The Dark Night of The Soul: Will It Ever End?

Our Beautiful Earth.  Maui Again!  A Stormy Sea
 (Appropriate for this Blog topic)

     As I wrote in my Profile, my younger daughter passed away suddenly at age 39.  That was 3 years, 8 months, 1 week, and 4 days ago.  And,  YES, I am still counting!  My life has a schism...life BEFORE she died and life AFTER she died.

     My grief has been compounded by the lost of my two precious grandchildren (her children) from my life in the family drama that followed, relocation from our home city of the last 25 years as well as financial challenges associated with the relocation and the economy.  My "dark night of the soul" seems to have no end.
     I am not new to grief.  I have had many loses in my life
including the death of my son in his childhood, my parents at an early age, aunts and uncles important in my life, my marriage, many cherished pets as well as employment.  Playing armchair psychologist, perhaps my most recent grief has been so devastating because my previous loses were "unresolved".  Regardless, as the inane saying goes, "it is what it is".

     Robert Schwartz in his book Your Soul's Plan: Discover The Real Meaning of The Life You Planned Before You Were Born states that we plan our lives before we incarnate, we choose the lessons on which we will work, we negotiate with the other souls who will participate with us, and we determine the roles they will play.  This hypothesis has been hard for me to accept.

     That would mean my daughter and I planned this tragedy for me, her sister, her two small children, and her husband.  Free will, however, is operational, never suspended, and there are ways to change the plan after incarnation.  Perhaps we are now on a variation of the original plan.  I have no way of knowing at this juncture. 

     I do believe that we are all living out a staged play and at the end of this incarnation, we will each self-evaluate and "grade" our individual performances.  Perhaps I do not yet have enough distance (time) between her death and now to even guess what lessons I (and we) should be learning from this scenario.   It may all be a play, but the drama is so real in Third Dimension that pulling back from it, looking at it as "the watcher", is very hard to do.

     We come from a family of motherless children it seems.  I became motherless at age 10, my grandchildren became motherless at ages 6 and 8, and their other grandmother also became motherless in her early childhood.  If we are all planning this together on The Other Side, I hope our soul group comes up with a different scenario for the next go-around, because  this one is getting old and it stinks.

     My Left Brain still pushes me to study and research my challenges, often drowning out my Inner Wisdom which is very difficult to hear with the chaos in my mind.  So I have read many blogs and articles on "The Dark Night of The Soul" in this AFTER period of my life.

     Often, however, such study is akin to reading the manual for the fire extinguisher while flames are shooting from the frying pan on the stove  toward the ceiling.  All such advice is well-meaning; some is so technical (from psychology point of view) that my eyes cross; and some suggestions seem contradictory.  

     Spiritual awakening associated with The Dark Night is quite common, but highly individual in depth, length, and character.  Hence, I am reluctant to offer advice to anyone else.  I can only tell you what I have experienced and what few things have worked for me - at least every other day.

• I have learned to ignore advice that feels harmful.  Friends are often not equipped to deal with the pain of another's grief.  After a time period (deemed sufficient by their calendar), patience turns to "okay, enough is enough; suck it up; get on with life".  The tendency in response is to put on a happy face which is harmful.  That reaction promotes a farce when the ego must be "healed".
• I ride the emotional roller coaster with as little self-judgement as possible.  The vacillation between despair and elation, high energy and immobility, the fastness of time passing and the slowness of time passing, all are effects I have found hard to cope with and understand.  I have experienced depression, anger, self-pity, melt-downs, impatience, and joy all within the space of 30 minutes!  I am much more susceptible to negativity in my environment, not able to cope with it.  Throughout my life, I have been able to "bounce back" quickly from almost any catastrophe. Now it is as if my resiliency has been permanently damaged.   
• I try not to focus on WHEN I will feel "normal" again, because I actually believe  "normal" has changed and my old self is gone.  Books and movies I used to enjoy are no longer interesting.  I am resistant to spending time doing things I don't enjoy or don't want to do. I long for sunshine when it's cloudy.  I enjoy being in the garden in solitude with nature.  I care little what others think about what I do, wear, or say    I feel much more "self contained" in spite of the emotional roller coaster.  I am "waiting it out".  I try to live one day at a time.
• I remember that I am cared for in a spiritual sense.  Given the spiritual nature of The Dark Night and the spiritual gifts that come from it (supposedly), it is surprising that I have been able to find little useful written information from a spiritual perspective.  I have found much synchronicity along my path which has provided me assurance that I am indeed headed in the right direction.  Books and references have "jumped" to my attention at the times most needed.  Money has come to me "out of the blue" to keep me going when everything seemed bleak.  I have found treasured moments of joy unexpectedly in small things not appreciated before.  Throughout this process, I have often, though not always, felt cared for.
• I have learned a major lesson in gratitude.  I worry less about tomorrow and spend little time beating myself up over past mistakes.  Material possessions have much less meaning.  I could be quite happy now living in a 15' x15' room with a bed, shower, a couple of changes of clothes, and a computer.  The people in my life have become most important.  Maybe I'm finally "catching on".

A blog by Erin Reese is one of the few sources I have found that truly resonates with me.  She says to remember the following:

• you're not alone
• you're not crazy
• you are okay
• allow it to take as long as it takes.

     I think that advice is sound for all of us during The Dark Night, regardless of our individual circumstances.

     The sources below are others you may find helpful:

http://www.freedomfromashes.com/2010/12/31/getting-through-the-dark-night-of-the-soul

http://www.extraordinarygriefexperiences.com

http://www.sunfell.com/symptoms.htm

http://phoenixtools.org/articles/dark_night_of_the_soul.htm