This profound spiritual experience isn’t a curse, but a divine invitation to discover your true nature
Have you ever felt that your entire life is meaningless, despite having everything you thought would make you happy? Are you questioning your very existence, feeling disconnected from everyone around you, and wondering why you’re experiencing such profound suffering?
You might be going through what mystics call “the Dark Night of the Soul” — and contrary to how it feels, this experience may be the most important part of your spiritual awakening journey.
What Is the Dark Night of the Soul?
I often hear this question from my students, in spiritual forums, and through emails: “What is the Dark Night of the Soul? Why am I going through it? Why is it so hard? How long will it take? What’s the whole point of this suffering?”
The stories I hear are heart-wrenching — people losing loved ones, feeling isolated, completely separate from society, unable to relate to anyone. Life itself feels like a curse. I know this experience intimately because I went through this too, for years.
What most people don’t realize is that this dark night is actually a blessing in disguise. It’s a spiritual awakening disguising itself as a difficult period in your life — one you desperately want to get over with. And nobody can blame you. It’s incredibly hard and can be an extended period of difficulty. I know how meaningless everything can feel during this time.
My Personal Dark Night Journey
To give you some context about me: I’m a spiritual awakening mentor who has helped hundreds of people through their awakening journeys. I’m building a community of people navigating spiritual awakening, but the only reason I do this work is because I went through the dark night of the soul myself — through many iterations of it.
In the beginning, it was devastating. I hit rock bottom, even though externally my life looked perfect. I was an actor playing lead roles in movies. I was also a photographer. I had many friends, a loving family, and was often the life of the party. I had good money and a seemingly picture-perfect life from the outside.
But internally? I couldn’t tell anybody how difficult it was. There was maybe one friend who somewhat understood, but even they couldn’t fully grasp what I was experiencing. I would go through cycles where I sometimes couldn’t get out of bed for many days at a time. My entire life felt meaningless despite all these amazing things. I wouldn’t eat or drink during these states. I wouldn’t even leave my bedroom.
It was pure misery. Frankly, I didn’t want to live anymore. I had many self-harm thoughts, though thankfully I never acted on them.
These experiences, these profound lows that happened repeatedly over many years, showed me patterns that I later recognized when I felt called to help others through similar experiences. What I discovered was eye-opening: these patterns are incredibly common. We all go through similar processes during the dark night of the soul.
The True Purpose of the Dark Night
This isn’t happening because God wants to punish you. There is no punishment here. It’s not something that happens to you — it’s happening for you.
The dark night of the soul is a beautiful process where you are being shown who you truly are by removing the layers upon layers of the false self that you’ve held onto over the years. These are the stories we’ve built on top of our true self — so much so that our authentic nature becomes almost impossible to find, even when we sit down to meditate and try to realize who we are.
You might be on a spiritual journey seeking enlightenment, happiness, peace, or simply a sense of fulfillment. But all these layers — what we might call the ego or the conditioned mind — are blocking your view of who you truly are.
The dark night of the soul is actually a blessing that comes as an extraordinary tool, a device programmed to remove whatever you hold onto, depend upon, and grasp for your identity. That’s why the things you hold nearest and dearest are sometimes exactly what are removed from your life.
How the Dark Night Manifests
This removal can manifest in different ways:
- Physical removal — like losing somebody you love
- Emotional disconnection — when everything you love still exists, but you feel no connection to it
The second manifestation is what happened to me, and it’s even deeper because you don’t even understand why you feel so empty and meaningless. It challenges your sanity because one part of you thinks, “My life is so good, I have all these people and things, everything I wished for has come true,” but simultaneously, it feels like you’ve been cheated of the happiness that was supposed to come with it.
Does this feel familiar? You’re probably reading this because it does.
The Blessing Behind the Suffering
I’m grateful I went through this difficult journey because now I understand how millions of people feel — likely how you’re feeling right now. This was my call from my higher self, my higher purpose preparing to express through me. These ups and downs prepared me to intimately know these patterns so I could help others.
When I work with my students and mentees, it’s almost funny how everything they’ve gone through mirrors my own experiences in some form. This gives me the ability to see what the next right step is for them, to recognize the bigger picture beyond the compartmentalized individual meaning of their suffering.
It’s hard to believe when I tell my mentees that what they’re experiencing is a blessing. I know it would have been hard for me to believe if someone had told me this during my darkest moments. But something deep within me made me hold on and go through it.
Why the Dark Night Happens
With the right understanding of what’s happening, with the ability to see this from a detached perspective, you can recognize that God is bringing you closer to your own divine nature. The divine is removing all the obscurations, filters, conditioning, and samskaras in your mind that are polluting your awareness.
