Dark night of the soul Options

I see some light, perhaps a lot.

when i stop to analyse, stop to care, and live in the moment, i have no intrest in this dark night, it does not exist.

I do not even exist, and i do not want to exist.

When i eat: i eat,
when i sleep: i sleep,
when i walk: i walk,
when i study: i study,
when i talk: i talk

where does the dark night come in to play, nowhere.
Life is simple, ridiculously simple. I do not care about right or wrong, about things that are in the past or in the future.
Things that are now do not seem so bad. As long as i have the potential to enjoy the moment ond ridicule everything else, i will grab it with all hands.

We humans are complicated, life at its base is not. Wake up and SMELL the coffee.

I started reading some books on toaism, and then i remembered again the humorous and carefree way of living. the book of lieh tzu it was.

Interestingly enough, I went through a sort of "Dark Night of the Atheist". Scientific determinism/nihilism is very similar to its spiritual counterpart, and also can involve the death of the ego.
I think the best way, overall, to deal with it is a "let go" philosophy. Advice only goes so far, but certain media has more of the experiential effect on me... try watching Fight Club (again =P), or reading Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind by Shinryu Suzuki. Or such classics as the Tao of Pooh. Fighting against prolonged apathy/negativity is like swimming upstream... if you can get over your fear and let it carry you away, you never know what might lie downstream.

exactly. Exactly. We may have different faiths, but we still have to bom down before the rules of the human mind.
The brain functions much the same in everyone. If not everyone then at least with groups of people.

Drugs affect almost everyone in the same way...

That is why it does not matter if you follow an atheist path or a buddhist. If you strife for perfection, enlightenment, or just happyness. the same problems will face you on the path.

In the end it does not matter what you believe logically, it is what you feel that decides your happyness. after all, happyness is not a thought, it is a feeling. the mind can arouse feelings, but in the end its the feelings that really matter.

Yeah, it appears to be a built-in psychological purging mechanism that just happens regardless of ideologies.

After all, the dark night of the soul was coined by a medieval christian mystic.
Now, it is becoming essentially synonymous with the experience of the Abyss and Choronzon.

Oh the irony (IMG:style_emoticons/default/rolleyes.gif)

The dark night of the soul is a total collapse of everything you believe in. All the knowledge you have has suddenly become irrelevant, and a totally new, unknown world emerges. This may be scary, but it signifies growth and 'you only fear that which you don't know', right?

So... it will take some getting used to, but once you have settled down, you become aware of the new possibilities that exist as a result of this dimensional shift'. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wizard.gif)

Could anyone provide me with some guidance, so that i may awake from this night a well rested man? Or perhaps some real life experiences, its always more interesting than regurgitated googleisms.

Force yourself to do something new. As psypocalypes says you've entered a new realm of possibilies - aka the twilight zone ;-) So explore this new state of being by doing different things. Find your place in this new existance as you did in your last. So the things you do are boring that means its time to do something else.

"Not the goody-goody christian god either"

I believe the "goody-good" Christian god caused a couple of bears to eat 2 kids
Cause they made fun of Elisha, that would be more like "baddy-bad" (IMG:style_emoticons/default/diablo.gif)

good advice Acid09.
Simple yet wise advice. The best things in life are simple. people just like to make things complicated.
Thats one of the things i learned in the dark night. Its not necesary to complicate things. The night is really simple, it almost stops instantly if you don't care about it anymore and just go on with whatever you need to do.

