What are the dangers and problems of ascending your consciousness to higher levels?

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The only problems are the ones you make for yourself.

Every tradition speaks of a “Dark Night.” The Dark Night is when the headiness of the ecstatic states starts to fade and you’re left with the uncomfortable realization that spirituality is not quite as transformative as you wanted it to be. This immediately proceeds from one of the most amazing and compelling experiences spirituality has to offer, which is the point where all this stuff becomes real.

When the states start to stick around after you’re done meditating. When you no longer have to put forth effort to keep yourself on the path. When your mind finally lets go and accepts the reality of everything.

Once you’ve had that experience, it’s easy to think that you’re done. But you’re not. In fact, you’re just getting started.

The shadow sides of spirituality start manifesting. You start longing for the times when you were naively joyful and blindly pushing forward. Because your mind just can’t do naivete and endless pushing. Not any more.

Of course, the masters have all been through this and seen it through to the other side. There are no set rules, this is the part of the spiritual journey that is incredibly intensely personal, everybody is going to have their own stuff that they’re going to have to deal with. Only the most general of advice is helpful. Keep doing the basics, and have faith that you will see the other end eventually.

My own dark night happened like clockwork. I was pushing forward on the path, coming to insight after insight. I was exploring what are known as the siddhis in Buddhist dharma, the so-called psychic powers. As I was doing this, I was letting my material life languish, not trying to or caring to find a job, just skating by on my meagre savings.

My spirit guide, whom I called my Higher Self, promised me that an acting career, or something equally compelling, would come by a certain deadline that coincided with the completion of the acting class I was taking at the time. My plan B was to leave Atlanta and stop spirituality for good.

The deadline came and went, I got no huge compelling acting gig offer, and I left Atlanta. I spent a few days wallowing, and then slowly started doing my inquiries again. I came to a greater understanding of what went on, and eventually decided that acting really wasn’t right for me after all. I picked up web development, tapped one of my old freelancer friends for a gig, or maybe he contacted me? Did the job on my old beat-up ThinkPad and used the money to buy a MacBook Pro. Came back to Atlanta and in short order I was making good money as a developer.

Everything started lining up for me after I went through my Dark Night. My spirituality leveled up, the money started rolling in, I even got a lady friend. If you think about it, it has to be this way, because any lasting change you make in the days of heady exploration, well, you are just too ‘half-baked’ to really be able to make the most of.

Luckily, most of us only have to go through the Dark Night once. If you have to keep going through it, then your best bet is to learn to embrace it because it’s something you really need, at a deep level.