The Dark Night of The Soul: 5 Steps to Cope-Up with Spiritual Depression

Posted by Fernande Dalal on Monday, May 6, 2024

The dark night of the soul is a phase that happens in personal development when a soul experiences a dark and significant transformation to a more profound understanding of life and their place in it. This increases experience is followed by a depressing shedding of previous conceptual frameworks such as individuality, relationship, profession, habit, or belief system that let them create significance in their life.

The Dark Night of the Soul might appear as a strange phrase but it has several relative conceptions in religion, mythology, and psychology. Some commonly linked conditions like ‘existential crisis’ and sorts of depression are more recognizable.

Other related concepts include ‘Positive Disintegration’ in psychology, ‘Soul Loss’ or the ‘Descent to the Underworld’ in Shamanism, ‘Katabasis’ in Greek mythology, and ‘Nigredo’ as Carl Jung symbolically comprehended in Alchemy.

The “Dark Night of the Soul” also known as “Oscura Noche” however references the name given retroactively to an untitled poem by the 16th century Roman Catholic priest and mystic; St. John of the Cross, where he explained the agony of the departure of an individual’s soul from God while imprisoned for his unconventional religious beliefs.

The concept of the dark night of the soul defines by Eckhart Tolle who is the most popular spiritual author in the United States

“It [dark night of the soul] is a term used to describe what one could call a collapse of a perceived meaning in life…an eruption into your life of a deep sense of meaninglessness. The inner state in some cases is very close to what is conventionally called depression. Nothing makes sense anymore, there’s no purpose to anything.” – Eckhart Tolle

19th century Canadian-born scholar and philosopher Manly Hall define it as:

“The only way we can really approach this is to realise that when we have received the full conditioning of our society and have attained physical maturity that perhaps we will be able to pause for a moment and try to find out a little more about ourselves. Usually, however, this moment of pause only comes when physical or emotional reverses break down the structure of the so-called physical-material-industrial plan for living. Nearly always a crisis: a great disappointment, a heartache, a desperate illness. These are the kinds of pressures that perhaps have been placed here to remind us that we have an individual existence and that this existence must be given expression or the life we are living will remain incomplete.” ― Manly Hall

But it is in this gloom that deep transformation is possible. When everything is absurd, you have the opportunity to let go of past beliefs, ideas, and doubts.

What falls is not who you are, but how you observe life or you can call it your ego.

The spiritual crisis seems to befall those who are on a path to self-realization, or those looking to increase their knowledge.

And ultimately, to keep improving, you have to see how you are maintaining yourself. You have to let go of all the processes in which you defend yourself, and resist life.

The purpose of this article is to let you know about the condition and how to come out of the depression time of your life.

Below I have compiled some of the steps that you need to follow, that will help you to cope up with your fears and give you some kind of support. 

Find Someone Who Understands

Find a mentor of high-level who can give sensible advice or a responsible partner who has gone through the same trials and outlived them. A mentor who has gone through the dark night of the soul can take you to the right track and drive you away from mistakes they previously made.

Take Proper Sleep

Never undervalue the strength of sleep. Sleep plays an essential role in the anxiety releasing process that is part of the dark night. Staying up late distracting yourself on the internet, watching TV, or partying is exactly that, a distraction from the idea of the dark night, to learn more of your Truth. Sleep is a span of time for the body and mind to have a release, restore balance, and purify. Go to bed early, have naps, sleep in this will be one of the best strategies for coping up with it.

Ground Yourself in Nature

Go barefooted into the garden. Let your feet unite to the skin of nature. Lie down the grass and feel yourself being pulled in to that. Henry David Thoreau wrote in 1853, “As for the complex ways of living, I love them not, however much I practice them. In as many places as possible, I will get my feet down to the earth.” There is nothing as simplistic and yet important as this.

This Too Shall Pass

 One thing that you can unquestionably be assured of, that time will change everything. The dark night is not your trial, it is not some accidental event, it is not your life sentence, it is part of your journey to a greater more knowledgeable experience in life. To move through it, be aware of what rests beyond. Have faith and a profound knowingness that on the other side you will feel clearer, more attached, more passionate, and brighter. When you know this and uphold this vision, you will arrive there soon after. This is the development and there is the only progression.

Seek Professional Help

Understand that faith and panic can be encountered contemporaneously. Be free to professional help. Without carefully planned tactics to deal with mental illness, prayer only is not always a wise choice. Counseling and psychological or medical treatments can enable you to be your best self and live the life God designed for you.

Do not underestimate the potential of these small actions. With these powerful and different coping tactics linked with compassionate support, the heaviness can get lighter and you will definitely find relief form the depression.

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