I always saw the ego as the basic survival instinct.
I believe the ego is necessary for the survival of the organism.
It drives us to procreate, eat, seek shelter, and all other things necessary for survival.
This can lead to competition, one-upmanship, pride, and other misbehaviours in our society, and when this happens, we say 'so and so has an over- inflated ego.'
When someone has an over-inflated ego, they need more than is necessary to survive, therefore they need fast cars, good looks, youth, adoration, and numerous other trinkets to support their insecurities, and some will go to extraordinary lengths to attain and maintain these things.
These things include such precious commodities as love and happiness.
Don't get me wrong, I also desire these things, though sometimes I really wish I didn't.
Love can be a real pain when it's not reciprocated, and also when it's forced upon an unwilling recipient.
Happiness can make us blind to the suffering of others.
When I'm happy, I find it really difficult to remember what it felt like to be miserable, and vice-versa.
I reckon the idea is to put the ego in it's place where it belongs, which is really difficult, as it appears to mean letting go of all of the above, hence the recommedations for celibacy, giving up of material possesions, solitude and the like (Although I do recognise there can be other reasons for this type of thing).
I freak at the thought of losing everything, but I think this is a trick of the over-inflated ego which, perhaps demonic in nature, seeks to maintain it's food supply, i.e. the energy expended through our fears and insecurities.
I don't mean we should give everything away, go live in a cave,.. etc, but maybe we should work on losing our attatchment to these things which keep us anchored to the world of materialism, so they no longer have the power over us to affect our feelings and behaviours in unhelpful ways, and if and when they are taken away from us, we are not affected in quite the same way as we would otherwise be.
Look at all the great spiritual masters. Most of them had zilch to their names.
I believe the suffering caused by the dark night of the soul is a result of one or more of these desires being unfulfilled, and as such should be embraced as an opportunity to shed some of the karmic dross that weighs us down, hampering our freedom to soar above, below, or whereever.
I've been down, contemplated suicide on and off for about 30 years now, and I've come to the conclusion that I take myself far too seriously.
Not that I no longer do, but I'm aware of it now, and I ALWAYS know that no matter how down I get, I will ALWAYS feel better soon.
ALWAYS.
I always have in the past, and always will in the future, provided I don't snuff it while I'm in the middle of a downer, in which case, as far as I can be certain, I'll be out of the running anyway.
When I'm happy, I try not to go too high in the hope that when I'm down, I won't go too far down, but I'm not too sure of the efficacy of this idea.
It's easy to say in theory but hell to put into practice, as it's difficult to know how happy is too happy.
Contemplate suicide by all means, just don't do it.
It's a waste of a lifetime, and they don't come cheap, otherwise we wouldn't be discussing this right now.
I've spent a long time alone thinking about this, that's why I feel so confident in writing it.
I've also had many good friends who have comitted suicide, and I don't wish to lose any more, especially before I've even got to know them.
Hope I haven't come across too preachy.

Yours in light and darkness,
Steve.

Actually I went through something very similar not too long ago. I associated it moreso with susto than the dark night of the soul. I lost over 40 pounds and became so secluded I hardly left my home. I gave up my studies and basically lost all will to thrive. The only way I could get over it, or through it, was to do so willfully. I ended friendships with people that thrived on my turmoil and I picked up my books again. It took over a year and a half to get back to where I was. I really was a hollowed husk of who I was before. Some of it was spiritual, some personal, and some due to a certain psychic vamp. l

ah, i went trough that to, but i do not think that is really the dark night. I went trough that before i picked up magick.

The dark night is an unmotivated time, hollow inside, yet fearless. No reason to thrive, yet thriving anyway. Going trough the motions and feeling empty while doing it.

It is the result of spiritual growht, of disataching from the material and losing the ego. Most people live for material things. When this desire is destroyed, and the material craving subdues, there is nothing left sometimes. I believe it is mainly the cause of unguided growth. And the love of life seems to vanish, because there is nothing left to live for.

One must search for love then, that oneness with the universe to fill up the void. One must fall like a raindrop in the ocean of life, and become part of the flow. However, this must be realised.

Correct meditation and insight can prevent the dark night in many, however some may thing they have shed the material world and experience the dark night unexpectadly, then they are surprised and lost until they can realise this truth.

This is a hard problem to overcome, since there is no psychologist or friend in the world who understands this, since material people never get to feel the emptyness when there material desires are destroyed.

