Each of you, while on the spiritual path, has experienced the dark night of the soul at least once. What characterizes it, and how can you understand that this is truly a spiritual crisis, a dark night of the soul, and not just an emotional low?
In this article, you will find answers to these questions.
What is the dark night of the soul
The dark night of the soul is a state when a “change of guides, a change of spiritual hierarchy” occurs, when you are left alone with your fears, including spiritual ones. And an upgrade supposedly happens.
In other words, from the spiritual side, something has left, but something else has not yet arrived, and the state of the dark night of the soul sets in. Like the saying, “the darkest hour is just before the dawn.”
I think each of you has had such a period in your life.
There is also the word “catharsis.” Catharsis is an enlightenment or some powerful realizations connected with some unpleasant situations. That is, first something bad happens, and after that comes liberation, opening up, and against this backdrop, you soar.
Characteristics of the dark night of the soul
It happens that the dark night comes through collapse, loss of values, and specifically spiritual landmarks. And then total disappointment arises, from which it is difficult to emerge.
During the period of the dark night of the soul, you have to face all your fears, all your “bugs,” everything that is called darkness. Everything that has accumulated during your life and was hidden deep somewhere rises to the surface.
It’s as if you’ve been struck by lightning, and a huge flow of electricity passes through your body. Your body vibrates, you experience shock because there is an overload.
Another sign is all your values are called into question. If you believed in something sacredly, but it turns out it is not sacred at all and is not the truth, then this spiritual disappointment is hard to endure.
At this moment, the death of the ego occurs. The ego is that controlling mechanism that was once designed so that we wouldn’t have to think about how to breathe or how to pump blood, so that these processes would happen automatically.
Many who experience the dark night of the soul have moments when they don’t want to get out of bed at all. When you force yourself off the couch to go drink some water, eat something, and then lie back down like a log.
The best part of all this is, the more density you shed, the higher your result. It is practically a resurrection. The deeper you fall, the higher you rise.
See also The Hero’s Journey — stages of personal transformation
How to distinguish the dark night of the soul from a low
A long time ago, I had states of the dark night of the soul, and you can’t confuse it with anything else. It is the most terrible, the most frightening thing. It is an inner experience.
In such moments, external circumstances, friends, acquaintances seem to disappear, and you, even if people surround you, remain deep inside in solitude.
Sometimes, such a state can be provoked by people — they can serve as catalysts, triggers.
In women, what most often rises up is everything connected, one way or another, with the person who catalyzed this process. But he is not its culprit. He only served as the mechanism that set it all in motion.
At that moment, you can fall into a childlike consciousness, small, wounded, oppressed, offended, looking at the world with big eyes: “How could this be?”
The meaning of this action is to wash out of you everything that needs to rise up.
It is important not to try to blame the person who caused it. All of this is being washed out so that you can look at everything with a wise, adult gaze, understand — it is there, and allow yourself to live through it, without blame.
For me, the best option is to remove yourself, not talk to anyone.
If you happen to go through something like this, do not transfer this experience onto a specific person, it is not their fault. This is needed to lift the layers, to feel liberation. This is a path to liberation through such a catharsis.
This is part of a grand process that is happening with you. So live through it with gratitude.
See also 7 signs that you have failed
Do you choose mentors
You do not choose mentors, mentors come to you themselves. You can simply call upon them, and specifically call upon the mentor who is responsible for the situation you need to resolve.
“I call upon my spiritual mentor, I ask them to come.” Just like you call friends on the phone.
You don’t need to know names or imagine what they look like. This is completely unnecessary, because where they dwell, they still have no bodies, no separation, no names.
We can attribute these qualities to them, but there is no need for that. Just call upon them and that’s it.
See also Rules for addressing higher powers
How your spiritual evolution happens and what you need to know
At some point, you outgrow this, you stop needing answers. You have spiritually developed, your consciousness has expanded, other levels have become accessible to you.
At this moment, the change of mentors occurs, which is accompanied by the “dark night of the soul.” You feel abandoned. Because when you established a connection with your mentors, a connection with your Higher Self, you were always under supervision. The feeling settled in you that there is always someone nearby, you only need to reach out, and you always get an answer to your question. Or you feel a sense of support, love.
