Dark night of the soul psychology
Psychiatry and the Dark Night of the Soul
TomWang/AdobeStock
“There are many ways not to be happy that do not equal depression.”—Thomas Moore1
Christian Robbins was 16 when he took his life during the first month of the pandemic. According to The Washington Post2 and the boy’s father, Christian had suffered a number of pandemic-related losses, including closure of his school; cancellation of a family vacation; and isolation from his friends. Quite understandably, his grieving father has been haunted by the question, “What if the pandemic never happened? Would my son still be alive?”
Of course, it is impossible to know. The Centers for Disease Control reported that between June 24, 2020 and June 30, 2020, about 1 in 4 young adults (aged 18 to 24 years) had seriously considered suicide in the 30 days before completing the CDC survey.
3 But attributing a completed suicide primarily to the pandemic is probably a considerable over-simplification. For example, in the case of Christian Robbins, The Washington Post report notes that the young man “had been struggling for months with depression and early symptoms of bipolar disorder.” Moreover, Christian had told his father of “a voice inside [that] was whispering how worthless he was, how he was hated by everyone.”2
It is tempting to hypothesize that Christian’s suicide was largely a result of a (bipolar) major depressive episode, possibly complicated by psychotic features. The pandemic and its attendant losses seem likely to have been the immediate precipitants. But recent research suggests other possibilities, and compels us to consider mental and emotional states that are not discussed at all in the DSM-5, to my knowledge, and may confer a high risk of suicide even when the individual does not meet full DSM criteria for a major depressive episode.4
Moreover, there are good reasons, at times, to shift our perspective from the strictly clinical to the quintessentially spiritual; specifically, to what some mystics and theologians have called “the dark night of the soul.
” First, though, we need to examine 2 closely related concepts that are not part of the DSM’s nosology.
Demoralization and Despair
Demoralization is succinctly described in a recent Italian study of kidney transplant patients5:
Demoralization is a syndrome clinically separated from depression. It is characterized by a combination of distress and subjective incompetence; the loss of meaning and purpose in life; the lack of perceived social support; a sense of being trapped and personal failure; a cognitive attitude of pessimism, and hopelessness/helplessness. Moreover, this psychological state has a significant role in negatively influencing a patient’s quality of life, coping styles, and dignity. It is associated with [suicidal] ideation; a higher wish for hastened death; and a worsening of the prognosis in patients affected by medical illness.
A more existential description of demoralization is provided by psychologist John F.
Schumaker: demoralization is “an overarching psycho-spiritual crisis in which victims feel generally disoriented and unable to locate meaning, purpose, or sources of need fulfilment.”6
Note that both descriptions involve a loss of meaning and purpose in life. We can easily envision many people suffering emotionally during the current pandemic who may not meet DSM-5 criteria for a major depressive disorder, but who would fit these descriptions of demoralization—and who might well become suicidal because of that mental and emotional state.
Despair
In a recent piece titled, “Dying Without a Dream,”7 psychiatrist Kenneth Gilbert, MD, described a trait he has observed in many individuals with substance use disorders who wind up fatally overdosing on opioids. He opined that these individuals do not seem to “feel that their own lives are worth protecting” or that “their own lives are worth living.” Gilbert further described such fatal outcomes as deaths of despair and wondered whether “without a sense of meaning or engagement, [these individuals] might have no reason to protect their own lives.
”
Despair is understood broadly as “an entire want of hope.”8 I believe Gilbert is correct in conceptualizing this as an existential problem—with important implications for psychiatry. Indeed, research by William E. Copeland, PhD, and colleagues has linked despair with higher rates of substance misuse and suicidality in young adults.9 Using data from structured interviews, Copeland et al derived 7 indicators of despair: feelings of hopelessness, helplessness, feeling unloved or worthless, experiencing worry, self-pity, and loneliness.
Importantly, whereas many participants with depression also reported despair, most individuals reporting despair did not meet formal criteria for a depressive disorder.9 The import of the Copeland et al study is simply this: we must look beyond the DSM categories of depression if we are to recognize young people (and probably others) who are truly suffering and at risk for substance abuse and suicide.
The Dark Night of the Soul
The phrase, “dark night of the soul” is often used informally to describe an extremely difficult and painful period in one’s life, for example, after the death of a loved one; the break-up of a marriage; or the diagnosis of a life-threatening illness.
For many, the loneliness, isolation and fear associated with the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic is, indeed, a dark night of the soul. There is nothing wrong with these informal usages, and they have obvious links to the concepts of demoralization and despair, as we have defined them. But they differ significantly from the original meaning and context of the phrase, as first conceived by the Spanish mystic, John of the Cross (1541-1597 AD).
John was a member of the Carmelite religious order, which he was trying to reform. The thanks he got was imprisonment by his Carmelite brethren, during which John composed his remarkable poem, “The Dark Night of the Soul.”10 (The Canadian singer, Loreena McKennitt, has set the poem quite beautifully to music.11) The poem begins:
On a dark night,
Kindled in love with yearnings–oh, happy chance!–
I went forth without being observed,
My house being now at rest.
John’s poem is essentially a spiritual odyssey.
