Some folks frown when the phrase dark night is used in secular contexts, for instance describing what many of us go through after losing a job or the end of a relationship. They say it should be used only in its original meaning, as describing the dark night of the senses or the dark night of the soul.

But is it so wrong to use it in a secular sense? Maybe the secular and spiritual dark nights are not as different as they may appear?

Any dark night, whether secular or spiritual, comes about through a friction between our shoulds and reality, or rather, friction between our stories of what is and what should be. It doesn’t really matter what the content of those stories are. The effect is the same: unease, stress, tension, complains, sense of being a victim, perhaps sadness, grief, anger, frustration, sense of loss, and so on.

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Any belief is hubris.

I tell myself I know how things are, and not only that, how things should be. I know better than God, life, the Universe, reality.

Life will inevitably rub up against these beliefs. I can struggle against it and try to hold onto my beliefs and suffer. Or, through grace, I can find some receptivity and allow the beliefs to wear off, or more actively inquiry into them to find what is more honest for me.

In this way, life is a humbling process. A process of friction between life and beliefs, and a wearing away of these beliefs.

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Walking a labyrinth, it is clear that it involves a walking away from the center or the goal. At least apparently.

This happens in smaller ways, for instance when I go into beliefs to examine them, or allow uncomfortable experiences as they are and with kindness. Before these smaller shifts, it may seem that going into beliefs and allowing experience is a backward step.

It also happens any time islands of insanity surfaces to be seen, felt, loved and examined. This can happen throughout the day, and also in different phases of the process - maybe even after (and in response to) other phases of a more clear awakening. There is more clarity, so these islands of insanity take the opportunity to surface and make good use of the clarity. (The resistance falls away, allowing these islands to surface and be seen.)

During dark nights, we may also appear to go away from the center. The clarity, energy and ease of an awakening may be covered up, and is replaced by a sobering friction with life that invites identifications to soften and release.

And just in living a regular life, there are times where we may appear to walk away from the goal, often due to circumstances outside of our control, but if there is some receptivity there it is (also) a process of maturation.

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I am no expert on how to work with or relate to the dark nights, but here are some things that seem helpful to me….

First, all of the usual practices can be helpful, whatever they may be. Ethics. Work in the world. Relationships. Inquire into beliefs. (Including those about the dark night.) Allowing experience as it is, as if it would never change. Be with experience, in a wholehearted and heartfelt way, with kindness. Be with emotions, with heart and kindness, allowing them to unfold and change as they want. Tong len. Rejoicing in others happiness. Jesus prayer. And so on.

And one that is especially helpful for me now is to explore how the dark night appears in each sense field. How does it appear, whatever it may be? (Despair, aridity, grief etc.) Is it content of experience, as any other experience? And then also notice the doer and observer of this inquiry. How does the doer + observer appear in each sense field? Are they content of experience as any other content of experience?

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A shifting refuge….

First, we take ourselves to be a me. This human self and its body, identities and roles in the world. There is an inside and outside, and it all seems real and substantial.

Then, we may notice that the me is content of experience, it comes and goes as any other content of experience, and it is not what I am. There is a softening or release of identification with the me. This process can appear as a dark night of the senses, called so since there is a release of identification with the senses. The temporary outcome is an absence of a sense of inside and outside, a recognition of all as awakeness itself or God, and possibly insights, clarity, bliss, a clear inner direction and so on.

The remaining refuge here is the separate I and the spiritual joys mentioned above.

Finally, we may notice that the separate I is content of experience as well. The doer, thinker, chooser, owner, observer - all of those - are content of experience just as anything else. That too comes and goes. That too is not what I really am. As I keep noticing this, maybe first in formal practice and then in daily life, there is the possibility of a softening and release of identification out of these. This process is called the dark night of the soul, experienced as a death of the core of what we take ourselves to be.

When identification is released out of the separate I, what is left is doing without doer, thinking without thinker, observing without observer and so on. Everything is as before, although now all content of experience - including the doer and observer - is recognized as living its own life. The center falls out, and the bottom or ground falls out.

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We live our history, before and even within awakening. We can’t help it since that is all our human self has to go by.

And when others live from a conditioning that is quite different from my own, it is easy to notice that we all live from our own history.

Here is a good example for me:

Two spiritual teachers appear to sometimes live from the story they should have told me. In one case, they should have told me about no-self. (That it can be recognized.) In the other case, they should have told me about the dark night. (How stark it can be.)

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The process of waking up, and embodying/living it, is a process of letting of of identification with (images of) past, future and present.

For a while, it may be quite abstract. But eventually, it is very real and gritty.

There is a need to let go of identification with the past. With my history defining who I am. There is a need to let go of everything I was.

There is a need to let go of identification with the future. With my visions of who I may be in the future. There is a need to let go of everything I hoped or expected to be.

And there is a need to let go of identifications with the present. With my images of who I am or wish to be. There is a need to let go of everything I take myself to be, or wish to be. All circumstances, roles, identities, life.

