Monday 8 October 2007

Have you arrived at your dark night of the soul?

This past week I read for a woman who, by anyone’s observation, was a very spiritual person. She was active in church. She led a prayer group. And to say that she read the Scriptures religiously wouldn’t be a pun or an overstatement. But she was struggling.

She didn’t need me to tell her that she was losing energy. She knew that. Of course she wanted to know what I perceived in her physical body. But what she was really eager to find out was what I perceived in her spirit. In short, she needed to know how she was doing spiritually.

What I perceived, in her words, knocked her for six. You see, I sensed that she was being called to refocus her spirituality and, if you will, become truer to herself in her spirituality. This, I have to admit, wasn’t initially received well. When we hear what we weren’t prepared for or didn’t want to hear it rarely is. And as we talked it become even clearer that she was entering her dark night of the soul.

This week I would like to examine what we mean by that phrase. On the face of it, it sounds like something to be avoided at all costs. It conjures images that if not frightening are nonetheless unpleasant. You wouldn’t think that it was actually a milestone that when reached and worked through would be something to be proud of. But it is.

When we embark on the path of spiritual development, we are really embarking on a path to get to know ourselves – warts and all. We begin to ask questions that we might never have thought of before. We begin to see things in a different light. And we often realise that we aren’t the people that we thought we were or even the people that our friends and family thought they knew.

Being spiritual means exploring and discovering the self – the person that we show to the world as well as our shadow with whom we had probably been struggling with on an unconscious level. Some spiritual teachers say that we have to peel away the veils of our inner child and shadow until we reach our true inner and higher self.

This involves what many describes as opening Pandora’s Box because when we put ourselves under such a microscope there are no guarantees about what we’ll find. We have to dive into what limits us and stands between us and our Truth. We have to do battle with our fears and shine the light on our biases, prejudices and assumptions.

Along the way we transform and we change. How we act and interact with our environment and those people in our lives changes as well. Emotional wounds and psychological pains have to be examined, confronted and healed during spiritual development. For many of us, it’s the hardest thing we have ever done. And just when you think that it is over it oftentimes gets worse. This is when you enter the dark night of the soul.

Just when we reach our centre and finally come face to face with who we really are, we are so often shocked with the realisation that we cannot be that other person any longer. This is what so many refer to as their loss of self. What we believed in, what we held true, what we thought we knew – it all relates to someone else – and not the us that we have become.

It’s no exaggeration to say that it’s as if we have died and have yet to be reborn. What used to work in our lives seems ineffectual at best. We have to enter a period of mourning. We have to say good-bye to who we were. For many of us, this is when it’s as if our worlds come crashing down. It’s as if the loss on the inside becomes mirrored on the outside. It’s sad but true that many relationships break down when one member reaches this point of spiritual development.

We then have to take all the skills and techniques that we picked up and mastered along the way and put all the pieces of our new selves, our new lives back together. And while it can be intimidating and very scary, it is also one of, if not the, most rewarding, enriching and valuable things that we will ever do.

The way to endure the dark night of the soul is to keep looking inward and to continually ask to be guided to where you need to be. Pray. Meditate. Work with your energy. Be aware of your energy. Know where your energy is. And then make new choices based on that information you perceive and receive

Over the years I have helped many people on their path of spiritual development. To be sure, the dark night of the soul can be a terrible thing to go through on your own. If you are struggling spiritually or feel that things aren’t working or even progressing as you had hoped, then maybe I can help. Through my Intuitive Life Coaching, I teach my clients how to take control of their energy to make the process of transformation as painless as possible. Click here to find out more about these empowering sessions. And don’t forget about my other readings which are available here.

And this week over at PsychicBridges, I offer my top tips on how to get the best reading that your psychic has to offer. It’s not all up to the psychic. You have a role to play in a reading! Find out what I have to say here.

I always welcome your thoughts and feedback on IntuitiveBridges, so let me hear from you by clicking here.

Until next week,

Kindest regards,

Back To Top