It is as i read a few posts back, the ego seems to be necesary, however it is not, if you get past this dark night. However, be warned, it is possible to experience the dark night over and over again, when you go back to material desires.

During a dark night of the sould it is important to find something, anything to stimulate you. It is my theory that these dark nights, while a normal part of our existance, are far too often allowed to carry on longer than necessary. The trick is to find the rose growing in the concrete. Good luck.

During a dark night of the sould it is important to find something, anything to stimulate you. It is my theory that these dark nights, while a normal part of our existance, are far too often allowed to carry on longer than necessary. The trick is to find the rose growing in the concrete. Good luck.

That is the tendancy, to stimulate yourself trough impulses. and you may well be succesfull in your effort.
You may conquer the dark night by stimulating yourself into something else.
But by doing that, you are leavin the dark night back into the evening, not into the dawn.
Your turning back and are leaving your spiritual progress behind if you overstimulate yourself and indulge yourself into the material worlds benefits and interests.

Silent meditation, how agonizing it may be, is the best rememedy. more precizely metta meditation.
But do not take on to much at once, set reasonable goals, becouse else you will likely go insane in the darkness.

Angalor, what you describe is something i went trough before i first picked up magick. I don't want to make less of your experience, since i know how painfull it can be.
But it sounds more like a depression than a dark night. wich is a horrible thing to go trough and can also be magickally rewarding in the end.

this is my highly personall opinion, which i believe to be true:

In the dark night you would have just kept on going, with no problem.
You would have kept your friends with no problem, they might even think you are at the top of your life, peaking mentally and physicly you seem outwardly. The dark night makes you go trough the motions of life, like a nihilistic machine. At least thats how it was for me.
Its not that there is fear for certain things, its just that everything seems so boring, so meaningless.
And there is no desire to do anything. However there is no desire not to do it either.
Doing or not doing feel exactly the same, boring and unrewarding, unhappy.
to a depressed person, this seems like a blessing, becouse you have no limitations in the dark night. An enourmous freedom is all around you.
Yet the pain of everything being boring and meaningless is constantly there also , making one feel extremely sad.

i would think about killing myself, to end the pain. But in the end, the killing seemed like a boring thing to do. And not feeling pain seemed like a boring thing too.
I would perform in school, in life, with friends, with great success. However, i took my diploma after the years of study, with the thought that it was a boring piece of paper. no satisfaction whatsoever, which was a little sad to think about.
I talked the talk, walked the walk, scoring high on my projects and intermship. yet all the time it gave me no joy. It was all boring but i just did it, going with the flow, totally bored.
i meditated, thinking, how boring is this. I went to bed quickly falling asleep due to my boredom.

Then i just said to my self a day. So what is it all boring, happyness stems from the inside. And i stopped caring about wheter it was boring or not. I stopped analysing how i felt about it. And just felt happy all the time. The happyness is much the same than the dark night, instead of feeling boring you feel happy. Its just a change of emotions. Take the above text and change boring with happy, and you have how i felt in my newfound freedom.

Thats how far i got, then it went away and i became more a "normal human" again. It seems i lost track of the magick for a while, and it set me back a little (IMG:style_emoticons/default/oops.gif)
Right now, i am seeking again that feeling post dark night. But i suspect i should stop seeking, becouse the feeling of non-caring of the dark night was the key to that happyness. Right now the only thing holding me back is the seeking itself. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

I have found the underlying reason for these Dark Nights of the Soul are in fact emotional and spiritual stagnation. The mundane and complacent feeling is the manifestaation of this stagnation. I remember myself going through a prolonged period of DNotS, it was a rough and drunken time. But it was, looking back on it now, a spiritual stagnation I was in the grips of. Then once I began working w/ magick again I had a new outlook suddenly and the experiences I gathered during the DNotS helped me see the pitfalls w/i me and I was able to pull from each day something useful for my magickal work.

In other words, dont rest on your laurels and try to keep things interesting to cut down on these DNot S.

This post has been edited by Suxur-Mash596: Nov 4 2006, 11:15 PM