It recounts “the journey of the soul from its bodily home to its union with God.”12 This mystical concept may seem too esoteric to have relevance in clinical psychiatry; but as we will see, the dark night may be understood more existentially, in ways that have considerable relevance to our profession.
Surviving the Dark Night
In his book, Dark Nights of the Soul, the psychotherapist and former Catholic monk, Thomas Moore, makes an important observation. He writes, “The dark night calls for a spiritual response, not only a therapeutic one.” The dark night calls upon the affected person “to remain in the present, not bound or deluded by the past and not imprisoned in a fixed and defensive idea about the future…the most difficult challenge is to let the process take place, and yet that is the only release from the pressure of the dark night.”1
Sadly, not everyone will survive the dark night of the soul. Some of those Moore mentions, like the poet Anne Sexton, will die by their own hand.
Those who do survive have come to realize, as Moore puts it, that “life is never as bright and successful and meaningful as you might imagine”.1 And yet, these survivors have found—or rather, created—new meaning in their lives.
Moore cites as an example the pianist Leon Fleischer, who died recently at the age of 92. At the age of 36, Fleischer suffered a mysterious neurological affliction that essentially crippled his right hand and nearly ended his career. None of the treatments he received helped, and Fleischer fell into a 2-year period of despair, to the point of considering suicide. But then, an epiphany: as Fleischer put it, “I suddenly came to the realization that my connection with music was greater than just as a two-handed piano player.”13 Fleischer essentially re-invented himself, becoming a teacher, a conductor, and a performer of the left-handed repertoire for piano. As Moore puts it, “it was the expansion of his musical vision that saved him.”1
The Midwife and the Dark Night of the Soul
As therapists, we need, in the first place, to appreciate and recognize the dark night of the soul as it afflicts and transforms our patients.
We also need to recognize and assess the degree of demoralization and despair our patients may be experiencing, as these have implications for substance abuse and suicidality.
At the same time, we need to distinguish the dark night of the soul from various states of disease and disorder, such as major depressive disorder—which, in some unfortunate cases, may be the outcome of an unsuccessful spiritual journey. The dark night itself is not a disease, but part of the price we pay for being vulnerable human beings.
We need not be observantly religious to help our patients through their dark night, nor need we enter into the mystical world of John of the Cross. Rather, we can act as midwives to our patients’ inner transformation—supporting and encouraging them as they struggle to give birth, often painfully, to new meaning in their lives. As philosopher Peter Wilberg has put it, this kind of healing: “is no longer identified with mental, emotional or bodily ‘recovery’ but rather, with self–discovery – the birth of a newly felt bodily sense of self…[and] the metaphor of maieusis – the physician as midwife.
”14 The term maieusis comes from the Greek word “maieutikos,” meaning “of midwifery.” In one of Plato’s “Dialogues” (the Theaetatus), Socrates—the son of a midwife—applies the term maieutikos to his method of bringing forth new ideas by reasoning and dialogue. He thought the technique “analogous to those a midwife uses in delivering a baby.”15 The maieutic concept of care does not require us to set aside our medical training or biological knowledge, which are essential parts of our identity as psychiatric physicians. Rather, the metaphor of the midwife enlarges our understanding of medical healing to include our ministering to the soul—especially during its darkest night.
Dr Pies is professor emeritus of psychiatry and lecturer on bioethics and humanities, SUNY Upstate Medical University; clinical professor of psychiatry, Tufts University School of Medicine; and editor in chief emeritus of Psychiatric TimesTM.
What do you think? Share comments with your colleagues by emailing [email protected]. Comments may be shared online pending review and editing for style.
References
1. Moore T. Dark Nights of the Soul. Gotham Books; 2004.
2. Wan W. For months, he helped his son keep suicidal thoughts at bay. Then came the pandemic. The Washington Post. November 23, 2020. Accessed December 2, 2020.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/11/23/covid-pandemic-rise-suicides/
3. Czeisler MÉ, Lane RI, Petrosky E, et al. Mental health, substance use, and suicidal ideation during the COVID-19 pandemic — United States, June 24–30, 2020. MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep. 2020;69:1049–1057.
4. Bower B. ‘Deaths of despair’ are rising. It’s time to define despair. ScienceNews. November 2, 2020. Accessed December 2, 2020. https://www.sciencenews.org/article/deaths-of-despair-depression-mental-health-covid-19-pandemic
5.
Battaglia Y, Zerbinati L, Piazza G, et al. The use of demoralization scale in Italian kidney transplant recipients. J. Clin. Med.2020;9,2119.
6. Schumaker J. The demoralized mind. New Internationalist. April 1, 2016. Accessed December 2, 2020. https://newint.org/columns/essays/2016/04/01/psycho-spiritual-crisis
7. Gilbert K. Dying without a dream. Psychiatric Times. Nov. 24, 2020. Accessed December 2, 2020. https://www.psychiatrictimes.com/view/dying-dream
8. “Despair, n.” Oxford English Dictionary. Oxford University Press; 2020.
9. Copeland WE, Gaydosh L, Hill SN, et al. Associations of despair with suicidality and substance misuse among young adults. JAMA Netw Open. 2020;3(6):e208627.
