Consciousness and Darkness

Tower Moments and Dark Nights

These are the most important parts of your spiritual journey

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Spiritual people know that life isn’t supposed to be happy. It’s a fact: life is about learning, and it’s painful. If that statement offends you, then you’ve never had a tower moment or a dark night of the soul. You’ve never faced the edges of reality. Putting crystals out to charge by moonlight and sage-cleansing your home doesn’t make you spiritual. What makes you spiritual is an awakening to a new level of consciousness where things make sense as a great collective, even all the “bad” stuff.

There are few spiritual people I’ve ever met who haven’t undergone some deep, dark night of the soul. This is when we are not only depressed but also really struggling with our existence and purpose as humans. A dark night of the soul is philosophical depression. Our souls ache.

Unfortunately, we can’t choose to have a dark night of the soul. So, even if you really want to have a spiritual awakening, you can’t just make that happen on your own. It’s something the universe just does to you — you’re given a trigger. A mind-blowing life event, usually. I suppose, somehow, the soul knows when it’s ready for that level of awakening, and the universe responds with what is needed, and both begin the transformation spontaneously. Consciously, you won’t know it’s coming.

It is essential to the spiritual journey.

There are many names for “the dark night of the soul” and personally, I hate using cliched expressions. So, don’t feel bad if you don’t want to call it that. Sometimes, it’s a tower moment. Sometimes, it’s depression. Sometimes, it’s being angry at the world and wanting to go into hermit mode. It’s whatever you want to call it. It’s transformation. It’s beautiful pain.

It’s Lonely

Your therapist won’t understand your dark night unless they’ve had one themselves. A spiritual path doesn’t fit into the modern psychologist’s idea of reality. They deal in the ego, not in the soul.

Your friends who haven’t been through this also won’t get it. There’s almost no point in telling them what’s happening to you. They…