The Dark Night of the Soul

The teaching of Evolutionary Enlightenment compels us to begin to make black-and-white or absolute distinctions—not just theoretically but directly in relationship to our own self. And that is because this is a teaching of enlightenment. Enlightenment, by definition, refers to that which is nonrelative or absolute. Most of us are not in the habit of thinking in such terms, but if you are seriously interested in evolution beyond ego, it’s essential to learn how to do this. When you begin to see for yourself the dramatically opposing nature of two of the most powerful forces at work within your own psyche—your Authentic Self, which is the part of you that always and only longs to evolve, and the ego, which is the part of you that violently resists change at all costs—it literally shocks you awake.

The transformation from ego to Authentic Self is a deadly serious business, and it’s important to understand how these forces work. You can have a deeply inspiring experience of inherent freedom, ecstatic positivity, and overwhelming creative passion. And then twenty-four hours later, you can suddenly find yourself in the midst of a profound attack of existential doubt. Often we are puzzled by this. We ask, “How could I experience such unshakable confidence in my own potential for transformation, and then so quickly fall into a state of doubt and despair?” But that’s human nature. The ego doesn’t want you to become a liberated human being, and this kind of experience is living proof of that fact. The attack of doubt is the ego’s response to your experience of your own Authentic Self. And the greater your experience of your own potential to actually become that Authentic Self, the stronger is going to be the violent response from the ego. Unless you can endure the intensity of this kind of experience, and stand firm in the face of the overwhelming temptation to doubt, you are never going to authentically evolve, and the experiences you have, no matter how profound, will not amount to much in the long run.

If you are serious about becoming a living expression of the Authentic Self, you have to be absolutely prepared for an assault from the ego. This ultimate challenge is what some of the greatest realizers have called the dark night of the soul. And it will happen—not once but many times. At any moment, the ego may strike. Too many of us are unprepared, and we fall into the ego’s trap. That’s when the light goes out of our eyes—the same eyes that only twenty-four hours earlier had been shining with the radiance of insight and revelation.

What does it mean to be prepared? It means you are ready to say: “I know what this experience is. I know it is only the ego. I know it’s not real.”  When you go through this kind of confrontation with your own self and come out the other side, you realize that the Authentic Self and the ego are two completely different worlds. You see for yourself that the perspective the ego creates is not real in comparison with the perspective of the Authentic Self. But this is a very hard lesson to learn. When you find yourself under attack, it won’t seem like an illusion. It will probably seem very real indeed. So only through the profound spiritual practice of contemplating the dramatic difference between the ego and the Authentic Self will you be able to prepare yourself, at a soul level, so that when the attack happens you will know what is real and what is not, and you will stand like a rock.