10. St. John of the Cross. The Dark Night. The Collected Works of St. Jon of the Cross. Trans. Kieran Kavanagh and Otilio Rodriguez. ICS Publications; Revised edition, 1991.
11. Loreena McKennitt. The dark night of the soul.
Accessed December 2, 2020. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MclLF473XtA
12. The Dark Night of the Soul. Accessed December 2, 2020. https://makeheaven.com/st-john-of-the-cross.html
13. Huizenga T. Leon Fleisher, the pianist who reinvented himself, dies At 92. National Public Radio. Accessed December 2, 2020.
https://www.npr.org/sections/deceptivecadence/2020/08/02/702978476/leon-fleisher-the-pianist-who-reinvented-himself-dies-at-92
14. Wilberg P. Phenomenological Medicine and Organismic Therapy. Accessed December 3, 2020. https://existentialmedicine.wordpress.com/phenomenological-medicine-and-organismic-therapy/
15. Maieutic. Merriam-Webster Dictionary. Accessed December 2, 2020. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/maieutic
For Further Reading:
Pies RW: Care of the soul in the time of Covid-19. Psychiatric Times. March 23, 2020. Accessed December 2, 2020. https://www.psychiatrictimes.com/view/care-soul-time-covid-19
Pies RW.
Is the country experiencing a mental health pandemic? Psychiatric Times. Oct. 13, 2020. Accessed December 2, 2020.
https://www.psychiatrictimes.com/view/are-we-really-witnessing-mental-health-pandemic
The Dark Night of the Soul: Understanding Amidst the Absence of Meaning | by Joshua Press
Photo by Greg Rakozy on UnsplashHave you ever felt alone in a meaningless universe, unable to bear going through the motions, having no sense of direction, and feeling like you have lost all hope? You could be going through a Dark Night of the Soul.
The purpose of this article is to shed light on this deeply miserable process of growth to come out the other side a more conscious and mature individual.
The dark night of the soul is a stage in personal development when a person undergoes a difficult and significant transition to a deeper perception of life and their place in it. This enhanced awareness is accompanied by a painful shedding of previous conceptual frameworks such as an identity, relationship, career, habit or belief system that previously allowed them to construct meaning in their life.
The dark night of the soul might sound unfamiliar, but it has various relative conceptions in religion, mythology, and psychology. Some commonly associated conditions like ‘existential crisis’ and forms of depression are more recognizable.
Other related concepts include ‘Positive Disintegration’ in psychology, ‘Soul Loss’ or the ‘Descent to the Underworld’ in Shamanism, ‘Katabasis’ in Greek mythology, and ‘Nigredo’ — as Carl Jung symbolically understood it in Alchemy.
The ‘Dark Night of the Soul’ aka ‘Oscura Noche’ however references the name given retroactively to an untitled poem by the 16th century Roman Catholic priest and mystic; St. John of the Cross, where he describes the anguish of the separation of an individual’s soul from God while imprisoned for his unconventional religious beliefs.
So what does the dark night of the soul mean?
The ‘dark night’ symbolizes an obscuration, and ‘soul’ usually refers to an individual’s true essence.
In other words: the dark night of the soul is the obscuration of the true self. The obscuration may consist of a previous idea of what one believes about themselves or the world that is thrown into question.
“There can be no rebirth without a dark night of the soul, a total annihilation of all that you believed in and thought that you were.”― Hazrat Inayat Khan
As we grow through different stages of life, we are influenced by many aspects of our surroundings. From birth, the family impresses upon a child a name, what the family believes, and what is acceptable and unacceptable.
The education system further influences the child. In high school the adolescent seeks the acceptance of the community as well as internalizes or rejects its values, at work there is a role to play and at home, many switch on the news or attend social gatherings where the topics of conversation can jump between media, the economy, or the failures and successes of their peers.
Personal goals may be the goals of everyone else: to have nice clothes, a fancy car, a comfortable home, an attractive partner, and so on, without a thought of the why, what, or how of their personal existence.
To a person who has bought into the regular motions of modern society, life can seem like it is on autopilot; guided by the ego and habit based on arbitrary and subjective conditioning from the surrounding culture.
However, for many, there is a rude awakening. It could be a tragedy, an experience of a non-ordinary state of consciousness, a person’s “faith flickers” as Ram Dass puts it, a loss of a sense of objectivity, distrust in authority, an accident, career change, illness or realization that you don’t know who you really are or what you want to do in your life — or maybe you have everything you ever wanted and you are still unhappy. Ultimately something shakes you out of your day-to-day limited perception of life.
“The only way we can really approach this is to realize that when we have received the full conditioning of our society and have attained physical maturity that perhaps we will be able to pause for a moment and try to find out a little more about ourselves.
Usually however, this moment of pause only comes when physical or emotional reverses break down the structure of the so-called physical-material-industrial plan for living.
Nearly always a crisis, a great disappointment, a heartache, a desperate illness. These are the kinds of pressures that perhaps have been placed here to remind us that we have an individual existence and that this existence must be given expression or the life we are living will remain incomplete.”
― Manly Hall
During the dark night of the soul, a person can struggle with their sense of meaning in the world. Everything can seem purposeless and it seems that there is no place where they belong.
