Janus
Advocatus Diaboli
- Sep 9, 2007
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This is based off a presentation Caroline Myss made, but I believe if just one person gains insight from it, it will be worth posting here.
A dark night of the soul is an entire archetypal journey. It has an agenda, a path. The purpose of a dark night is to break you down and change your understanding how the divine works in your life. How the nature of the invisible world works in your life.
The symptoms of the Dark Night are "Am I in a battle with god? Is my life not following my logical conclusions? My logical order? Do I feel like I need to change internally in order to proceed? I can't change anything else...it's me that has to change." And the changes that need to be made are soul deep.
Every single person starts out with this idea that there are logical reasons why things happen the way they do. That there is a way we can behave, and we can form a kind of parent-child relationship with god...in such a way that if we are good, bad things won't happen to us. That if we receive guidance, that somehow if we follow that guidance we will be protected from bad things, or rewarded if we struggle.
It's as if feeling special is the counter product to difficulty, or that the sign that you've made the right decision in your guidance is supposed to be that everything went smoothly. "I know it was the right decision because right after I made that decision, everything was easy"...and if it doesn't go easy, we say "Excuse me, I did everything that you asked me to and things still went bad. Explain yourself!"
That's how human beings reason.
The First Stage of the Dark Night of the Soul - The Night of the Senses
This is a confrontation with exactly that kind of reasoning. When we follow our inner intuition and instead of things getting easier, they get harder. Because the way you look for validation if you've done the right thing is that you except things to get easier as a result of your actions...you expect fairness, you expect justice...you expect heaven to somehow have the wind at your back because you've followed what you believe is the righteous course of action.
This comes from a childish view of god. Unless everything is reasonable, unless everything is fair...then there is no such thing as god. It's just a man made thing. But the Night of the Senses is about a realisation - life is not about fairness, but how we respond in the midst of unfairness. Life is not about reason, but how we navigate the unreasonable.
This is the journey of our soul. How is it possible that we can choose to be loving in the midst of cruelty? To be forgiving in the midst of insanity? This is the great choice - we can choose reason, which is the product of ego i.e "Why is this happening to me?". We can accept the fact that even if we do what we feel is right we might not get the reward we are after, and nothing we do actually matters because we are not unique or special...which is the product of reason. This is what Christ felt when he shouted "My god, my god, why have you forsaken me?"
Or we can choose love in the midst of insanity and the midst of cruelty, because it's the only thing that makes sense...and what doesn't make sense will suddenly make sense. The mystical paradox.
The Second Stage of the Dark Night of the Soul - The Night of the Spirit
In the first night, we come to the realisation that the god of personal favouritism and personal justice is a myth, merely the god we want. We realise that in thinking that we somehow deserve everything to go a certain way, that we have limited our capacity to love, we have withheld compassion, and how and why we have judged others. This is mystical, or divine, love.
We need the Dark Night of the Soul. We desperately need the experience of cosmic disappointment. We need to confront why we desperately need life to be reasonable and fair. To want life to be what it can never, ever, ever be...and why we keep insisting that life is like that.
We must confront why we become so angry at people who we feel let us down...that when they do something we think "This is so unfair! This is so not right!" That we think that bad things shouldn't happen to us because we think we are so special. That unfair things can happen to others, but they shouldn't happen to us.
And why? Because we are terrified to display unconditional love, because our mind will say it shows weakness while our heart will say it shows strength. We are terrified of the depth of our own humanity, and it is only reason that allows us to control it. It's only our capacity to stay angry at life that allows us to control how much we will allow ourselves to love.
Once you've experienced a Dark Night of the Soul, you'll understand that you have an infinite capacity to inspire other people. Through divine love, you can become a mystic without a monastery.
A dark night of the soul is an entire archetypal journey. It has an agenda, a path. The purpose of a dark night is to break you down and change your understanding how the divine works in your life. How the nature of the invisible world works in your life.
The symptoms of the Dark Night are "Am I in a battle with god? Is my life not following my logical conclusions? My logical order? Do I feel like I need to change internally in order to proceed? I can't change anything else...it's me that has to change." And the changes that need to be made are soul deep.
Every single person starts out with this idea that there are logical reasons why things happen the way they do. That there is a way we can behave, and we can form a kind of parent-child relationship with god...in such a way that if we are good, bad things won't happen to us. That if we receive guidance, that somehow if we follow that guidance we will be protected from bad things, or rewarded if we struggle.
It's as if feeling special is the counter product to difficulty, or that the sign that you've made the right decision in your guidance is supposed to be that everything went smoothly. "I know it was the right decision because right after I made that decision, everything was easy"...and if it doesn't go easy, we say "Excuse me, I did everything that you asked me to and things still went bad. Explain yourself!"
That's how human beings reason.
The First Stage of the Dark Night of the Soul - The Night of the Senses
This is a confrontation with exactly that kind of reasoning. When we follow our inner intuition and instead of things getting easier, they get harder. Because the way you look for validation if you've done the right thing is that you except things to get easier as a result of your actions...you expect fairness, you expect justice...you expect heaven to somehow have the wind at your back because you've followed what you believe is the righteous course of action.
This comes from a childish view of god. Unless everything is reasonable, unless everything is fair...then there is no such thing as god. It's just a man made thing. But the Night of the Senses is about a realisation - life is not about fairness, but how we respond in the midst of unfairness. Life is not about reason, but how we navigate the unreasonable.
This is the journey of our soul. How is it possible that we can choose to be loving in the midst of cruelty? To be forgiving in the midst of insanity? This is the great choice - we can choose reason, which is the product of ego i.e "Why is this happening to me?". We can accept the fact that even if we do what we feel is right we might not get the reward we are after, and nothing we do actually matters because we are not unique or special...which is the product of reason. This is what Christ felt when he shouted "My god, my god, why have you forsaken me?"
Or we can choose love in the midst of insanity and the midst of cruelty, because it's the only thing that makes sense...and what doesn't make sense will suddenly make sense. The mystical paradox.
The Second Stage of the Dark Night of the Soul - The Night of the Spirit
In the first night, we come to the realisation that the god of personal favouritism and personal justice is a myth, merely the god we want. We realise that in thinking that we somehow deserve everything to go a certain way, that we have limited our capacity to love, we have withheld compassion, and how and why we have judged others. This is mystical, or divine, love.
We need the Dark Night of the Soul. We desperately need the experience of cosmic disappointment. We need to confront why we desperately need life to be reasonable and fair. To want life to be what it can never, ever, ever be...and why we keep insisting that life is like that.
We must confront why we become so angry at people who we feel let us down...that when they do something we think "This is so unfair! This is so not right!" That we think that bad things shouldn't happen to us because we think we are so special. That unfair things can happen to others, but they shouldn't happen to us.
And why? Because we are terrified to display unconditional love, because our mind will say it shows weakness while our heart will say it shows strength. We are terrified of the depth of our own humanity, and it is only reason that allows us to control it. It's only our capacity to stay angry at life that allows us to control how much we will allow ourselves to love.
Once you've experienced a Dark Night of the Soul, you'll understand that you have an infinite capacity to inspire other people. Through divine love, you can become a mystic without a monastery.