And when the change of mentors happens, you suddenly find yourself alone with yourself again overnight.
For the inner feeling — this is a very difficult experience, because you are as if cut off, and usually at this moment all your abilities are cut off.
It seems to you that everything is blocked, thoughts and no bright ideas come to mind, no insights or revelations. The feeling that you have become a simple person again.
This is a very big and serious moment, you suddenly feel that you are again a person, an ordinary person from the street, who feels nothing new, no special sensations.
Spiritual fear may arise. There’s no need to fight it; accept on a level of knowing that at this moment you are simply being reconfigured, it’s like a reconnection.
To plug a computer into an outlet in another room, you need to disconnect it from the power and plug it into a different outlet.
The same thing is happening to you. The guides have left, and then others come to replace them; this takes some time. This is what is called the dark night of the soul.
Usually, the dark night of the soul lasts about 10-14 days; now it might happen faster. Before, it was like this: a very uncomfortable state, because you’ve already forgotten what it feels like to be constrained, small, worthless; you’ve gotten used to feeling your immense power.
Therefore — pay attention to yourself.
When the reconnection happens, completely different entities appear around you, those who are responsible for the level of development you are currently at.
And then — another level, another reconnection. And finally, you reach the moment when you understand that those beings who are your guides, who help you, are — YOU YOURSELF, only in your higher aspects. It is you at a higher level of yourself, you are helping yourself from another level.
There is you now, and there is you who has already evolved, who has already developed, reached certain heights, and you are helping yourself. You are an aspect of your Higher Self, currently living out physical reality.
So when people ask how to establish a connection with guides, how to choose them, at that level they want answers.
But there is a level higher and even higher, when you understand that this is also you, only more developed, more evolved.
This is precisely why all questions are resolved so simply with guides, because somewhere you have already gone through this experience, lived it, and now from that experience you can give recommendations and advice. You have already achieved this there; that is you.
See also: Why crises and inner upheavals intensify in our lives
Spiritual crisis and spiritual turnarounds, disappointments
You’ve surely met people who didn’t believe in anything for a long time; no matter what you told them, they would blacken it all, contest it.
And suddenly, out of the blue, it’s as if they have a supernova explosion, an enlightenment in their brain. And they suddenly start walking the same path.
Moreover, they start moving faster than you, even though you may have been in this field for a long time.
I was a materialist, a nihilist, denying everything. I believed you needed to take one book, study it, and follow what was written there. When my aunt studied many different books, I laughed at her: “If you like this teaching, take it and follow it. Why do you read so many books?”
And then, at some point, it all turned around, with the prompting of Svetlana Vladimirovna Dobrovolskaya. And another world opened up. I woke up. For me, this is the moment of awakening.
And there is another option, when people go through some personal experience or spiritual crisis, and on the contrary, they close the door.
For me, it was a shock at the time. Steve Rother had an amazing female translator. And then suddenly at some point she became disillusioned. There was a layering of events, it hit two areas of life.
When the blow comes, for example, to work, to your career, that’s one thing. When it hits both work and family, it’s already more difficult. And when, for example, there are powerful blows in three areas — something you ignored and got hit with — it’s hard to get through.
Many people close that door, become completely and deeply disillusioned with the path they were on, and build a very strong wall.
Doreen Virtue also went through a spiritual crisis. Doreen Virtue is the author of many books about angels, particularly “Earth Angels.” And then suddenly, many years later, she had this spiritual crisis, and she went down a biblical path, into religion.
She banned the sale of her Tarot cards and everything else, removed all her books from sale, and took her name off them. Michelle Eloff (the channel for Mary Magdalene) also followed her path.
This is a spiritual crisis. It’s not just a dark night where you dive inside and resurface with something new. It’s when you close down and completely debunk absolutely everything you have created up to that point. A complete renunciation.
When a person renounces a three-dimensional life in favor of, say, a spiritual path, it seems logically understandable. But when a person renounces a long spiritual path, everything they have achieved, and moreover does it publicly in front of tens of thousands of people, that takes courage.
After 2012, many channels left. There was also a deep disillusionment there. That is their choice, and it must be respected.
Have you experienced the dark night of the soul?
The article is based on the accompanying webinars of the Keys of Mastery Training Center and the group meditation “Acknowledging the Strength and Beauty Within”