It is quite easy to reluctantly succumb to a despondent nihilism as one floats in liminal space, a kind of purgatory. The allure of victimhood, comfort, and avoidance of responsibility dwell in this place but it comes with the cost of misery… but at least it’s familiar.
It’s no wonder people choose this option because unfortunately there is not much refuge for this in the fast-paced modern world, which can cause the pressure to outweigh a person’s capacity — a threshold where the dark night of the soul can go from emergence to emergency, with accompanying suicidal thoughts or apocalyptic hallucinations of death and destruction in extreme cases.
There are usually intense feelings of sadness, frustration, hopelessness, meaninglessness, and hiraeth — a homesickness for a place that never was.
“We rarely find people who achieve great things without first going astray.”
― Meister Eckhart
To take ‘night’ literally would be a mistake. As with any spiritual crisis it is highly idiosyncratic. There is no predetermined time, no ‘normal’ experience as it depends upon each individual.
This night is more like a polar night, where due to the earth’s tilt (life conditions), the area is in darkness much longer than the regular night and day (happiness and sadness) the rest of the world (the person) is used to. This experience, however, as miserable as it may seem, hides extraordinary potential. Patience is essential as any attempt to forcefully speed up the process will inevitably hinder it.
You can put off the dark night of the soul in a world that can cater to your every sense with addictive pleasure, or engage in over-analysis, but the beginning of a way out of this dreary underworld is to be conscious where you were once naïve, as well as letting go of the old parts of you that were conditioned, assumed, or habitual that really isn’t in alignment with who you are.
This usually must be accompanied by personal realization that can only come through contemplation, meditation, and relaxation.
Proper contemplation must occur in the context of radical honesty. You can no longer lie to yourself about how you feel or tell yourself how you should feel; meditation helps with the distractions and illusions of the mind; relaxation is required because tension will not reveal how you feel, only that you are refusing to feel.
Relaxation will allow openness and surrender — without these things the pressure of trying to figure everything out simply with tireless thought can easily burn you out, make you feel even more hopeless and fill you up with a sense of dread and overwhelm.
The dark night of the soul can convince you that it’s just because you aren’t doing enough. Your peers certainly might enforce this idea. They don’t understand that there are feelings you need to feel and hang-ups you need to overcome in order to be functional again.
Whipping yourself into submission won’t work as the mental pressure you are already under will fast lead to burnout. One thing to remember here is that for now, you don’t need to ‘be more’, you need to ‘be’ more. You need to be able to switch off from everything external and come back to the basic experience of you being alive in the present moment.
The hardest part of the dark night of the soul is to face your shadow which contains the repressed parts of yourself such as your fears, desires, traumas, and beliefs. Behind the dark night of the soul is the treasure of the underworld. It is guarded by a dragon, but you must go into the belly of this beast. If you turn away it will slowly devour you.
Because this is very difficult, there is a risk. One of the greater risks is to adopt an extreme ideology or another pathological complex. Instead of breaking boundaries within yourself, you strengthen them and try to tear down boundaries in the physical world.
There are many enticing pre-packaged ideologies for sale. From religious dogma, conspiracy fanaticism or extreme activism, these are propelled forward by perverting the course of suffering.
It is only natural for someone to seek wisdom in this time of suffering and it is helpful in breaking down previous ideas, but these groups allure people with their half-truths and lead down a path of misguided agenda. The same trap that is a common cause of the dark night of the soul — a misplaced identity.
Understanding the process you are going through and that you are not alone is a great first step in finding some fragments of meaning to hold onto again. Once a small amount of meaning returns it will then give hope, in turn affecting the frustration and sadness, introducing a sense of feeling more at ease in the process.
Whatever a person’s natural temperament, there is an interpretation that can allow them to start to draw meaning from this experience to see the light at the end of the tunnel, from the ‘darkest before the dawn’.
The situation resolves itself in the event of the reintegration of perception beyond the original conditioning of the individual. Some events may make things click and awaken this sleeper within, or possibly a full retreat inside with no external stimulation is required. The conditioning one has received if it were to be analyzed piece by piece can take more than a lifetime to deconstruct on the level of mind, but fortunately, the change needs to take place at the fundamental level of perception. Time must be spent on this fundamental level.
During this experience meditation and quietude will be a helpful practice to meet life at a level beyond the noise and chaos of the fractured mind. More and more you will start to see the world as it is, rather than what you were taught, or what you would prefer it to be. From a place of calm, you can be honest enough with yourself to rebuild your life in accordance with who you are, or aspire to be. Guidance from someone who has made this journey can also be invaluable.
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Dark night of the soul | Master Margashov Vyacheslav
Ω
The shadow of death, suffering and torments of hell is felt especially sharply, and this comes from the feeling that you are abandoned by God… and a terrible foreboding arises in the soul that it will always be like this… The soul sees itself in the very center of the most diverse forms of evil, in the midst of pitiful imperfection, devastated, thirsting for understanding and thrown into darkness.
San Juan de la Cruz, Dark Night of the Soul
…
The following pages will describe some of the most common critical and embarrassing types of experiences that come to the surface from the complex and confusing inner world of the individual during the transformation process and which we know both from our own experience and from the reports of other people.
