“Out of suffering have emerged the strongest Souls; the most massive

characters are seared with scars.”

– Khalil Gibran

We all go through the Dark Night of the Soul but the subsequent awakening is the reward only to those who dare to move towards the unknown and trust the move.

When I was going through the dark-night I didn’t have any idea that I was into it and to top that, I was so deeply depressed with my life as I wasn’t living my authentic-self, that it didn’t help. With the first spiritual awakening suddenly, in a flash my life became clear and I understood why the 8+ years have been difficult, why I was into the deep dark period of depression, when everything was difficult, unattainable.

The irony here is with most of us even if the circumstances are different and we are living a completely different life dark-night is always disruptive of everything that we “think” we hold dear or we “think” we have built. And since the emotional and mental effects of a dark-night is so intense that we keep seeking help from doctors, counsellors, therapists, healers, but if we’re not “learning” and our “wisdom” isn’t expanding during this period then no solution can come to our rescue.

That inner-shift and probably that physical change that our life needs, we as a Soul need; if it’s not taken care of which in many cases people don’t then their dark-night never ends. Which is why you will see many people talking about the “Saturn Return” never ending in their life.

One of my many experiences during my dark-night were with people and situationships created. I was working as a freelancer in New York and this one center had an employee who took a dislike to me without any reason, she was jealous and very rude too. I soon became popular, and just after a few months, I discovered that she had been tricking my clients by telling them my services weren’t good enough, and that others’ & her own services were better. I was deeply hurt, and that whole week became a disaster for me.

That’s when a very good friend of mine asked me, why wasn’t I “learning” from the situation, and wasn’t even practicing what I was preaching. That made me sit up and take notice. In my mind I didn’t do “wrong” to this person in thought or behavior so I kept asking why so much hatred will she have towards me, forgetting the lessons. That was a big turning point in my dark-night period, as if it was a much awaited inner-shift that took place the day Miriam asked me the “why”. I didn’t only release this karmic burden initiated by someone else but I also understood that I don’t have to know their reasons, but only have to let go of the situation knowing that our soul-contract initiated this exchange and that she took some of my karmic burden.

From that day onwards I became more aware, more conscious of my thoughts and feelings as if a door that was closed had opened and soon after I went to Vipassana, which helped me further with my first awakening.

Keeping in mind that we all are different individuals with different karmic-contracts, soul-contracts, and that both the dark-night and awakening are disruptive forces, chaotic forces to uproot whatever we believed in to activate a new belief-system in us, with “meditation and “visualization”, “yoga”, “journaling” being the best practices, I am sharing with my experience these 7 survival-tactics that will make the time easier but will also help us in bringing all the power of our practices into everyday life so the time is over faster and that the awakening is smooth too,

1. “What’s in here for me”: With each experience, be it bad or good keep asking this question. It does two important things, one is to help us see the good in every situation, which becomes difficult through the dark night and I have survived 8+ years of it. And the second thing is one of the main aims of this period, “to expand and grow our wisdom”. The faster we can do it, the better the chances of this period being over.

 I want to be clear here, that by saying “finding good” in the situation, I am not propagating 

 bypassing what we felt -sadness, anger, rage, as our intention isn’t to judge or justify.

 We are accepting our feelings and acknowledging them, but we’re also not giving our

  power away to anybody or any situation.

2. Don’t take anything personally: Throughout the dark-night, I was betrayed by people, my skills used but nothing given in return, my work was sabotaged. What I learned through these periods of intense grief, of pain and suffering, and depression is that reliving them in my head hurts me & nobody else. I had to survive so I started detaching myself from these instances. I stopped “analyzing” which was a definite Virgo Rising trait and started “being”.

3. Stop resisting and go with the flow: I kept resisting the changes because I didn’t even know that it was my dark night. And moreover, we all have self-sabotaging habits and it was mine. I learned that the more I resisted, the more painful the changes were.

As I let go and started to change myself, awakening happened fast, there was clarity and semblance to my life. The shift is inevitable and nobody can stop it, so resisting it is a 

preposterous dream. The best way is to flow with life and whatever it brings. Days are easier 

that way and there are promises of good too.

4. Don’t believe anybody who has added to your grief: There will be many wolves in the garb of friends, and it’s just that you will start “seeing” them as they really are. And when you do, move the heck out of there. Create and maintain boundaries even if you are labeled selfish and self-centered.

  If a person creates heightened sensitivity in a negative way or you feel uneasy because with their “good talks” they seem to tear you down, they aren’t supporting you in any way but always telling you how wrong you are. Don’t even think of giving them a chance, maybe when your dark night is over. But now is your time to protect yourself and build yourself up. Do just that!!!!

5. Start trusting your “infinite intelligence: One of the biggest lessons every seeker has to learn, is to completely trust one’s own instincts, which is quite difficult. And in my case, there were many things I was genuinely doing including practicing self-love and never “not trust” my intuition and then after my kundalini-awakening a test came in my life. And as most of the times happen, I feel back into not believing, which I paid a high price of mental & emotional trauma of a month.

This traumatic period wasn’t the same as dark-night and I could see how the energy-vampire was sucking my energy through negative magic, but wasn’t able to do anything for at least 15 days. And if we aren’t careful and don’t apply all our lessons, the Universe will keep throwing curve-balls to make us understand. It was a difficult period but a much-required eye-opener.

6. Stop being “mean” to yourself: During the dark-night many-a-times, it’s the relationships that are going to be difficult, and we are subjected to many harsh and manipulative talks. We’re at times labeled weird or too sensitive for our own good, not sociable or non-adaptive to others (mostly insults and bad behaviors). All these lead us to start “judging” our-self and being “mean” to us because others are. That’s when many-a- times we stop trusting our gut-feeling because we’re bullied into it.

And this period is about “detachment” from wanting “validations” from others, its’ about developing that self-love which comes from the understanding of self and how we as a human operate. Shunning oneself becomes one strong veil that needs to be healed. And the first step towards that is stop being “mean” to yourself and this one act helps in not let anyone manipulate us into thinking “less” about our-self.

7. Be your Best-friend: Dark-Night and Awakening does change your inner-grid of thoughts-emotions-beliefs and most of the time people around you will not get your change, they won’t understand. If you’re lucky there may be one or two people who will be having the same inner-growth trajectory as you but not all. It never happens that way because the Universe wants an uncorrupted, un-manipulated version of your inner-changes.

So, we may find that we don’t gel with people with whom we earlier used to, and it becomes frustrating and even chaotic when they want our earlier version or keep making fun & undermining our feelings and experiences. Which is why you will see most of the people going through this period experience “loneliness” and there’s an understanding about it in the later stages, but when it starts it’s bewildering and confusing. The best way is to become your own best-friend and support yourself, talk to yourself as every bff would.

This not only is for the sake of healing the feeling of loneliness but is highly therapeutic to our nervous-system thus growing our emotions and making us emotionally mature.

I hope my experiences may give you more clarity to tread the challenging period, making it more enjoyable and knowing that it too shall pass. May you remain blessed.