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I am taking over my father’s house. Although similar to what I remember and am familiar with, it is all also slightly different.

Two neighborhood kids are used to having free reign in the house. They retreat to the basement when I arrive, and leave completely after I am firm and persistent with them for a while. Their father walks his dog in the yard and is upset with me, but I am firm and clear with him as well.

There is a sense of it being necessary for me to be firm, clear and stand my ground for a while, until it all realigns. 

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There is a flying event where we are to fly to Paris and then Copenhagen using balloons. I am on a three person team, and design a combination of a hang-glider and a hot-air balloon that is fast and maneuverable. We get a little exuberant and fly low along a road, but have to steer off the road when a truck comes towards us. We crash and take a day off. It turns out that my two team members design a new craft on their own, but one that only floats and is not fast nor maneuverable. I plan on redesigning it.

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A lion has escaped. It is one that I know well, and it seeks me out and is very friendly and playful. I am a little concerned at first, but then realize it is all OK.

Day residue: I was in Ashland this weekend, noticing the banners of a golden lion on a red background. (or the Shakespeare festival, I assume.) I mentioned to Jen that the banner is similar to the coat of arms of Norway. There was also a toy store we walked by a few times with lots of stuffed lions and lion books in the display window.

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The topic of dark nights came up for me again, and as I am slipping out of the tail end of one, they continue to appear a little different to me.

What is common for any dark night is the sense of loss, of life showing up differently from how we want it to. And in this is the opportunity for old beliefs and identifications to wear off.

In the conventional dark nights, where the term is used in a very lose sense, there may or may not be this wearing off of beliefs. Sometimes, we may just use them to cling even more solidly to them, although we can also use them to break open.

In the dark nights of the senses and soul, there isn’t much sense of a choice. Beliefs are worn off whether we want it or not, and we usually fight it with what we have. And the suffering is proportional to how much fight we put up. (Not that we have a choice there either.)

It seems that the dark night of the senses leads into a sense of oneness with God, and the dark night of the soul into the possibility of realized selflessness. After the first one, there is still a sense of a center and a subtle I that is one with God and everything else. And following the second one, even the subtlest sense of a center and an I with an Other tends to fall away.

The dark night of the senses is a release/relaxation of identification with the senses, which allows us to perceive all as God. The dark night of the soul is a release/relaxation of identification with the soul, which allows what we are to notice itself, inherently free of an I with an Other. (”Soul” here can refer to the soul, the alive presence, and most likely also our human self still used as an anchor for a sense of a separate self, a center.)

For me, the first one was an experience of being pulled apart and put together in a different way, of extremes of bliss and pain woven together, and lots of “paranormal” stuff such as continuous and amazing synchronicities (which others couldn’t help noticing), seeing auras, healing abilities, and so on.

The second one was the polar opposite in most ways… a sense of incredible loss, of the oneness with God falling away, not being able to do any practice as much as I wanted to and tried, my ambitions in the world going down the drain, and generally life showing up in exactly the ways my remaining and deep seated beliefs said they shouldn’t.

If we see a dark night as a wearing off of beliefs and identifications, then The Work is a voluntary and gentle dark night. It has that same essence of the dark night, without the torment. Usually, it is even fun and a relief.

It is something our personality wants to do even if it involves disidentification with this personality and its beliefs and identities.

But that doesn’t mean that the nigredo quality isn’t there. Life is different than our beliefs tells us it should be, there is a sense of something being off (nigredo), which then, if we are in the habit of doing The Work, nudges us to identify the belief behind it and inquire into it, exploring what is already more true for us than that surface belief.

I am still reading Bernadette Robert’s Path to No Self. She writes about the path better than almost anyone I can think of, especially in a Christian context.

At the same time, although what she writes about are elements in many paths to awakening, the sequence is clearly a reflection of her own. As they say, if there are 7 billion awakenings, then there are 7 billion different awakenings. Not everyone go through each phase, and not in the same sequence, and there are elements in other paths to awakening that is outside what she describes. When she writes, she gives the impression that there is one main pattern in the awakening process, and she does not seem to fully acknowledge the variability in her writings. Which is fine. Something has to be left to the reader to wrestle with and clarify for themselves, beyond what the writer explicitly mentions.

I can also see that my initial take on the dark nights was, as I suspected, a little off in terms of the Christian tradition.

In general, a dark night is any time beliefs and identifications wear off. It is a letting go of who we thought we were. And this can be gentle and easy if we didn’t quite believe it in the first place, or we use a process that is effective and gentle such as The Work. Or it can be a struggle if the attachment is stronger, and we resist the wearing off. As usual, resistance=suffering (resistance to experience, that is).

Then there are the specific dark nights of the senses and the soul, as St. John of the Cross writes about.

As I understand it, the dark night of the senses puts us on the path. It is a disillusionment with the world as being able to provide us with what we are looking for (essentially, lasting happiness, and freedom from suffering). We realize that being dependent on circumstances for our happiness is a precarious situation, and look for something else. It is a wearing off of beliefs of the world being able to provide lasting happiness, and identities related to that. (Not a full wearing off, just enough to put us on the path, and the wearing off continues on the path.)