. We hope that we will not discourage the reader by starting now to deal with these difficult experiences. The dark night of the soul is just one aspect of the spiritual journey, and there are many more that are much more enjoyable.
…
The purpose of our study of this topic is, firstly, to express the unusual sequence of states during the process of transformation. Although there are many exceptions, most people who experience a spiritual crisis still have to dive into and through dark areas before they reach a state of freedom, light and peace. For those who undertake this path, the positive experiences often seem more meaningful and intense afterwards, in contrast to the difficult experiences they had to deal with earlier. Just as the sunrise is perceived as particularly bright and hopeful after a long winter night, so joy seems especially strong after pain.
With this in mind, one might ask the following question: what are those dark regions through which a person may have to pass? What do they look like? And what kind of conflicts can arise there?
For some people who are in a spiritual crisis, both in its dramatic and milder forms, the task of getting through one more day, the task of maintaining the ability to act in the usual way, can be a serious challenge.
Normal, seemingly simple activities that are part of everyday life can suddenly become difficult or depressing. Often, individuals in crisis are filled with inner experiences that are so saturated with emotions, power and energy that it is difficult to separate the vivid and vivid images of the inner world from the events of external reality. In such situations, it is often difficult to maintain concentration, and this can cause great difficulty for people going through a crisis. Panic can also be caused by rapid, frequent changes in states of consciousness. Unable to function in their usual way, people in this situation feel powerless, ineffective, and guilty.
One woman described her problems as follows:
“I could see and understand that there were chores to be done around the house, but I had the feeling that there was a wall between me and these chores that I used to do. without any effort. I remembered that I needed to go out to do some gardening work and knew that this activity could be useful.
However, I got the feeling that if I went that far, I might explode. All those artistic and creative projects that made me so happy before were too hard to focus on now. And even playing with my children seemed too difficult for me. The only thing I could do during this time was to somehow take care of myself.”
Among the most difficult and disturbing conditions that a person experiencing a spiritual crisis usually has to face are feelings of fear, a sense of his own madness and preoccupation with death. Although these states are often inevitable, necessary, and central parts of the healing process, they can become frightening and overwhelming, especially when there is no support from others.
A wide variety of repressed emotions and memories break out from the opening gates of the unconscious. When a person is faced with specific memories or experiences from personal or transpersonal, transpersonal, areas, he may have experiences associated with fear, loneliness, insanity and death.
The person may recall memories of severe illnesses, life-threatening events, or other disturbing events from infancy and childhood. Biological birth, with all its complex, chaotic and dynamic manifestations, can also be re-experienced.
Many memories contain an element of fear. People whose parents were addicted to alcohol may experience the horror that their drunken mother experienced when she was abused. In others, the fear that a person once experienced when falling from a tree or when he had whooping cough as a child can come to life.
The individual may suddenly feel a childish feeling of loneliness which has nothing to do with his present situation. These irrational feelings may be related to childhood experiences such as abandonment by parents or lack of connection with mother at the time of birth. Feelings like this can come from being isolated from peers at school or from the pain of divorce. Often, when the memory of life-threatening events arises, some individuals may experience feelings of insanity.
They may suddenly recall a sequence of events from their personal history, such as a near-fatal car accident or an incident while swimming where there was a threat of drowning, or some extreme physical or sexual abuse. When people recall such incidents, their feelings are so strong that they begin to believe that the connection with reality is lost.
Such situations can also lead a person to experience death. In addition, experiences related to death may be related to the circumstances of birth. A person always experiences some form of essential contact with death when the memories relating to his birth are revived in him with the accompanying feeling of suffocation and threat to life. If during the prenatal existence the individual was threatened with abortion or miscarriage, then he or she may experience a very convincing crisis of the survival of the fetus, which is again vividly remembered after a long time.
The person may also experience fear, loneliness, insanity, or death during transpersonal states that arise from the collective unconscious or even from universal realms.
Transpersonal areas contain both light and dark elements; fear can cause both those and others, "positive" and "negative". Someone may fight a monstrous mythological demon or relive a battle that took place in another era - feelings of anxiety and fear in such situations are inevitable. The fact that a feeling of fear sometimes arises when an individual moves into the realm of light and beauty may be puzzling. In the next chapter, we will discuss the challenge of "positive" realities.
The individual may experience a feeling of loneliness during realistic identification with a soldier separated from his beloved during the war, or with an African mother who is losing her child to starvation. One woman during our seminars experienced a real madness when, during a session of deep empirical work, she felt insane in a medieval asylum for the insane. An hour later, when her experience ended, she returned to her usual rational state.
The encounter with death on the transpersonal level can take many forms.
Experiences reminiscent of past life memories can vividly revive the feelings of a murdered soldier, a slave, a martyr, or a mother experiencing the loss of children during the war. A person can experience a collision with death in the mythological worlds sometimes through his identification with the figure of Christ crucified on the cross or with Osiris dismembered into parts.