The biggest thing preventing you from integrating your spiritual awakening is the story of who you are — a false story, actually many stories, full of “I, me, mine.” This is the mantra of the ego. It pushes that narrative upon your awareness so strongly that it’s hard to see through it, and you’re fooled into believing you are the ego.
Part of you might be yearning for God, for enlightenment, for happiness and peace, but all these conditionings are twisting even your purest intentions into another story to add to the stack of filters on your awareness.
The Ego’s Losing Battle
So along comes the dark night of the soul, making you question everything:
- Who am I?
- What’s the meaning of me being here?
- Why should I even exist?
- What’s the point of eating, drinking, surviving?
- If I’m going to die anyway, what’s the point of this 9-to-5 job?
These questions hit hard, but they can also bring profound realizations. As you struggle with these questions, it’s actually the ego going through its losing war. The dark night of the soul is the ego’s desperate fight to hold onto anything it can use against the fullness of its own true nature beyond the ego.
The ego is fighting to maintain the sense of the false self. It’s so desperate that it would rather cause self-harm than face its own divinity. This is what I’ve observed in my own mind and in so many people I’ve helped — the same patterns repeating over and over.
IMPORTANT: As a disclaimer, if you’re experiencing psychotic episodes or something beyond the scope of spiritual advice, I highly recommend getting help from a qualified certified professional who can provide hands-on assistance. I’m not a doctor or psychologist qualified to help in that way.
The Purpose Is Freedom
The whole point of the Dark Night of the Soul is to let go of your story, to release all your limitations. This is a catharsis designed to free you from these limitations. It’s not a curse or punishment — it’s a loving gift from God, full of grace and blessings.
This experience puts you in a position where there is no other goal but to realize your divinity. That’s what the divine is trying to do for you — to help you recognize that you are not this limited personality, this limited body, this limited mind. The intention is for you to recognize who you truly are, but the ego complicates it tremendously.
The complications are all ego. Life is just wanting to help you.
Going even deeper, this entire drama between the ego and spirit is orchestrated by spirit itself. The deeper you go down this rabbit hole, the less words and concepts make sense, the less separation and duality make sense — which is perfect, because that’s how you realize you are one with God. You’re doing this to yourself in a loving, motherly fashion. Your true self is taking you through this experience.
Finding Support Through the Dark Night
Just thinking about this makes me feel immensely grateful for my journey through these ups and downs, and even more grateful for having had the honor of helping others through theirs. I know how difficult it can be when you’re grasping for something in the dark, desperate with no help in sight.
You don’t need to go through this alone. Whether you’re experiencing a disruptive spiritual awakening, a dark night of the soul, or simply wanting to achieve your highest potential, having support is crucial.
The Power of Letting Go
If there’s one piece of advice I can give you to practice by yourself, it’s to learn to let go — again and again and again. Letting go makes things so much easier. It means that the things you’re holding onto don’t need to be snatched away from you if you willingly surrender them.
But even easier than letting go by yourself is having help. The best thing you can do during the dark night of the soul is to find a mentor who has gone through it themselves and truly sees what is happening. Even better is having a community of people supporting you, and ideally, an enlightened mentor who has been transformed through their own journey to the point of realizing their true nature.
Having someone who merely listens with good intentions but lacks the full experiential understanding of what’s happening may not be as useful. It’s important that you deeply resonate with your mentor.
Finding Your Community
This is why I’ve built a community of people going through spiritual awakening or the Dark Night of the Soul. The emphasis of my community is to help each other through this journey, supporting one another because I know how challenging it can be.
I provide tools and teachings, and we meet weekly on Zoom. We have meetings organized by me, guest teachers, and self-organized meetings within the community — creating comprehensive support for everyone involved.
For example, one of my mentees is currently going through an extremely difficult time. In our previous meeting, I walked with him step by step through a confusing process he couldn’t navigate alone. I gave guidance, teachings, and homework, but recognized it was hard to implement alone. We worked through it together, and now he has an accountability group of other members supporting him — even meditating together and practicing the same processes daily.
This level of support is sometimes exactly what’s needed when you can’t see three feet in front of you in the fog of the dark night of the soul. And beautifully, as members help each other, they deepen their own understanding and growth, creating a win-win situation for everyone.
You Are Not Alone
I hope these insights resonate with you. Please know that you are not alone on this journey. Keep going. Know that everything is okay. All is well. You are loved by God, by your higher self. This experience is a tremendous blessing unfolding in your life. You may not see it yet, but you will soon.
Everything you’re going through is preparing you for something greater than you can imagine. Trust the process, even when it feels impossible. The darkest night precedes the most beautiful dawn.
Namaste.
If you’re experiencing the Dark Night of the Soul and need support, consider joining our free community of seekers navigating spiritual awakening together. Share your experiences in the comments below, and I’ll do my best to respond to your questions.