The Dark Night

[markern]

Daniel Ingram (wich has an amazing free ebook by the way) writes a lot about the Dark Night a phaze that many spiritual seekers go through once they have gotten pretty far. What it is for different people can vary but one often gets very depressed, has problems meditating and become extreemly frightened. The way out is mostly to just be mindfull of it and be able to accept it. Ingram seems to claim that this will happen to very many people as they progress but that some get through a lot easier than others and don`t realy experience it as a big deal. He also claims that this period always follows a breakthrough wich in Vipassana is called arising and passing away and that if one does not progress through the dark night and a bit further up to first level of enlightenemnt one has to go through arising and pasing away and the dark night again and again. He also claims that after first enlightenement one will experience many smaler dark nights all the way up till Arahat level is attained but that after first enlightenment these are much less problematic.

 

I am wondering what you guys know about the dark night phenomenon, wether you have experienced it, how frequent you think it is, what you think it is and how best to handle it.

 

After reading in Ingrams forum (Dharma Overground) about the experiences of people there it seems to me that a lot of their problems with the Dark Night comes from lack of good energywork and a too exclusive reliance on meditation. It apears that very many people that do Vipassana only go to a yoga class once or twice a week and don`t realy do much heavy energetic work. Since the arising and passing away is usualy assosiated with kundalini like experiences and the dark night follows, since Ingram claims that loving kindness meditation and the meditating in the Jhanas and that grounding stuff like judo helps to stabilice the dark night, it seems to me that it is not just an "insight" problem but to at least a large extent energetic. If those things help it would seem natural that something heavily grounding and rooting like iron shirt would help. I am guessing that when people do Vipassana and have breakthroughs in insight a lot of energy goes to the head. If one has not done other energetic work to cleanse, ground and prepare the body, this might lead to loads of overload problems just like with ordinary energetic overloads. It might not be much to the dark night other than an unbalanced practice, just a somewhat different form of kunadlini imbalance. Opinions anyone?

[Trixter Streetcat]

who knows what the dark night really is. in my opinion it has nothing to do with energy work, grounding etc... because in most cases of spiritual progress it is unavoidable. something like jesus being tempted in the desert etc...

 

in my opinion, it seems like something God inflicts on the seeker to test his willpower (the story of Job in the bible also seems kind of dark night-ish), to provoke resistence and make him further wish "enlightenment" (because what would be the point, if the road to enlightenment was smooth and easy?).

 

read The Dark Night of the Soul by ST John of the Cross, which is a poem and an essay that deals exclusively with this subject.

 

and if you're going through it, just hold tight. whatever comes down, must come up again...

[rookie]

To my knowledge the dark night is refering to the work of the christian mystic John of the Cross.

Fr Thomas Keating describes it as a normal part of the chriatian comtemplative path that follows a period of being touched by grace. In this period the experience is so sweet and deeply pennetrates ones heart with the holy spirit. When it passes one is left feeling empty and dark. One has passed through a level where the ever present grace was needed. Now one is in a new stage that is dark partly becasue one cannot see on this level.

Some consider it a test of their faith. I consider it a new space that one has entered.

 

I am surprised to find the term used outside the teaching of christian mystics. It is particularly relevant to faith based systems because of the deep love and gratitude that is felt to the holy spirit after recieving grace through contemplative prayer. When this stage passes, it seems dark.

[Trunk]

To me, "dark night" means that you're closing in on a major shit-tangle in your subconscious. Often in the beginning a person cleans up and progresses through quickly any number of areas that are maybe a mess - but an easy-to-get-to and cleans-up-fairly-quickly mess. Most everyone has something dug in somewhere that is hard to get to and overwhelming: a major shit-tangle. And, I would suggest, often there ain't just one. Welcome to the path!

[Creation]

"Dark night of the soul" has become a general term for any difficult phase of the spiritual journey. As such, many people have many types of experiences from following many traditions that they could refer to by this name. I haven't had the chance to look into Ingram's stuff yet to see what he is really talking about. It looks great and I will get around to it sooner or later.

 

As far as the Christian sense of the term, the dark night is an experience of "aridity" on the emotional and mental levels. All your old patterns of though and feeling "dry up" and leave you feeling empty and hollow. Most pertinently, you feel very distant from God, usually after a period of feeling close to Him, and you don't quite know what to make of it. You thought you were doing well on your spiritual path, but the rug has been pulled out from under you, and all you previously did of a spiritual or devotional nature, what you thought was the most important part of your life, no longer "does anything" for you.

 

The explanation being this: The spiritual aspirant begins to understand on a deep level that God is beyond all our mental and emotional states, our naming and categorizing, and the limited conceptions of our finite human minds. He or she begins to relate to God on the level of spirit, and at first this is extremely uncomfortable. When the aspirant comes out on the other end, relationship to God is rooted on a deeper level than mundane consciousness (the "soul" or "psyche"), instead it is firmly rooted in spirit. Only then can true divine love and bliss occur. Everything before that was a signpost at best, and a delusion at worst.

 

Yet even in this more technical sense, the dark night of the soul is a necessary and important stage of any spiritual path, although it may not be phrased in terms of relationship with God. It is detaching from the ego and the constructs of the mind and the senses to arrive at a higher, deeper, transcendental base for one's being. And in all traditions it is considered a painful period and a great obstacle to be overcome.

 

For an inspiring read, check out the anything by Thomas Merton. He was a Christian monk who immersed himself in Taoism and Zen as well as the Christian contemplative tradition.