Dark night of the soul?

When I hear someone reference the dark night of the soul, I tend to think they are being overly dramatic. Saints have dark nights of the soul - the rest of us just face tough times. Most of us have periods in our lives that are very dark and difficult but woudn’t call this a dark night of the soul. When I received Thomas Moore’s newest book Ageless Soul, I discovered this is his 26th book. I thought he had written two or three.

After interviewing him for my Keeping It Real show, I went to Amazon to look at some of his other books and discovered he wrote one called Dark Nights of the Soul, A Guide to Finding Your Way Through Life’s Obstacles. Hmm, thought I, perhaps there’s something here for me. Indeed, there is.

What if what I have been going through the past few years beginning with my fall in 2011, can be called a dark night of the soul? Instead of seeing all of this as something to be fixed or endured, is it possible the experiences since then are meant to be some sort of initiation for me? Is it possible I’m meant to reframe all of this as a life passage that is meant to initiate me into something new, bigger, broader? Of course I have thought of it this way somewhat. But mostly I’ve looked at it as a challenge to be conquered, the old “You can do this, Krysta!”

One of the earliest themes Moore introduces in the book is the idea of Jonah being swallowed by the whale and eventually being coughed up on land. Moore suggests taking this attitude, alllowing one’s self to be in the darkness of the belly of the whale, being carried who knows where, knowing you will  be spat up on land eventually. He is far more poetic about this in the book but this is the gist of it and I love the analogy.

After reading this before bed last night, I decided to just let myself be in the belly of the whale and see where I am being taken with all of this. What new me might be birthed by these experiences? Guess what happened this morning? I had just gotten up shortly after 5 AM when the power went out and the entire house was thrown into darkness. I live in the country so when the power goes out, it is 100% darkness. I chuckled to myself when I saw the synchronicity- truly I was in a dark night! For almost an hour, I sat in the darkness punctuated by the light from a small candle and said, “Okay, I get it. I can’t control when the lights will come back on so I will embrace the darkness and enjoy the experience instead of pushing against it.”

Now I get to apply this to my life. Being in the belly of a whale really isn’t so bad. I am interested to see where the whale decides to spit me out!