A psycan (the spiritual being that you are) will progress through Stages 1 and 2 (Evil and Drama) before he will tire of the Human Experience and want to go Home to Love. The entire cycle of human incarnations is 500 to 700 lifetimes. To be human is to be trapped in the being shell of evil and drama, in avidya and darkness, in a body and matter, in pain and suffering; in short, in samsara. For a being whose nature is Essence, Light, Power, Love and Joy, samsara is a heavy and dark experience. Eventually, the psycan is weary of the Darkside and longs for Home. The experience of that weariness of the Human Game expresses as the symptoms of the Dark Night of the Old Soul, also known as the Old Soul Syndrome.
The mere fact that you are reading this information with a positive interest is an indicator that you are ready for enlightenment; people still in Evil and Drama will not find their way here and the mere idea of enlightenment will appear to them ridiculous. Even occasional flashes of the following symptoms is certainty. The symptoms will get worse if you-human ignore them and take no action to recover your True Being.
Do you have any of these symptoms of the Dark Night of the Old Soul?
1. Do you sometimes feel life is empty or meaningless—despite your material success?
2. Do you sometimes feel, “There has got to be something more?”
3. Do you long to be much happier and more fulfilled than you are now, but don’t know how to achieve it?
4. Do you ever ask yourself the Philosopher’s Questions: Who am I? Why do I exist? Where do I come from? Why am I here? Where am I going? What does it all mean?
5. Do you find that the old, the traditional or the religious, answers to these questions no longer satisfy you?
6. Do you sometimes feel tired and weary of living, even though you have no big problems?
7. Do you sometimes experience anxiety, frustration, desperation, or depression about life for no apparent reasons?
8. Does life sometimes feel dark and heavy?
9. Do you ever feel trapped in life, or your body, or your human identity, or in matter itself?
10. Do you sometimes feel alone and isolated from others? Do the interests and goals of others leave you uninspired?
11. Do you no longer so easily lose yourself in chasing the pleasures or values of the world?
12. Do you sometimes feel you have lost something important, or it is far away, even unreachable?
13. Have you felt sadness, longing, or melancholy for something that was long ago?
14. Do you ever feel you are far from home, or far from Love, or from happiness?
15. Are you realizing that no matter how much more money, things or experiences you accumulate in life, it will never be enough: that nothing material will every satisfy the emptiness within you?
16. Do you desire to experience spiritual things you have read about with such authors as Carlos Castaneda, Deepak Chopra, Neale D. Walsch, Richard Bach, Eckart Tolle, Robin Sharma?
If you have answered YES to some of these questions:
That is good news. The Symptoms are signs you are tiring of the Human Experience, of avidya and drama, and are ready to awaken and go Home, back to Essence, to Love and Joy. More good news is: you are within one or two lifetimes of doing so if you work at it. Awakening, enlightenment, illumination are very quick (one or two lifetimes) compared to the 500+ lifetimes in Stages 1 and 2.
We-spirits come to Earth to play and experience the Human Adventure. You have been through hundreds of incarnations in a human identity and body and so have explored most of the variations of human experiences. You have been rich<>poor, king<>slave, nun<>prostitute, warrior<>priest, black skin<>white skin, gay<>hetero, healthy<>sickly, and many more. You have died young and old, burned, crucified, tortured, crushed, drowned, in prison, of starvation, of painful diseases; and sometimes in your bed; you have explored every possibility. You have loved and hated; been greedy and generous; cruel and magnanimous; haughty and humble; wise and stupid; evil and loving: everything possible. You have savored it all
But, sooner or later, after so far and so long from Love-Joy; you-spirit are tired of physicality and ready to go Home, to return to “heaven” whence you come.
Psychology calls these symptoms an “existential” or the “mid-life” crisis. However, it is much deeper and grander than that: your symptoms are spiritual awakening and birthing pains.
The Dark Night is the beginning of Stage 3, Awakening. It is your spirit knocking on the doors of your human identity and seeking to be known and attended to. Your Higher Self is telling you it is time to meet its needs, needs you have relegated because of your concentration on your worldly activities. Your spirit is telling you-human it is time for you to awaken from physicality and return to spirituality.
You are in physicality when your primary focus is on satisfying the material needs and desires of your human identity and your body. Spirituality is an ever-increasing focus on the non-physical parts of your life, on your inner world of mind, emotion, and, above all, spirit. (Your spirit is a multi-component, non-physical, Life-Energy complex that includes the characteristics of Consciousness, Intelligence, Creativity, Will, Power, Love and Joy.)
As you-spirit tire of materiality, you will tire of human games, goals and values. Your human existence, previously fascinating, becomes less and less interesting and unsatisfactory. The external world becomes dry and tasteless and meaningless—to force you to seek greener pastures within, to turn to the sweetness of the wisdom, power, beauty, love, and joy that is within you. In true Spirituality, you must go ever deeper within. A great teacher said it clearly: “The Kingdom of Heaven is within. Seek First the Kingdom of Heaven. What does it serve you to gain the whole world if you never find your soul?”
When you experience the Symptoms, your spirit is signaling you to establish a new balance between your focus on your external, physical world, and your focus in your spirituality. Your awakening self will pull you forward with the existential questions and push you with dissatisfactions, emptiness, and even frustration and desperation. The Dark Night is a time of suffering. The old you is burning away so that a new you, a more spiritual you, can be born. The Dark Night grows over many lifetimes; growing stronger in each one. In any lifetime, it can last years. It fades away as you find the Light and develop it in you. Spirituality is the only real solution to the Dark Night.
The Dark Night will push you into the next step which is Search. Driven by the pain of the Dark Night, and by intuition, the person searches for answers, for a solution. If he has a religion, he becomes dissatisfied and seeks elsewhere. If he has not a religion, he may investigate religions. He may deviate into philosophy, occultism or esotericism. He will investigate teachers and schools. He must find a source of True Spirituality.
If you want to awakening and achieve your enlightenment, you need a source of True Spirituality. For that you must be clear what that is and how to identify a True Source; there are many more false prophets on the planet than there are True Sources.
Continue reading: What is True Spirituality?