The individual can identify with the universal human experience of dying, becoming every woman who dies in childbirth and every man who has been killed in battle throughout human history. Some may experience their identification with the most archetypal figure of Death, feeling the enormity of this universal force. The following vivid example comes from the recollection of a woman whose spiritual crisis involved many realistic death experiences:
“I saw everything around me swirling in a whirlwind of death: tombstones, crosses, laughing skulls and crossbones. I saw a lot of bloody battles, concentration camps, hospital wards - there were scenes of death everywhere.
It seemed to me that at the same time I was watching and taking part in all the deaths at the same time. Then my experiences suddenly changed and I felt as if I, whoever I was, was responsible for it all; I became Death itself in its traditional gloomy image with a scythe, reaping human lives; an apocalyptic rider on a pale horse - and all this was myself, calling all people to leave life.
It is easy to make the mistake of associating the emotions and sensations caused by the sudden manifestation of repressed memories with the life situation that the person has at the moment. For example, someone who re-experienced the threat of death that hung over him at the time of his birth may develop a deep preoccupation with the problem of death or an unusually strong reaction to films or television shows showing scenes of death. He may feel constantly threatened by potential danger in the world around him and may often worry about physical safety. Without realizing it, he may panic in confined spaces, be frightened in an elevator or during a crush on the subway.
Some may develop thanatophobia - an excessive fear of death, against which the person becomes obsessed with the belief that he is in danger of a heart attack. When the experience of birth is fully realized with all its wide range of emotions and physical sensations, the realization comes to a person that this is the source of his fears, and these fears dissipate.
——————————
FACE TO FACE WITH FEAR
Fear is a natural part of the diverse mosaic of changing states of consciousness.
Some form of fear usually accompanies a spiritual crisis, both in a mild form, associated with upcoming participation in everyday events, and in the form of a huge, overwhelming horror that seems to be unrelated to any real aspects of the person's life. Sometimes anxiety and anxiety can also be associated with the situation in which a person is: when not only many of his beliefs are destroyed, but the person himself in such a situation becomes extremely emotional.
There is a general weakness in the body, new physical stresses and disturbing pains appear. Most of the fears seem completely inexplicable and unreasonable, although, of course, in essence, these fears cannot cause any real harm to the person who experiences them. Sometimes the individual involved in the crisis deals with the fears relatively easily, but there are times when the feeling of fear seems to have expanded so much that it turns into a completely uncontrollable panic.
Most people experience many forms of fear in their lives, from the most gross and obvious, such as fear of physical injury or death, to more subtle manifestations, such as the anxiety experienced when asking a stranger for something person. Despite their fears, most people are able to function reasonably well in daily life without being overwhelmed by those fears. During many spiritual crises, everyday fears intensify and escalate, often becoming unmanageable. They may take the form of spontaneous general anxiety, or they may crystallize into separate more common types of fear.
FEAR OF THE UNKNOWN.
To a certain extent, it is common to many people. When life begins to take us in an unfamiliar direction, we often respond by becoming preoccupied and resisting.
Some people rush into the unknown relatively fearlessly, while showing admirable courage. But many others, when they have to move towards unexplored areas, do it against their will or, at best, very carefully.
For those who are in a spiritual crisis, the fear of the unknown can increase to enormous proportions. Their inner states often change so quickly that they become filled with fear from not knowing which state will be next. Such people are constantly immersed in immeasurable inner spaces, in new forms of awareness, in undiscovered possibilities. Thus, a completely materialistic woman may experience spontaneous out-of-body states and may imagine that she is more than just the physical body with which she usually identifies herself. Or a person may suddenly experience a series of emotional and physical states that appear to come from some other place and time.
This experience can lead a person to the idea of reincarnation - an idea that was previously completely alien to him.
Sudden events of this type can be quite frightening for people who are not prepared for them. They may develop a sense of uncertainty about where they are going and how they should react to everything that happens; such rapid and dramatic changes can cause fear that they are losing control of their lives. These changes may be too long for the old, familiar and safe way of being, that calmer and less demanding existence, even if not quite happy, that they had before.
FEAR OF LOSSING CONTROL.
A person who has spent many years working hard for the well-being of a successful family life can imagine his future as something quite clear and feel the significance of the daily burdens that fill his existence. When his wife suddenly develops a terminal illness, his life suddenly takes a completely different direction from the one he had planned.
His dreams are shattered, and the emotional stress caused by this event can be the beginning of a transformational process. With difficulty, painfully, this person realizes that he has no power over the forces of life and death and that he is affected by something that is beyond his control.
Many people spend years feeling that their familiar world is well organized and that they have complete control over their lives. When they discover that they are by no means in complete control of the trajectory of their being, they may experience a sense of extreme freedom. But it happens that people are afraid of this, especially if they completely identify themselves with their lifestyle full of constant stress. They will ask themselves: “If I am not in control of my life, then who is? And is he, she, or it—that which rules my life—quite trustworthy? Can I give myself to some unknown power and know that this power will take care of me?
Faced with the fear of losing control, the mind and ego become very sophisticated in their efforts to cling to something; people in these situations can create complex systems of rebuttal by convincing themselves that the way they are living is absolutely wonderful and that there is no need for any change, or that the changes they feel are just illusory.
. These people may try to intellectually interpret the states of mind they experience, creating sophisticated theories to explain them. Or they may simply be trying to avoid these states altogether. Sometimes the feeling of anxiety itself becomes a defense: when a person clings to his feeling of fear, this can quite successfully prevent him from growing too fast.