The dark night of the soul leads us into the unitive life. It is a wearing off of beliefs and identities of being separate. There is still a sense of a separate self here, an I with an Other, but now an I that is one with the larger whole and God. It is an awakening at the soul level, to the alive presence, to all as God and consciousness. It is a relatively stable awakening.

For Bernadette Roberts, the transition into realized selflessness from here was more of a slipping into it. She didn’t need another (dramatic) dark night for it to happen.

As she points out, it is the torments inherent in the unitive life that wears off the last beliefs in and identification as a separate self. In the unitive life, there can be a great deal of bliss and joy, yet also torments in terms of (a) not being able to fully share it with anyone, (b) others not being interested in it, and (c) seeing how every experience and insight is still filtered through, and tainted by, this sense of a separate self.

These torments are, in a sense, a dark night happening within the unitive life.

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I used to be identified with an identity as cultured, which lead me to read a good amount of literature classics, philosophy and art history, watch obscure and sophisticated movies, listen to music such as Arvo Part, Palestrina, Bach, Philip Glass, and so on, and although I genuinely enjoyed it and got a lot out of it, it was also a one-sided life and identification.

During the dark night this identification, as so many others, wore down, and there is now more of an open space for anything… deep and shallow, artsy and popular… it matters less now.

The irony in this shift is that now, finding more fluidity within the wide landscapes of literature, movies and music, I am also more easily able to find the depth in the shallow, and the same dynamics and patterns in all of it. Popular or sophisticated… it is all reflections of the same basic dynamics and patterns of the mind.

There is a depth in the shallow that, although I was aware of it all the time, I held at arm-lengths distance. Now, that it is right here in my life with no distance, I can appreciate it much more.

Conversely, I guess I can say that there is a shallowness in the deep as well, often an identification with a particular identity which sets up boundaries where there really are none, and a self-congratulatory attitude about things that are really not that sophisticated, and sometimes not even that important.

The dark nights of the senses and soul can be filtered through a focus on beliefs…

The first dark night, the dark night of the senses, is a release of beliefs telling us that ultimate fulfillment can be found in the world, in more money, fame and things, in better relationships, and so on. Not all of these beliefs and identities go, but a majority of them do, enough to reveal the soul level and glimpse into the spirit level.

The second dark night, the dark night of the soul, is a release of more core beliefs and identities, including that of a separate self, and I with an Other.

Here are some examples of beliefs (and their associated identities) that may be worn through during each night:

• Dark night of the senses
  Ultimate happiness and fulfillment is found in money, fame, security, relationships, food, vacations, literature, music, art, sports, being in nature. When arrived at, I will remain happy and fulfilled. Or at least, it will alleviate the emptiness I am experiencing, and that is good enough.
• Dark night of the soul
  Awakening is good/desirable, delusion bad/undesirable. I need to be of service. The world of appearances is real. Something is inherently better or worse (even if it is all God). There is a separate self here, a doer, someone this happens to/for, someone who is “one with” life, existence, God. I am awakened/deluded. I am on a path. I am.

Somewhere, in both of these cases, there is a knowing that none of these statements are absolutely true. But if this is not clearly seen, over and over, from many different angles, then at least a remnant of the belief is still there. And this remnant is enough to filter the world, to make the belief appear true, to make our human lives be lived as if they are true.

And that is what needs to be worn through, revealing what is already more true to us even in immediate awareness… although sometimes hidden by the dust kicked up by the beliefs.

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I am learning to appreciate the dark night more and more, especially as I am at the tail end of it… I see how it allowed for a deepening into who I am, as an individual, and also what I am, as awake emptiness. And it both cases, it happened through wearing off of beliefs and identities…

Even before it happened, I saw how there were still identities floating around, most of it taking the form of arrogance, of feeling better and worse than others. And although it allows for an exploration of those splits, it is also a split, preventing a wider embrace of who I am (of everything I see out there also in here) and what I am, as Ground, awake emptiness, awake emptiness and form. And, it also seemed to allow for the shift into endarkenment, the yin complement to the yang awakening… the luminous darkness and a different way of embodiment.

It was of course painful, but the pain only came from trying to hold onto something that had outlived its purpose. It came from trying to hold onto identities that life made it impossible (or at least very difficult) to hold onto anymore.

All of this is very sobering, and it also reveals the inherent neutrality of all of it.

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I did a process work session earlier today, and started a process, which I continued on my way home, and then now. (In Process Work, the unfolding can be similar to what is described here, but they also include a more active exploration of the meaning of the process and how to bring it into daily life. When I do it on my own, it tends to unfold easily, but the meaning of it may not surface until much later if at all. Somehow, it still allows for a shift that is sometimes profound.)
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There are many forms of dark nights… In a more technical sense, there are two of them, and in a loose - daily - sense, lots of them.

