|
Whenever a word is overused, it is most
likely being misused, and over time, it begins to lose its
meaningfulness. For example, we often refer to a fleeting feeling of
depression or a period of confusion, as a dark night of the soul, but
neither of these things qualifies as such. A dark night of the soul is a
very specific experience that some people encounter on their spiritual
journeys. There are people who never encounter a dark night of the soul,
but others must endure this as part of the process of breaking through to
the dawn of higher consciousness.
The dark night of the soul invites us
to fully recognize the confines of our egos’ identity. We may feel as if
we are trapped in a prison that affords us no access to light or the
outside. We are coming from a place of higher knowing, and we may have
spent a lot of time and energy reaching toward the light of higher
consciousness. This is why the dark night has such a quality of despair.
We are suddenly shut off from what we thought we had realized, and the
emotional pain is very real. We may even begin to feel that it was all an
illusion and that we are lost forever in this darkness.
The more we struggle, the darker things
get — until finally we surrender to our not knowing what to do, how to
think, and where to turn. It is from this place of losing our sense of
control that the ego begins to crack or soften, and the possibility of light
entering becomes real. Some of us will have to endure this process only
once in our lives; while others may have to go through it many times. The
great revelation of the dark night is the releasing of our old, false
identity. We finally give up believing in this false self and thus become
capable of owning and embracing the light.
|
No comments:
Post a Comment