenge, each one has taught me so much.
Aspects of my consciousness have shifted to a broader awareness as my heart opening allowed for a deeper introspection to unravel who I thought I was. What I had held on to as a boy, a teenager and then a young man was limiting not only my truth, but what I could give to others.
As I began to understand my purpose here, the realignment that came with that knowing helped me to anticipate and understand the darkness or perhaps shadow parts of myself that I had yet to bring to this new light that was a result of this heart awakening.
My sense of self changed and as I faced what I held on to, and at some times clung to, I saw it as the limiting darkness that became a teacher to me, a friend.
It limited me because I let it do that. It was the role I assigned it and so it served its purpose. Like a computer program it had parameters and limitations which it could not deviate from.
The steady heart awakening tapped into higher intelligence and aspects of who I am. They are infinite, and non-linear in their perception of reality. It is spiral thinking and because of this nature the light shines upon the shadows that is the ego’s interpretation of reality time and time again. This is the repeating Dark Night of the Soul. Each time is a little different because each higher aspect of self offers a different lens. It is a constant revealing of limitations that we have been taught or conditioned to believe to be the only reality there is. Our society has been built on this and the limiting truth of this is starting to surface.
We have been trained to look outside ourselves to see what is reality and in this time of war, the outside appears very dark indeed!
From a linear perspective, there are parallels to what has happened before. Similarities that as a society we can remember or relate to. Through this relationship we bring the past here in to the now and in doing this project it into the future as possible outcomes. Have we been here before? If so, is there a light or higher perspective that we have now that we did not have back then? What does it mean to you?
The world is awakening and so is going through a collective Dark Night of the Soul. Anyone who has gone through this experience and stays the course becomes more heart-based as a result of it.
Despite this being a challenging time on so many levels, I trust and have faith that we as the collective human race, will be able to see what has been the past two years and the current period as the darkness that comes before the dawn of heart-based awakening to a sun-filled new day.