The two formal ones are…

• The dark night of the senses, which is an initial stripping away of beliefs and identities, enough to notice all as God, to notice that everything is a field of awakeness, of consciousness, even of awake emptiness. It can be painful, maybe an experience of being pulled apart, dismembered, even of dying. What dies is really only beliefs and identities, but when we are identified with these, when we take ourselves as that, the experience is of being dismembered and dying. For me, this was a very intense time, but there were lots of rewards in the middle of it as well. It was painful, but also immensely blissful.
• The dark night of the soul, which is similar but goes more to our core beliefs and identities, and specifically the one of a separate self, of someone that this is all happening to. Here, any and all beliefs are stripped away, and it often happens through a profound disillusionment. Everything that we found comfort in is stripped away, taken away from us, and none of our practices have meaning or even work anymore. Nothing is left. God is gone. Any sense of accomplishment is gone. Any ideas of being special, or chosen, are gone. There is no place to anchor any of those beliefs anymore. They get stripped away, whether we want or not, and most often we desperately cling to them as long as we can, making the torment even stronger for ourselves.

Having cleared out some space through the dark night of the senses, the soul realm is revealed. Bliss, clarity, alive presence, all as God, inspiration, luminosity, and so on.

And having cleared out even more, including the sense of a separate self, through the dark night of the soul, the emptiness is revealed in its completeness. When I am gone, emptiness is revealed, as the Ground of it all… of awakeness itself, of the soul level, of mind, of form. It is all emptiness dancing, already and always absent of any trace of any separate self anywhere.

Our core belief, and core identity, of a separate self is greatly diminished through the dark night of the senses, and that is exactly what allows the soul realm to be noticed and come more into the foreground. Here, there can be a sense of no separation, of all - absolutely all - as God, as divine, as consciousness, as the divine mind, there can even be a sense of oneness, but there is still a trace of a sense of a separate self here. And this serves as an anchor for a sense of being special, privileged, of having accomplished something, of being chosen.

The dark night of the soul takes care of that. Every reason for feeling special, privileged, of having accomplished something, of being chosen, is taken away. And none of the practices or tools that at one point work so easily and so well, have any use anymore. They are all broken.

Where the dark night of the senses is more of a dismemberment and a sense of dying as a human being, the dark night of the soul is a deep existential falling away… my most core identity of being something at all, separate from anything else, is wrestled away… leaving just emptiness. No angels. No luminosity. No bliss. Nothing special. Just emptiness. The emptiness that allows, and is, the dance of everything.

The dark night of the senses leads into an amazing awakening, with lots of bells and whistles… God in all its glory. Alive luminosity. Guidance. Inner God, and all as God. Amazing insights. Amazing abilities to do things in the world. Amazing energies.

The dark night of the soul leads into nothing at all. At the threshold of it, it appears thoroughly boring, neutral, like nothing. And inside of it, there is the Ground of all, that which allows the dance of everything. It is nothing special. Just what is, here and now, always.

The void that never changes, and allows all change. The no-thing that allows all things. The absence of everything which allows the fullness of everything. The groundless ground, which already and always allows every fruit.

The bottom falls out of everything. Leaving only the dance of emptiness, with no separate I anywhere.

In a loose sense, we experience a dark night any time there is a sense of loss, any time we believe that something should be here - either what was or what could be - but is not.

And in a more narrow sense, the dark night (of the soul) is a loss of God. Of an alive presence of the divine, of seeing/realizing all as God, of awake empty luminosity, or in whatever form it came up. It is of course not a real “loss”, just an experience of loss, or maybe the loss of an experience.

I seems to have gone through a quite typical dark night of the soul. And it may not be the only one. They seem to come at different times, at different levels of intensity, and with different flavors. (I didn’t realize how typical and ordinary my experience of it was until I read Mysticism by Evelyn Underhill, where the chapter on the dark night describes, often in detail, what I also went through.)

Some of the effects I notice, now more of the tail end of it, are…

A burning away of identities, or rather identification with identities (although there are certainly some left.) In the dark night, there is a loss not only of God, but often of lots of other things in our life. For me, anything that gave me comfort was lost, either externally or internally, and with this went any identities that gave me comfort. My experience of myself and my life was so completely at odds with these identities, so the identification with them (as a good Zen student, as someone awakened to all as God, as someone who could deal with difficult situations and experiences, as someone good at you name it) gradually wore off, although in my case with a lot of reluctance, resistance and kicking and screaming (which only made it more difficult for me). I should say that they are not really burnt away, just lessened in intensity and solidity.

A fearlessness. Again, not a 100% fearlessness, just more of it from a sense of transparency of fears. In the dark night, everything worthwhile and valuable seems lost, and it lasts for a while. There is plenty of time to get used to it. So what is there to fear? I am already used to loss, even of what was at the center of my life and gave my life meaning, so what more is there to fear? This is a reduction or loss of the existential fear, so there is still the more mundane fears here, but even those are more transparent, space.

