Should we be afraid or welcome going through the Dark Night of the Soul?

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A Dark Night, the real deal, is not merely a few bad days. It’s not when life falls down around you. Your hostile divorce is not a Dark Night, though a Dark Night can cause you to destroy your marriage. It’s not finding yourself homeless. It’s nothing to do with the external world. It’s not a punishment, it’s got nothing to do with karma, God does not force you through it.

A Dark Night is you torturing yourself just by being you. It’s a natural result of the spiritual journey. The self-torture was always there. It led you to conduct a spiritual journey. Then, the journey peaks and for a brief moment, everything is working, and it feels like nothing can go wrong. Then it goes away.

I used to think the ‘going away’ process was “managed.” Now I understand it in terms of pressure. To push yourself along the journey, you build a fire underneath and fuel it with existential pain. Progress along that journey keeps you out of that fire, and lets you propel yourself into the world and out of the hell of the self.

Picture the fire as a rocket engine, you’re trying to get out into space. But the fuel you use to get into space, does not actually burn in space! A journey fueled with existential pain will fall back to Earth, every single time! As an engineer, you’ll notice some things are different and build your rocket better next time. Your rocket fuel will be cleaner.

But as long as there’s some of that existential dread mixed in, you won’t be able to make much more progress out into space so you can see the stars. In fact, we can extend the metaphor. Consider the vastness of space. Angst doesn’t just not burn in space, even if you get out there, if there’s still any of it left in your rocket fuel, you won’t be able to reach light speed. You’ll be stuck in the solar system, it’ll take you a long time just to get to the moon, and progress will just be real slow.

This is why the spiritual journey leads to enlightenment in the end, and the Dark Night is a crucial part of it. Spirituality doesn’t, by itself, kill ego, angst, or negativity. Hell is just as spiritual as Heaven! The Dark Night is when you start to realize that you have to kill it, yourself. To make yourself whole. You can ask for help, but ultimately it’s your journey, to make, not God’s.