Moving Through The Dark Night Of The Soul

By JH Simon

It’s you alone, with unbearable terror and pain without end. What you are experiencing is beyond torture, and you will be feeling this way for eternity. Welcome to the Dark Night of the Soul.

It comes after a sudden breakup. The death of a loved one. Being abandoned and cut off by a lover. Or at the end of a toxic, abusive relationship where you have chosen to go no contact. You get panic attacks. Deep aches and longings. You ruminate, driving yourself mad with incessant thoughts. A terrible sadness falls over you. You get an inescapable sense that you will die miserable and alone. The pain and terror become so great that you scramble for relief from anywhere or anyone. You can’t do this! It’s impossible. Right?

Well, yes and no.

Moving through your Dark Night of the Soul is something you have never done before. By its very nature, you are transitioning from one state to a higher state. It will feel impossible the entire way, right up until you emerge on the other side, ready to live a reality that was previously beyond your wildest imagination.

What It Takes To Do The Impossible

Even if you are not religious, you can still gain crucial tools from the symbolic elements of the Abrahamic religions.

I spent a lifetime never understanding the significance of a guy who died a horrific, miserable death nailed against two planks of wood. After a particular experience during my own Dark Night of the Soul, however, it finally became clear.

At the time I was having another panic attack. I was pacing the room with a bone-deep terror, feeling like I was on the edge of death. It was horrible. I had struggled with the panic attacks for months, and had always ran the other way when they came up, desperate for an escape. This time, however, I closed my eyes and directed my attention directly into the feeling of panic. The fear swelled, and swelled, and swelled, until death came nearer, and I felt like my heart was going to give in. What happened? Nothing. And everything. The panic dissipated suddenly, and my senses awakened fully. Relief washed over me, and I felt reborn. I could not believe it. I had done the impossible!

At his trial, Christ could have confessed to the charges and begged for mercy, but he remained steadfast and accepted every torturous second of his fate. His reward? He ascended to heaven. What was it about him that empowered him to withstand his horrific ordeal without breaking?

When moving through your Dark Night of the Soul, you can stand your ground and look within yourself for a lifeline. I call it ‘Your Christ Self’. Christians might find this easy to take on, but even if you are not religious or have another faith, you still possess a Self within you that is strong and tenacious enough to support you through your ordeal.

Christ was only a man. What finally immortalised him was his impressive spectacle of showing the people what they possess inside. If he could do it, so can you. That is the meaning of Christ.

Islam takes this same concept and expresses it as ‘Jihad’, or ‘Holy Struggle’. While the War on Terror and religious fundamentalism has stigmatised this term, it still holds immense truth. The Dark Night of the Soul is your ‘Holy Struggle’ to endure your ordeal. God, the Universe, the Angels, whatever helps you conceptualise it, if you can ask its (or His) help, then you will have it.

These two examples help demonstrate that you are not some weak, cowardly human. You are a divine creation, and if you can conjure enough faith, then the divine creator will provide you what you need when enduring the Dark Night of the Soul. This is not some story, it is a real, metaphysical process.

Your Mind Is Not Your Friend

Call him and beg him to take you back.

You can’t do this.

Without her, you are nothing.

This will never end.

You are doomed to feel this for eternity.

In everyday life, the mind is an indispensable tool. It can analyse situations, provide solutions to problems, or it can create pathways to get you out of a difficult situation.

When it comes to the Dark Night of the Soul, the mind is your enemy. Beyond helping you practice self-care, the mind will only taunt you and encourage you to escape your experience. The mind believes that pain must be avoided at all costs. For all of its power, the mind lacks the imagination to comprehend the path that you are on.

To experience metamorphosis and move through the Dark Night of the Soul, you will need to go beyond the mind. You will need to surrender completely to the experience. There is no way around it. All you have during this time is your Christ Self. The Holy Struggle is the way. If the mind tells you otherwise, it is a lie.

Crossing The Bridge And Entering The Narrow Gate

Religious and spiritual symbolism is full of bridges and openings such as narrow doors or archways.

The bridge is usually covered in painful needles, nails and razor blades. In other cases, the bridge is a blade that is sharper than a scythe, and is crossed in pain and agony. In the case of the Dark Night of the Soul, this bridge is your only path. There is no alternative.

The narrow gate, on the other hand, is a point of no return. Once you walk through, you will be transformed. However, in order to cross, you need faith. Without faith, you stay within the realm of the mind, and can never enter. The narrow gate requires absolute faith, and absolute surrender.

Dark Dreams of the Soul

Another symbolic experience is the gradual narrowing of the path and experience of being trapped. It is not uncommon to have claustrophobic dreams, where you are inside a narrow tunnel that progressively grows smaller until you become stuck, unable to move forwards or backwards. You might also find yourself inside a coffin from which there is no escape.

Another type of dream is the pursuit of something that proves infinitely unattainable. You might be trying to find something which you’re sure is there, but proves elusive. You might be trying to prove yourself in some situation and never quite measure up.

You might wake up from these dreams with a howling sense of despair, or an unsettling terror. You might also wake up in a desperate state of inescapable panic. These all represent the experience of moving from the known to the unknown, from the conscious to the unconscious, where transformation is possible.

Death Is The Price, Rebirth Is The Reward

Over the bridge and beyond the narrow gate lies the Kingdom of Heaven. This is your metamorphosis and your reward.

The Dark Night of the Soul is to symbolically die and be reborn in a higher state. You are being initiated into wisdom and truth. When you emerge, you will feel immense relief. Your skin tingles, and you feel spacious inside. There is no feeling like it.

When you surrender the mind and embrace the way, someone else emerges. You look at your ‘past self’ as another person from another life. The new you has a higher consciousness, a wider awareness, is wiser and more humble, and contains a vastly-expanded capacity to withstand fear and pain.

Above all, the one who emerges from the Dark Night of the Soul will possess a superior capacity to manage future situations like the one that began the process in the first place.