A sense of it all, whatever happens, no matter how amazing or terrible, as unremarkable. We have gone through the highest ecstasies before the dark night, and the darkest loss and despair in the dark night, so anything that happens now have a sense of ordinariness and of being unremarkable, including the most unusual states and awakenings. Or more accurately, they may be experienced as remarkable and surprising for a little while, but somehow against the background of it all being unremarkable. As space, transparent to it as unremarkable.

A surrender. This is the thread that runs through any of the other outcomes of the dark night. Surrender… to what is, to whatever may come. The loss of identification with identities is a surrender of the identification, but also a surrender of wanting things to be a certain way. Now, whatever happens is more OK. Before, whatever happened was OK as long as I didn’t loose God (the apparently stable awakening to all as God.) Now, whatever happens is more OK, including exactly that.

For all of these - identities, fear, a sense of it being remarkable, resistance - there is not a complete burning through. They are still there, only lessened in intensity, not so substantial, more transparent, more as just space.

And finally Ground awakening. The dark night paves the way for a Ground awakening. An awakening independent of any content, any state, any experience, and allowing them all.

One of the functions of the dark night, which comes some time after a clear (or near-clear) and stable awakening to selflessness, seems to be to burn through and out (most of ) the remaining traces of a sense of separate I, and the effects of a sense of separate I on the personality…

The second part of it, burning through the effects of a sense of separate I on the personality, seems crucial here.

For most of us, our personality is formed within a sense of separate I. And although it does reorganize to a certain extent following an awakening, many traces of this sense of a separate I still remains.

And the dark night is one of the ways this is burnt through, allowing the personality (and the individual) to reorganize more fully within a context of realized selflessness. Maturing into it, becoming more seasoned.

I read parts of A Dazzling Darkness earlier today, an anthology of writings from Christian mystics. My attention was first drawn to the title, and then on of its chapters on darkness.

Reading the selection under that chapter, I was reminded of the many forms of darkness…

There is the darkness of evil, of what appears as Other and not desirable. (Not used my mystics much, thankfully, since mystical awakenings does away with the sense of I and Other and reveals all as Spirit.)

There is the darkness of the dark night, of loss, of failed expectations, of a profound sense of hopelessness.

There is the darkness of not knowing, of finding ourselves as that beyond discursive thought. This is the darkness from an absence of the “light of mind”, of conventional thinking and abstractions.

And then there is the darkness of the luminous blackness, the fertile darkness, formless and arising as and allowing all form.

The three first ones are metaphors, poetic expressions, analogies, and produced by the thinking mind. And the fourth one seems to be a direct experience of fertile darkness, of luminous blackness (from my own experience, others I have talked with, and also as described by Almaas. Even right now, there is a sense of this luminous blackness as formless, yet in and as all form.)

Just to complete the picture here of the endarkenment process, I should mention a few things about my dreams and sleep.

Dreams of soul mates

Since about July this summer and up to the endarkenment shift, I have had a large number of dreams where I meet my soul mate (always a different one each time!). These dreams stopped after the endarkenment, because what I dropped into was the soul mate, or rather (an aspect of) soul itself.

(I have been embarrassed to write about these dreams here since I am in a relationship in my waking life, even as I know that these dreams reflect a much deeper inner process, not the externals of my waking life.)

Phases of the endarkenment process

As I see it now, the endarkenment process started a long time ago, and has gone in several phases. The first phase was the dark night, preparing the ground for it. The second finding Breema, which has an emphasis on the belly center. The third seems to have been all the soul mate dreams, reflecting a shift that has not yet become conscious. And the fourth, dropping into the velvety smooth darkness, the endarkenment itself. I guess the current one is the fifth, where it continues to deepen and change.

Shadow dreams mixed in

Also, mixed in among the dreams I have written about in this blog has been a series of shadow dreams, of things coming to the surface needing to be seen, balancing, grounding and widening it out in all directions. There has been a pattern of awakening dreams (velvety blackness, alive luminosity) and widening dreams (shadow dreams), much as a wave with peaks and valleys passing through.

Identities

Related to all of these corrective and shadow dreams is identities. I have been more acutely aware of identities over the last few weeks, seeing them clearly when they come up, and how they filter the world into I and Other, and how attachment to them is holding back what is emerging. They are an old coat that does not fit anymore, too small, wrong cut and color, dusty and old.

More about this in the next post.

Sleep

I have also needed a lot of sleep in this period. Even today, I slept more than twelve hours, and could have slept many more. There has also been a lot of processing before falling asleep and after waking up, allowing a parade of whatever comes up to be embraced by the velvety darkness.

Movies

I have also had a draw to see a lot of movies since the endarkenment, in a wide range of genres from science fiction to horror to existential to comedy to thrillers to post modern to documentaries to classical to quiet Iranian movies. It is as if the endarkenment wants as much of me as possible to come up and be embraced by the velvety darkness, and movies is a good way to trigger this.

Over the last few days, the birth of the seed resistance, the effects of identities, and the difference between resisting and fully experiencing these effects have been even more acutely up for me. I also see how resisting the effects of a sense of I and identities is a dark night, while allowing myself to fully experiencing these effects is purgatory. It allows the sense of I and its identities to gradually burn away.