There is another form of loss of control, far less gradual and more dramatic. Being in a spiritual crisis, a person may feel overwhelmed by powerful episodes of experiences during which he completely loses control over his behavior. In such situations, the individual may explode with anger, burst into tears, tremble violently, or scream in a way that has never been done before. This unhindered release of emotions can be extremely liberating, but before it occurs, the person may experience extreme fear and resistance to the power of their feelings. After such an explosion, the individual feels frightened and ashamed that he allowed his expression to manifest with such force.
OTHER TYPES OF FEAR.
In some form of spiritual crisis, physical sensations or reactions are sometimes interpreted as fear. People can feel strange bursts of energy in themselves, sometimes of extreme strength. They feel pulsating electrical charges within them, an uncontrollable trembling in their body, or the presence of some unknown force flowing through their nervous system. Their pulse quickens and their body temperature rises.
What happens in this case? Such manifestations often become a natural physiological accompaniment of abrupt changes in consciousness; these sensations may also be specific characteristics of some form of spiritual crisis, such as the awakening of the Kundalini.
People who are unprepared for or unfamiliar with such phenomena can be very frightened when such manifestations become part of their daily lives. Since they have certain criteria for the normality of bodily sensations, they usually experience anxiety during attacks of such strange new sensations and can easily mistake these sensations for manifestations of fear itself.
One woman, immersed in intensive meditation practice, recalled her experience in this way:
“I went to my spiritual master and told him about the strange feeling of anxiety that has now become a part of my life. I felt this especially at night or when I tried to meditate: my heart would begin to beat faster, my body would tremble, and I would feel like I was sweating with fear. When my teacher heard about this, he laughed and said that these were just manifestations of Kundalini Shakti. He said, “Remember that when you experience these things. It's not fear that attacks you, it's God moving through you." Then I thought about his words many times, and it finally gave me a lot of support.”
The person may also face the fear of insanity, the fear of death, and the fear of universal destruction.
We will look at this in more detail later.
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Stanislav Grof
When the process of transformation reaches its highest points, decisive, its last stage often accompanied by strong suffering and inner darkness.
Christian mystics called it state of "dark night of the soul". Externally it resembles a disease that psychiatrists called depressive psychosis melancholy. Its signs: condition severe depression, up to despair; pronounced sense of self unworthiness; acute self-condemnation completely hopeless and cursed; depressing feeling of paralysis mind, loss of willpower and self-control, resistance and braking against to any action. Some of these symptoms may appear in less expressed form and on previous stages, without reaching, however, tension "dark night of the soul". This is peculiar and fruitful experience, whatever it is nor seemed to be generated purely painful condition. It has spiritual causes and deep spiritual meaning.
Following behind this so-called "mystical crucifixion" or "mystical death" comes the victorious resurrection, and with it pain and suffering end. It carries complete recovery and rewards for everything experienced. Chosen the topic made us study almost extremely negative and unusual aspects of internal development.
This does not mean at all that people walking on path of spiritual growth, experience nervous disorder more often than others. Note following. First, many spiritual development proceeds more harmoniously than in described cases, internal difficulties are overcome, and the person moves from stage by stage without nervous reactions and without special physical ailments. Secondly, nervous and mental disorders in ordinary people are often more severe and are less amenable to treatment than those that have spiritual reasons. Disorders ordinary people are often associated with strong conflicts of passions among themselves, or conflicts of unconscious drives with a creative personality, or they generated by someone's opposition their own selfish demands or wishes. There are ordinary people more difficult to treat, as their higher aspects too underdeveloped and little on what you can lean on to convince them subject yourself to the same self-discipline, which will restore the internal harmony and health.
Third, the suffering and sickness of those who walk on paths of spiritual growth, no matter how difficult they sometimes took no form, reality is only temporary reactions, as if "waste" of organic growth process leading to internal rebirth. Therefore, they often by themselves disappear when the caller passes their crisis, or relatively easy eliminated with proper treatment. Fourth. Suffering caused by the ebb spiritual waves are more than compensated for not only by periods of high tide and inland rise, but also faith in a significant and high the purpose for which the internal journey. The foresight of victory is very great motivating force and consolation, an inexhaustible source of courage. This image we must arouse in ourselves how you can brightly and often and help in this our companions. For this is hardly the most the best help we can provide. We must strive as much as possible more expressively imagine the joy victorious and liberated soul, which consciously partake of wisdom, strength and love of divine life, see inner eye exercise on Earth the Kingdom of God in His glory, perfection, which is picture Of The Liberated Mankind, - a newborn creation, complete divine jubilation.
Similar visions gave great mystics and saints endure inner suffering with a smile and physical torments, they inspired words Saint Francis of Assisi: "Waiting bliss, any torment is a pleasure ... "
let's go down now from these heights for a while to the valley where people "work in sweat faces." Looking at the problem with point of view of medicine and psychology, then one important thing to understand question. We have already said that although disorders associated with crises spiritual development, are reminiscent of some disease and sometimes even indistinguishable from them, in fact their causes and meaning completely different and in a certain sense even opposite. Respectively and their treatment should be different. nervous the symptoms of ordinary patients have like usually regressive in nature these patients are not capable of that inner and external adaptation, which requires normal personality development. So, some people can't get rid of emotional dependency on parents and they stay in this childish state dependence on parents or those who represents them, at least symbolically.
