The Dark Night

People talk about “the dark night of the soul”, what do they mean? Does it mean trials that one goes through only to come out shining on the other side like having the sun come up in the morning? And is the dark night, a long period or short period of time. One tends to think that a night is a short period of time, like in, "if I can just get through this, everything will turn around when the sun comes up and the shadows are gone."

Some of the people that I know who are traveling through this have been doing it for years. How draining it must be to never see the sun peek out from time to time. My only hope is that they get glimpses of the future and know that this is only temporary. How could one continue if they didn’t? That brings me to the question that only they would pose, “Why continue?”

When I used to talk to teens in the High Schools about Suicide prevention, I talked about the fact that suicide is just one of many options. Most of the time we are so close to the situation that we only see that one solution but there are many. Everyone has seen that as an option and discarded it in favor of one of the many others or they wouldn’t be here. But when you are living day to day with your dragons, maybe it becomes the focus, the only option?

Both my grandfather and my great-grandfather took their own lives while wrestling with their dragons. In the 60’s, I even looked at it as a way out but today I understand that there are many ways out of everything.

For the most part my life has been full of sunshine but yes, I have felt hurt and sorrow, so I can feel what other people tell me about. I think that I have been blessed in this manner to be able to walk with others through their “Dark nights”. So many people are trying to sort out and claw their way through the shadows that seem to press in on their lives. Many times I think it is the junk that they have created but because I know about reincarnation, I understand that they are burning off some past-life stuff. That doesn’t make it any easier.

When I stand by and watch someone hurting so much and am not able to alleviate even a tiny bit, it hurts to the very core of me. Why have I been given the gift of seeing and not be able to help?

I listen with the hope that maybe, just maybe I can help them find a way out. Sometimes in the past I have used my resources to assist them but it is only a temporary band-aid for a very serious problem that only they can find their way out of.

Some people get so entangled in their junk that they withdraw from the rest of the world and leave most of their resources to fight the dragons of their lives alone, without any armor.

When they have reached out to others, there are many reactions. One that has been explained to me is that no one seems to understand. It is hard for those living in the sunshine to understand what constant dark looks like. Another reactions is, that they must be mentally ill and need to be drugged. Do you have any idea what that does to a person living in the dark already without any armor of any kind to be put on drugs? They are victims of the “sunshine” people.

Let’s look at a hypothetical situation. We have a person who is burning off the residue of being one of the holocaust victims in a past lifetime. This person is withdrawn and afraid of just about anything. Now let’s drug him. Somehow this just doesn’t work for me. He is living with demons that you and I can’t even imagine.

I know of three such persons in my life that I can only stand by ready to help when they want it. It is a very helpless feeling. When I ask if there is something that I can do at this point in any of their lives, my guides tell me, “No”.

So where do I go from here? I can only send them my love that they can find themselves or are able to do what they need to do to become the shining being that they really are. I need to stay strong because in the future they will emerge as newborns without the skills to function in this ever-changing world. I need to find joy in the world around me and stay as positive as possible to be ready to go to work when called on.

I guess I have my work cut out for me.