Seed resistance, giving rise to a sense of I and its identities

First, there is the resistance to what is as inherently absent of I. This resistance gives rise to a sense of I, and of I and Other.

This sense of I is fleshed out through various identities. I am this, not that. I want this, not that. And this gives rise to resistance to various aspects within form.

Resistance to the effects of the sense of I and identities

Then, there is resistance to the effects of the sense of I and the various identities. There is resistance to the experiences of loneliness, fear, anger, attraction, aversion, confusion, and so on.

When there is this resistance to the effects, the sense of I and its identities tend to seem very real and substantial. We act as if they are real, so they tend to appear as real.

When the resistance to the effects is dropped, when we allow ourselves to fully experience the effects of a sense of I and various identities, they tend to appear less substantial. They may even erode over time and fall away.

Resisting experiences vs. fully experiencing

In practical terms, it means that when we resist experiences, the sense of I and its identities appears as more real to us. They become solidified.

Many of these experiences arise when the world is filtered through a sense of I and its identities, such as fear, anger, loneliness, and so on. And resisting these experiences only makes them proliferate. We pour gasoline on the already existing fire.

When we allow ourselves to fully experience, the sense of I and its identities appear as less substantial and real. Eventually, they can burn out completely.

Fully experiencing allows us a glimpse into what we really are, awake emptiness and form absent of I, and this gives a sense of coming home, and even of bliss.

Resisting experience is hell. Allowing the resistance to experience to fall away is bliss.

Dark night and purgatory

I notice for myself that this is also the difference between an experience of dark night and purgatory.

When I resist experiencing the results of a sense of I and various identities, it is hell and an experience of a dark night.

When I allow myself to fully experience the results of a sense of I and the various identities, there is a sense of fullness, being held, coming home, and even bliss. There is also an experience of the sense of I and its identities burning away, of purgatory.

Put another way, resisting God’s will is hell and a dark night. Surrendering to God’s will is heaven and purgatory.

Following my years of (head) awakening, there were some years of a dark night. There was a reversal from deeply realizing all as Spirit, and luminosity, clarity, insights, effortless practice, and incredible energy and activity in the world, to the opposite of a complete absence of Spirit, being just a separate human being steeped in confusion, hopelessness and fatigue, unable to engage in any form of practice.

During these years, it definitely felt like a fall from grace. I was blessed with a spontaneous and quite clear awakening, and then fell down into identification with this human self and all its confusion and weaknesses.

Now, I can still see it as a fall from grace, but even more, it seems as a fall into grace. It is true that it did take me off track in terms of my plans of continuing my Zen studies and eventually becoming a teacher, and also getting a degree which would allow me to practice and do research in the mind-body field. In that sense, and in many other ways, it was a fall from grace. But in another sense, it was a fall into grace. It allowed some edges to soften. It allowed me to experience from the inside the suffering that so many experience, at least at times in their life. It allowed me, possibly, to drop into the endarkenment.

And it allowed me to learn about surrender. And loss.

Surrendering even that which seems, in every way, so good. A surrendering that allows space for something else to emerge, something not part of my plans, something that was not being “on track” as I saw it, something completely different.

It is certainly a fall from grace. And it is equally a fall into grace.

I am in a different culture, and must have moved there since I have all my belongings with me. A kind of festival is coming up, and I am encouraged to contribute to a kind of display. I offer them all I have, including my most personal belongings such as letter, photos, journals, and so on.

To my astonishment, a horde of people show up and take everything. Nothing is left. I tell one of the people in charge that there is a mistake, I would never have contributed all I have, including my most personal belongings, if I had known they would all be lost to me.

She said I had to follow the rules of the game. It turned out later that the ceremony was a way for people to get rid of their excess belongings, to declutter. I felt a mix of terror of having lost everything, any anchor I ever had in the physical world, and also, more distant, a sense that it could be exiting and freeing when I got used to it. Everything would be open. No anchors.

The day residue is from an old Star Trek episode I watched last night, Amok Time (!), where Kirk makes a similar mistake by agreeing to take part in a ritual from a culture foreign to him, and finds that he is getting more than he thought he agreed to.

The experience in the dream is similar to two real-life situations for me.

Identities falling away

One is what happens when there is no identity, as I have explored more over the last few days. Our identity, or identities, is our most intimate and cherished belonging, in a certain way. There is a sense of I, and then all the ways we clothe it up and define it through a set of beliefs, through an identity.

Our identity, especially the most intimate parts of it, gives a sense of security, buffering, familiarity, a point of view, a particular perspective, an anchor. And when we start to explore this identity, and parts of it starts falling away, there is a point of no return.

There is a place where the process cannot be stopped, where it continues all the way, until the last element of an identity falls away and nothing is left, except wide open space. Just awake emptiness and form, allowing any and all perspectives to be taken and explored, fluidly, without getting stuck anywhere.

