Chapter 5: Four Stages Of Human Metamorphosis
What Is The Dark Night Of The Soul?
Dark night of the soul is a metaphor for a common phase that happens in spiritual awakening, marked by despair, intense fear, crying and wanting to die. I think a better name would be dark night of the personality, because the strong reactions do not come from the soul. The strong feelings result from identifying with our personality.
The personality is upheld in our mind’s eye by identifying with our thinking. This happens when we tell a story and believe our story is truth. Our story’s undertone causes an emotional charge in the muscles that produces the ‘me’ illusion. Chiefly, we identify with feeling energetically alive because of the story we are creating. When the thinking is dark, it will create a dark vibration in the body and we will feel dark. Once established, the dark vibration will continue to trigger similar thoughts. At this point, we are immersed in storytelling and the dark vibration. Our personality is strongly activated, and our soul is trapped in a circular reaction.
The Four Stages Of Physical Transformation
There are four main stages of physical transformation, each with a dark night and awakening. The number of stages we experience depends on our current state of evolution. We can spend a lifetime in any cycle. The first dark night is before spiritual awakening and the fourth awakening happens when the process is complete with enlightenment. By going through a long transformation, I realized there were multiple dark nights. With my third dark night, almost identical issues arose as the second dark night. I felt I was repeating and was a failure. The same issues arose with my fourth dark night, but this time I knew I was progressing. I had the same issues in each dark night, but saw healing was occurring in a different energetic layer of each issue.
Our personality stays intact due to identification with our mind, emotions and body. Enlightenment is the process of dissolving the personality, in reverse order, of how it was built. The outermost layer is cognitive, which we built from about three years to adulthood. The middle layer is precognitive or emotional, which we built from about conception to age three. The innermost layer is the physical body reflecting our DNA, which represents many lifetimes and inherited aspects from our ancestors, mother and father. The reason there are four stages of personal transformation is based on the fundamentals of how something is created. The personality is an object and goes through the same steps of creation and destruction. Physical transformation is about transmuting our personality into awareness as higher-self in the light body. The transformation is about learning to become a creator and our body is our field of learning.
How We Create Something
1. We observe an object in the physical world using our sensory apparatus. We think about what we have seen and ask questions about it. The answer comes from inspiration or thinking, and then we decide what to do and form our ‘mental’ goal. This is the thinking level.
2. When we have our goal, we need desire to do it. With our goal and desire, then the direction to use our energy is set. This is our intention. Energy charges move from the brain to the proper body muscles preparing us to move our energy from thought to feeling to carry out our goal. This is the feeling or emotional level.
3. Once our intention is determined and we are ready to act, our body muscles are charged and prepared for movement. This is the vibration level.
4. We move and do the action in the world. We created the thing we desired, by moving our energy from the external world to the inner world and back. This is the manifest object or body level.
Pattern Of Transformation: Awakening And Dark Night Cycles
Each layer of transformation goes through distinct phases. Our starting point is attachment with a layer. Because of our attachment, misery and dissatisfaction eventually result and then we are ready to let that layer go. In the instant, we drop attachment to a layer, higher-self arises and a spiritual awakening happens. Tremendous energy is released, which fuels the transformation. Transformation is a biological aspect of awakening accompanied by profound healing and spiritual reactions. It is normal to experience many charismatic symptoms such as, tones, flashing lights, rushes of internal wind, numbness, tingling, going out of body, insights, crystal clarity, visions, repressed memories, telepathy, amplified hearing, heightened vision, weight loss, elation, kriyas, laughing, and many more. Most of these symptoms are due to biological changes to the mind, body and nervous system. It is normal to feel elated for many days following a spiritual awakening. When higher-self arises, we make direct contact with our higher-self and feel spiritual and awake. The awakening has changed us permanently. We have received revelations, insights and wisdom that we will never forget. Our values have changed and we see everything differently. It is normal that we drop attachments to people, places and things associated with the layer we dropped.
The Dark Night Begins
Eventually the elation settles, yet healing is still going on. We may feel tired, have pain in the body or have strong emotions. The thoughts get dark and crying can be nonstop for days on end. We may have dreams and memories of past lives flood in to our consciousness. We no longer feel well, it seems we sacrificed much and what we gained was little. We may feel we have no reason to live. This scenario triggers the dark night of the soul. It is easy to identify with the heavy healing reactions and the personality dominates. Because we are energetically stronger, we can activate our personality stronger when we identify with our thoughts and feelings. When we feel we have lost something, we cling stronger to what is familiar. By identifying with thoughts and feelings, we are lost in the illusion and entrenched in the dark night of the soul. Even though this stage feels dark, it is still part of the transformation. Our vibration is higher and deeper blocks of the personality are healing. Every main awakening stage releases tremendous energy from fixed form. Crying is a vehicle to release stored energy from the mind and heart. After we cry hard, we will feel much better afterward. When it is the darkest, the light is near, hang in there.
How To Get Through The Dark Night Of The Soul
In the awakening event our body, mind, and nervous system are changing due to the released energy. The brain is reorganizing, and thinking and feelings are erratic. Many of the thoughts and feelings in the dark night are a reaction of the reorganization occurring in the brain. Eventually we will process information and react to events differently, owing to those changes.
We have more energy, but do not know how to direct this energy yet. It is likely we still have the habit to attach to the energetic layer of personality that is healing. The way to get through the dark night most efficiently and with the least pain, is to quiet the mind as much as possible whatever stage we are in. Do not identify with the strong symptoms occurring which include your thoughts and emotions. As much as we can, we should practice quieting the mind and seeking our center. When we are united with our source, we are still and free of resistance. When we are still, the transformation goes faster and is more efficient because we have no resistance, allowing the energy to change us. The image of a hurricane is helpful. Our physical self is in the twisting vortex of wind and our higher-self is in the eye, still and calm in the center. Seek center, to ride out the storm in the safety of the eye.
Many meditation tools can help us achieve quiet mind. The tools that work are partly preference, part experimentation and part what has worked for us in the past. The awakening event happened because we achieved quiet mind, so use what worked before. While there is a strong transformation occurring in the mind, we cannot rely on our thinking. It is best to do everything we can to divert ourselves from thinking. The more we practice meditation, the more skilled we get and it is easier to pass through stages that rewire the brain. Meditation is a skill we need to master, as each dark night requires a deeper stillness.
MARY E. (BETSY) RABYOR was born in Wisconsin and lived in Nevada, Florida and Spain. She went to college and was a computer programmer for 17 years, with family and suburban life. Since 1990, she has meditated and learned self-healing techniques. In August of 1999, she spiritually awakened, quit her job and devoted her life to self-realization and helping others. Shortly after starting Reiki self-healing in 2005, her kundalini unexpectedly awakened. She continues to work with her kundalini transformation today. She lives in Wisconsin and is a skilled distance healer, author, poet, intuitive, and spiritual mentor.