Sometimes patients lack their own good will to cope with difficulties normal family or social life. Without knowing it, they are looking for a flight into the sickness of liberation from their responsibilities. In other cases, the reason disease is emotional trauma, for example, disappointment or loss: being unable to accept the situation, a person reacts to it painfully.
In All of the above cases are conflict between the conscious individual and lower impulses, which, working in the realm of the unconscious, partially dominate the forces of consciousness. The suffering caused by the course of the spiritual development, on the contrary, are pronounced progressive character. It's a consequence stress associated with growth or struggle between the individual and those coming from above energies.
So Thus, these two types of disease should treated in completely different ways. For ailments of the first kind, the doctor should help the patient return to the state normal person. For this he the patient must be released from repressions and prohibitions, feelings of fear and dependence, excessive egocentrism and false assessments, misrepresentation about reality. Its task is to bring human to the objective and reasonable vision of a normal life, to a complete awareness of their own responsibilities and the rights of other people. Immature and conflicted among themselves factors must be developed and brought into agreement, thus successful personal psychosynthesis.
What concerns the second group of ailments, then the task of internal harmonization - treatment - is to new spiritual energies have been assimilated an already established normal personality, those. it is about spiritual psychosynthesis around a higher spiritual center.
Obviously, that treatments suitable for patients of the first group are unsuitable and even sometimes harmful to patients of the second type. The doctor who doesn't understand the problem the latter, unaware of the possibilities spiritual development or denying it, may exacerbate rather than alleviate difficulties. Such a doctor is able to devalue or ridicule the insecure yet spiritual aspirations of the patient, considering them as empty fantasies or, at best, like pure sublimation. With his help the patient will come to the conclusion that the best thing for him to tighten personal protection and completely ignore the voice of the soul. But this will only make his condition worse. struggle - escalate, liberation will slow down.
Against, a doctor who himself follows the path of the spiritual development, or at least aware of spiritual reality, can render great help to our patient. At that the time when a person is still in state of dissatisfaction restlessness, unconscious desires, lost interest in everyday life, but having no idea of the ultimate reality, while he seeks relief not at all there, where it is possible, and is lost in dead ends, at this time revealing the true cause his suffering can help find the right way out is in the awakening of the soul. AND this will be the essence of the treatment.
To the person in the second stage of the spiritual way, feeling happy in spiritual realm, in the atmosphere of the blessed flights in unconscious heights, very it is important to reveal the nature and purpose of its experiences, warn about them temporality, about the vicissitudes of his future wanderings. Then our wanderer will not caught unawares by a state of recession, will not be disappointed, will not be in power associated with the decline of doubt and despondency. If such a warning is not timely arrived and the person needs treatment during the period of a depressive reaction, then his it is important to convince that this is his condition temporary and it will definitely come out of him.
On the fourth stage, when a person enters into the "pit" on the path of ascent, work assistance is particularly difficult. In general it is divided into the following tasks. First, explain to the patient the meaning of his inner experience and how it should behave in this situation; Secondly, show how a person can manage deep desires, without displacing them into the realm of the unconscious; Thirdly, help convert and use own psychic energies; fourthly, to teach to master the incoming into his consciousness with a stream of spiritual energies and use it; fifth, implement leadership and collaboration recreating the patient's personality, i. e. at actually psychosynthesis.
IN period of the "dark night of the soul" help especially hampered by the fact that the person is, as it were, in dense fog, he is immersed in his suffering, and the light of the spirit does not reach his consciousness. The only thing that can be done is tirelessly repeat that his condition only temporary, not permanent, it is confidence in the latter that plunges patient in deep despair. We also we recommend that you persistently inspire him, that these torments, no matter how heavy they are were, have such spiritual value, contain the germ of such a high happiness that the time will come when he will bless them. So we can help you move suffering with humility and humility. It should be noted that the described psychological and spiritual means in no way exclude the physical treatment, as long as it alleviates suffering. Particularly valuable are those support the healing powers of nature: healthy eating, exercise relaxation, contact with nature elements, suitable rhythms of various types of physical and mental activities.
IN some cases difficult to treat that the patient has a mixture progressive and regressive disorders. This is a case of uneven and disharmonious internal development. Such people are one part of their personality can reach high spiritual level, and the other to remain slaves childhood addiction or unconscious "complexes". However, it can be said that upon careful analysis of the problem of a regressive kind are found in most of those on the spiritual path and almost all so-called "normal" of people. However, usually regressive or progressive manifestations of the disease decisively prevail. However, always take into account the possibility the fact that symptoms are combined in the disease both groups, each individual disorder needs to be explored and interpreted to understand its true cause and find the right treatment.
From of the above, it is clear that effective help with nervous and mental disorders arising in the course of spiritual development, knowledge is needed and experience of two levels: a doctor who specializes in nervous diseases and psychotherapy, and a serious researcher spiritual paths, and even better - a wanderer on these paths.
