The Dark Night Of The Soul

[iamthat]

The Alice Bailey books describe periods where the disciple goes through "the burning grounds", which may be another term for the dark night of the Soul.

This is a time when we are tested, and "These tests are applied when the soul grips the personality and the fire of divine love destroys the loves and desires of the integrated personality."

So it is a time of letting go, a time of apparent loss, a time when we surrender all that we hold most dear. But this is necessary, because we need to lose all that no longer serves us so that we may move ahead on the Path.

This is always a difficult stage, a time of personal crisis, but it is also a time of preparation for something greater.

Peace.

[froebellian]

The DNOS is different for each of us, and sometimes it is not a DNOS as well but seems like one. While you are going through it you will not be able to rationalize what has/is happening, so perhaps it's not a DNOS, and maybe a phase of awakening?

[Starman]

Problems are challenges to grow. In my opinion it does not matter how we label it. My soul shines brightly
even when I am in the deepest darkest grips of despair. Just because I can not see the light does not mean
that the light is not there. Ignorance is the only veil that keeps us from illumination. We go down into the
valley only to climb another mountain. Growth often involves going into mental and emotional areas where
we get stuck, challenges which we have yet to master. It can be scary and even painful, but in my experience
the darker the night, the brighter the dawn. Clarity comes when we empty ourselves and stand humbly
before our own transparency.

[muffin]

Good afternoon all

Just wondering if any of you were given something sweet beforehand.

Like a child going to a doctor, being given a large lollipop as he walks behind you with a bloody big needle saying this isn't going to hurt you one little bit

And Siemens

You get what you need, make the most of it.

[hallow]

Living in the dark night of the soul.... Darkness can strengthen sences never know you had. It's up to you if you make it a negative or positive experience. It's easy to see in the light, it's not in the dark.

[Siemens]

I call my experiences negative because they are very unpleasant. On a rational level I know that theses experiences help me to develop. But seeing it that way isn’t easy, if you are permanently suffering since decades. But in principle I agree: The best way to deal with it might be accepting it.


I know I will be prepared for something greater. Maybe I have to give up certain desires of the integrated personality. Paradoxically and surprisingly my transformation has to do with strengthening the ego not overcoming it. Difficult story...


I experience something like an Awakening. But only on the cognitive level. I know a lot about how material incarnations work and why we chose them from the perspective of the soul. But my transformation doesn’t lead away from materialism. So I experience no Spiritual Awakening. One of the goals of my transformation is enabling me to experience material lives as joyful as possible in the future.

[Miss Hepburn]

Originally Posted by Siemens

One of the goals of my transformation is enabling me to
experience material lives as joyful as possible in the future.

Nothin' wrong with that!~!
Esp if your 'future' is like tomorrow or the next day...even better!!!

You said earlier your higher self wanted you to exp some things.
My 'belief' is my Higher Self wants only the good for me, my Higher Self is
the Holy Spirit or another way to put it ,if it pleases someone more,
my Higher Self functions in the Thought System of the Holy Spirit ...not the Ego's or Worldy Thought System, see?...
not thru suffering, LOL ...(been there, done that when I was young, naive and
was like a leaf blowing in the wind, not yet realizing the God-given power I had.)
And if I believed in 'suffering makes me grow'...boy, would suffering come! (Oh, the stories I have!)

And ya know what? If suffering does come...let it for an hour and be gone!!!

This is just a different story, maybe...if it influences someone, cool.

This was a very good idea for a thread, Siemens.

[Sarian]

I'm not up on all the spiritual phrases and terminology and even now struggle with some basic words like awakening and enlightenment. Dark night of soul is interesting and i think regarding my own life, I would have thought it just depression/melancholia. So that has me thinking as I reflect on my life and things that have happened and just the things I've thought about even as a child, I was not a particularly happy child. I was always deep in thought. I thought about things that seemed other children did not think about (life/death/cruelty) and whys of those things. I used to talk to the sky at night. But I wonder if I was, at this point, leading up to the 'DNOS' then came the time I was forming relationships, thinking about family of my own...made some really poor choices but yet bad as they were, I think there was a purpose to it...but then went on to make more poor choices or failed the tests, I guess, which plunged me even deeper into a DNOS...so dark I didn't think I'd ever get out of.. It was so bad I simply wanted to die to be free of it, but I held on..