It looks fine for a while. I can get rid of the clutter in my identity, those parts I didn’t care much for anyway. The excess parts. It feels good. But then, there is a point where the more cherished parts of the identity is questioned, where they too are taken up in the process, where they too start to unravel. And that does not always feel so good. This is where terror comes in, a sense of a terrible mistake being made. But it is too late.

Dark night

The other similarity is the dark night phase, where there was a similar experience of all my cherished belongings being taken away.

Of course, those two, the eroding of identity and a dark night, are not that different from each other. They are two ways of looking at the same process. One of letting go to how we see ourselves, how we define ourselves, our identity, all the way to the core of it.

I don’t know if there is a typical pattern here, but it seems that…

Initial awakening and amazing experiences

During initial awakenings, to soul levels and nature/deity mysticism, there is typically a large amount of amazing experiences, including deep insights out of the blue, strong energy experiences, causeless bliss and joy, seeing of auras, new abilities in any area of life, and so on.

Attachments as a carrot

So naturally, there can be an attachment to this particular content. This can be very helpful for a while, it is the carrot that keeps it moving.

Fall from grace

After a while, the process is ready to move on beyond attachment to this particular content. If there is still a stubborn attachment to this content (as was the case with me), then the rug may be pulled from under one’s feet, as an invitation to see this attachment and allow it to burn through.

Dark night

After a while of despair, a sense of dryness and weariness may surface, a clearer seeing of the futility and confusion in attaching to any particular content, even that content which seems most appealing and attractive to this human self.

Realized selflessness

And in this dryness, this setting of all dials to zero, the Ground may surface more, it may shift more into the foreground, this Ground of all content, of all phenomena, of all experiences. There may be a taste of real selflessness here, and eventually a clearer realization of selflessness - maybe first in glimpses and then more stable and clearly.

Now, the Ground awakens to its own nature of no I anywhere, naturally allowing any content to come and go, to live its own life, within and as Ground itself. Bliss and pain, joy and sadness, dryness and ecstasy, it is all recognized as nothing other than Ground itself.

Ground is primary and in the foreground. The particularities of the content is all recognized as Ground itself, and important only in a relative context.

Preferences of this human self - within context of I and realized selflessness

The preferences of this human self are still there, yet now within a different context.

First, there was the context of a sense of I, so the preferences of this human self naturally came into the foreground. There was an attachment to some experiences, to some content, and an aversion to other content. All this is perfectly natural and innocent.

Then, in a context of realized selflessness, there is still the preferences of this human self, as before. But now, these too unfold as Ground. These preferences, as any other phenomena, unfold as emptiness. The nature of these preferences as Ground, as emptiness, as Spirit, is in the foreground, is primary, is clear, inherent in what is happening.

They are not identified with. They are not seen as I. The center of gravity is no longer in these preferences. They just happen as anything else. They live their own life, as anything else. They happen with no doer there. They arise with no I to be found anywhere in it.

Even as the center of gravity moves to nature and deity mysticism and/or the Witness, there is still an identification with a segment of what is.

There is a belief in the idea of I, and it is placed on the soul (nature/deity mysticism, F7/F8) and/or pure awareness (F9). There is still a sense of I and Other, no matter how apparently transparent and subtle.

It is an awakening still with the presence of a sense of I, and identification with a segment of what is, so it is naturally subject of change with changing content.

Nondual awakening

From here, it can move on to a nondual awakening, to Ground awakening to its own nature of no I anywhere, allowing any content to come and go as it naturally does. This is an awakening where the context is the only thing that needs to change, from a sense of I to an realization of no I anywhere. Content - states, experiences, phenomena, come and go freely and naturally, as they do anywhere, but no with no trace of attachment or resistance to them.

Fall from grace

If this does not happen, if there is a stuckness here even as there is a deeper readiness to move on, there will be a fall from grace, a dark night of the soul. And this fall from grace invites to a gradual wearing off of any sense of I, eventually revealing the Ground - absent of I anywhere.

It seems terrible as it happens. It seems that everything is lost. But it is just another phase in the process of Ground awakening to itself, of God remembering who it is, of Buddha Mind realizing its own nature, of emptiness dancing.

Example

This is what apparently happened in my case.

The nature/deity mysticism awakening and the awakening as Witness initially came out of the blue, uninvited in any conscious sense (to somebody who saw himself as a die-hard materialist and atheist!). It deepened and stabilized over some years.

At some point, there may have been a deeper readiness to move on to a Ground awakening, yet there was also an attachment to and holding onto the belief in I and to the nature/deity awakening and the sense of Witness as I.

So there was a fall from grace, a dark night of the soul, also lasting for years, gradually wearing off attachments to a sense of I, to segments of what is, to any content. And it is still far from complete.

I have struggled finding peace with the fall from grace which happened some years back. So many plans got thwarted, so much seems lost.

I have done several inquiries on it, I have stayed with whatever emotions and other experiences come up around it, I have set the intention of it to unravel and clear, and it has helped - but some remnants of the regrets are still there.

Today, I suddenly saw clearly that my specific role is to find peace with this particular life.

