Dark Night of the Soul:The Joy of Transformation

In a real dark night of the soul it is always three 'o' clock in the morning~ F.Scott Fitzgerald

According to Greek mythology,humans were originally created with four arms,four legs, two faces and a head. Fearing their power,Zeus-The God of Sky, split them into separate parts condemning them to spend their lives,in search of their other halves.

So how do we experience the "dark night of the soul". There is a deep desolation,more or less, spiritual; a disconnection from worldly matters and a hollow feeling of emptiness. Further, symptoms include feeling of loss,hopelessness and consumed by melancholy.

So why does one feel this way? There is a catalyst event that occurs in a person's life that leads them to this path. Some instances can be loss of a job,loss of a relationship,loss of a loved one to state a few.

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So let us understand what is the link between the concept of dark night of the soul and awakening. As a general human nature, we all detest change. We all prefer being in our "inner circle"- the safe zone of life where we are used to carrying out on regular mundane activities. However, the Universe nudges us by sending across a painful experience where we experience a deep spiritual depression before we go through a "wake up". I would term this as the Universe "pushing us to our limits".

Let me bring in my share of experience that I have undergone in this phase. I was emotionally and spiritually connected with a younger person many years back. Before I begin explaining the journey of that experience,a little insight on what fears do I have. I have not been very confident about myself due to me being slightly overweight. This stemmed inhibition has always made me to believe that love is reciprocated if one has a perfect body type (I know, it sounds obnoxious) but this is what makes me feel a little less than the others.

So coming back to the experience,the initial stages of the romantic involvement were full of joys of spring. Slowly, the depth of the connection unraveled to heated arguments, fear of abandonment,deep-seated insecurities,fear of past disappointments to state a few. This resulted in me becoming clingy and having a poverty-stricken mindset with the involved person to meet my emotional needs.

This slowly turned to a strongly toxic connection that took an overwhelmingly emotional toll on my mental well being, which led to a domino effect on my other relationships and areas of my life. I started questioning myself on " Why am I feeling this way?", "Why am I letting such a meager argument rule over my mind?", "Am I not worthy of being reciprocated in love?" and many other such questions arose in my mind.

I slowly started losing interest in activities that I once enjoyed such as listening to music, interacting with people,reading news content. It also, started impacting my professional life:

I started missing out on meeting important deadlines,forgetting to follow up with my colleagues, not involving myself during lunch hours with colleagues. Basically, I became a recluse.

The emptiness was eating me away to a point, where I used to come home and just lay in bed and mindlessly watch youtube videos.Hours turned to days to months of crying that resulted in purging. It is said that,crying is by far, the best emotional release mechanism to regain your mental health.I was like an empty vessel that was just breathing.

This clearly showed that I was in a dark place and was in a life crisis emotionally and spiritually. The universe stepped in ( like it always does!! lol) and led me to start understanding why have I become a dark person that once was self-sufficient and full of life.

I was undergoing through the dark night of the soul.

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The dark night of the soul is a clear example of the suffering of the soul. Why do I call it as a soul suffering is because it is a kind of death and re-birth. What was dying within me was the ego-self, an illusionary identity, self worth issues, letting go of insecurities, letting go of external validations. The aforementioned traits were mediums through which I have auto-functioned throughout my life. There I was undergoing the death of my old self and emerging into a newer being altogether at a mind and soul level.

Let me throw in an example of how diamonds are formed. Diamonds are the precious stones that were formed between 1 billion to 3 billion years ago deep within the Earth's crust under conditions of intense heat and pressure that uses carbon atoms to crystallise forming diamonds. The formation stage of a diamond consists of it becoming a thinly sliced seed which is heated in a 800 degree celsius temperature approx.150-200km below the surface of the Earth.

Co-relating the above example to the journey of the dark night of the soul is strikingly similar. Just like how the diamond undergoes intense heat and pressure to transform into a shiny piece of precious stone, we as humans also undergo rude awakenings that break us on a soul level in the form of connections- romantics vs non-romantic to transform us into a "shinier" version of ourselves. The reason why I call it is a "shinier" version is due to the fact that, we gain the cognition i.e link our thoughts to our experience and process our mind and thought patterns and embrace our newer selves by working on our shadow aspects.

As human beings, we need to understand what are our shadow aspects and work on healing them in order for us not to repeat patterns in our next relationship. This rings a bell of a statement that I heard stated by Dr. Marisa Peer, a British world renowned speaker and a Rapid Transformational Therapy trainer, "The words that you hear from the others about you are not important, but the words you say to yourself are what matter".