So now as I see my life, I think I'm on the upside of it, I would experience moments of sheer bliss which is something I have never experienced before...sadly, for little over a year now, I've not felt them, but I feel other things that fill me with such gratitude and thankfulness but I long for the sheer bliss I had experienced. It was as though I punctured a hole in this dark place I was in and was breaking free and seeing all in life I had missed or never experienced before. Thinking about those experiences now makes me long for it even more.

I've had setbacks due to situations in my life going on and holding fast to maintain my sanity during these things and being thankful for blessings that i do have. Is this DNOS a process? A lifelong process even...if we look back and see where it started, see where it was rising, see where it reached its crescendo, then ever so slowly started abating?

I feel as though I'm nearing the end but still have some obstacles to overcome when I can then be fully committed to my life and my personal spiritual walk. If any of that makes sense.

[Unseeking Seeker]

***

Accepting that the dark or let us say consciousness contracting thoughts begin to arise ... if we look at it as toxins of our past fear/desire matrix being removed, we may simply observe the phenomena without associating our present flowing consciousness with it. Only when we wrongly (delusionally) believe in a relationship between us and the negativity that we deny ourselves the divine connect in the here & now.

Since we have conditioned ourselves to a belief in limitation, we feel imprisoned even though we are free. We can simply choose to snap out of it right now. Instantly. However, the prerequisite is letting go of aspect of clinging to external ephemeral images.

***

Originally Posted by Siemens

I call my experiences negative because they are very unpleasant. On a rational level I know that theses experiences help me to develop. But seeing it that way isn’t easy, if you are permanently suffering since decades. But in principle I agree: The best way to deal with it might be accepting it.

They're your experiences so call them anything you like, experience them any way you see fit because that's the whole idea. However... It doesn't have to be all pain and suffering and that's the understanding. If it's happening then it's happening, anything else is denial and that's not clever. If it happened in the past then it still happened, and what you're left with is your perceptions of the experiences.

I suffered abuse as a child so yes, I do understand these things from my own perspective but I turned all that around and made it work for me instead. Yes it was traumatic but I came through the other side, and it didn't kill me but made me stronger. There are still some things I have to work through so many years on but that's OK too. I have mental health issues too, but y'know, I would go through it all again to be a part of the transformations people have gone through and I've been a part of. What some would term as a curse I made into a blessing.

I remember doing a reading for a woman, and as soon as she walked through the door I knew she was in for a world of hurt. She was looking for hope but I had none to give her, and Spirit was adamant that I couldn't tell her that it was going to hurt. A few days later her world was torn apart, a few weeks later she found the strength that both her and her young sons needed. Her Life was transformed.

Originally Posted by Siemens

I know I will be prepared for something greater. Maybe I have to give up certain desires of the integrated personality. Paradoxically and surprisingly my transformation has to do with strengthening the ego not overcoming it. Difficult story...

There is no paradox.The problem is often that people want to run away from their humanness instead of embracing it, and that's the perspective their Spirituality comes from - escape and denial really. If you don't like a large part of who you are, hat does that say about you? Your humanness and Spirituality are tightly integrated.

The ego is also badly misunderstood too, it's a word that has been 'borrowed' from outside of Spirituality and whose original meaning has been not just lost but misused so that people can feel better about themselves. In many ways being Spiritual is of the ego but few want to know that. The ego is not the bad guy.

Originally Posted by Siemens

I experience something like an Awakening. But only on the cognitive level. I know a lot about how material incarnations work and why we chose them from the perspective of the soul. But my transformation doesn’t lead away from materialism. So I experience no Spiritual Awakening. One of the goals of my transformation is enabling me to experience material lives as joyful as possible in the future.

Do yourself a favour and step out of the Spirituality because it's not helping I don't think. It seems as though you're trying to find yourself a box to put what you're going through into, and most likely it's never going to work. You're going through a transformation that's for sure, but labelling it isn't going to help. It's not a DoS so all the DoS bumph in the forum isn't going to help. You're also going through it on a couple of levels, but Spirituality is ill-equipped to deal with it all. Who says you have to give up on materialism? That maybe a great ideology for someone who's going to be a monk in a temple, but is that where you're going? None of today's Spiritual Masters are paupers.

Being honest Spiritual Awakening is not all it's cracked up to be, and what constitutes a Spiritual Awakening is defined by the person using the words. Have your own experiences and drop the labels, 'should-be' and 'shouldn't-be'. Do what you need to do to get through it with your head intact, talk to people who understand from an experiential perspective and not an ideological or theological one.