It seems so simple, yet it hit me like a ton of bricks. And there was a huge relief and sense of coming home in it. Finally, this is what my role is - at least in relation to this life situation.

I don’t need to process it to death and harvest every little gift and nutrient in it (although I will most likely continue to do that). I can just find peace with it as it is. That in itself is my role.

I can find peace in not completely finding a resolution to it. It is OK.

And of course, this is not just about me. This is the role we each have: to find peace with our particular life. And to demonstrate how to find peace with this particular life. We are all teachers for each other in this.

I am sure this is detailed in Buddhist philosopy, although I can’t recall having seen this in the sporadic readings I have done in the area.

One of the six realms is the God realm, defined by bliss but also impermanence.

It seems that this describes an awakening as formless awareness - as the Witness, F9, causal realm - quite well.

There is bliss and a certain release from suffering, and it can certainly last for a long time. Still, there is the belief in an “I” here, now just placed on pure awareness. The seeing is made to appear as a seer.

With this subtle “I” there is also a subtle “other” and attachment to content. And as content always changes, it inevitably leads to a fall from grace. It is temporary.

All of this sounds a lot like the God realm.

Here is a summary of recent slightly obsessive ruminations (!).

Three phases: from I to no I

When there is a belief in the thought “I” and it is placed on my human self, then there is a blind caught-upness in whatever is happening. I am identified with some parts of what’s happening, and try to either hold onto or push away other parts, and there is a sense of struggle and suffering. I see myself as an object in the world, at the mercy of an infinite number of other and unpredictable objects. So, naturally I am also caught up in emotions such as fear, desire, aversion, anger and so on.

When there is an an awakening to pure awareness, to the Witness, there is still a belief in the thought “I” but now placed on the seeing. There is a sense of release here. I can work on and learn how to allow anything and everything to come and go as guests, to arise, unfold and fade within space & awareness. Learning this is a process and involves some effort and attention.

When what is awakens to itself as having no “I” anywhere - when no segment of what is revealed as having no inherent “I” - there is a more complete release. There is the same content - awareness and phenomena, seeing and seen - but no “I” as either our human self or awareness or anything else. It is all just happening. And there is an immediate realization of it as emptiness, as emptiness dancing. Again, there may be the same content - pain, anger, confusion, grief and so on - but it is all revealed as emptiness dancing. There is no suffering anymore.

Dazzled and dark night

During the awakening as formless awareness, there may be a good deal of bells and whistles going off. Bliss, miracles, synchronicities, seeing and engaging with energies, experiencing all as God and Spirit, and so on. And since there is a belief in an “I” there is also an attachment to phenomena, however subtle it may seem at the time. We are dazzled by the show - by the content, and since it is subtly experienced as “other” there is also a subtle holding onto it.

Two things can happen here. Either we continue and awaken as the nondual, as no “I” anywhere. Or we continue to hold onto I and other, and as the content moves - as it always does - there is a fall from grace. It seems that one way this can be triggered is through exhaustion of the human self, from the high energies that can be experienced in this awakening.

In Ken Wilber’s framework, the awakening to Witness is F9, and it can be accompanied by awakening to F7 and F8 which is nature- and deity-mysticism. At all of these levels, there is a belief in the thought “I”, and a subtle sense of I and other. And this can occur even if there is a clear sense, feeling or intuition of God being completely beyond and including any and all polarities. We have an immediate and (apparently) clear realization of this, yet this whole beyond all polarities is subtly “other”. “I” am here as pure awareness, experiencing Existence as beyond and including all polarities. There is a oneness of “I” and the whole of Existence, of God.

During the dark night of the soul, there is a sense of loss of connection with God and of “dryness”. No content gives comfort anymore. And this is exactly what is needed for the awakening to ground, to the emptiness which content arises within and as. To the context for all content and experiences, to that which never changes and is always right here now. To what is, with no “I” inherent in any segment of it.

No I

The irony is of course that this experience of “no I” seems to be all of ours immediate experience. We just don’t trust it, and add a belief to the thought “I” onto it. Somehow, it seems safer that way. We become familiar with that way of operating.

And we have trouble becoming childlike again, to drop what we have been trained to see and experience, so we can realize that there is indeed on “I” anywhere in our immediate experience.

It is what aways is. Indeed, it is that which time unfolds within and as.

Or more accurately, it is that in which the fluid seamless whole of form (time & space) unfolds within and as.

Deepening into the nondual

There may also be a deepening into the nondual (I don’t know too much about this). First, it may be a nondual awakening with same content as before. Then, it may deepen to be present to itself during the sleep and waking cycles of our human self (as it seems that it can be at F7-F9 awakenings as well). Then it may expand in space for all I know.

Transcend and include

As the nondual awakening has the same content as before, only with no “I” anywhere, it is another case of transcend and include. Nothing is lost, apart from the belief in the thought “I” and the struggle and suffering that brought with it. There is an effortless inclusion of our human self and human life, in its fullness - and its continuing development and maturation.