What is the ‘Dark of Night of the Soul’ REALLY?
By user_dd

Almost every year I participate in a Kabbalah ascension journey. This is dedicated time working on the subconscious processes that affect my lived life, and upgrading them to support my spiritual progression.

This year I’m focusing in on what’s called the ‘Personality triangle’ of the Tree of Life, with the intention of discovering how I can start to shift my awareness so I’m operating from the higher level perspective of my Individuality, which is more closely connected with the God-head than my personality.

How WE Work

We leverage subconscious processes to arrive at our conscious states of being. So by intending to move from a lower to a higher perspective, I must encounter and ‘move through’ certain subconscious processes that affect how I see the world, and thus what my experience is. The goal is to become aware of those processes to better understand how I manifest the world I experience.

In Kabbalah terms, we talk about spheres and paths. Spheres are conscious states, paths are subconscious states (between the spheres). The relevant path for me currently is the 25th path, called the Path of the Intelligence of Probation, referring to the primary temptation by which “the Creator trieth all righteous persons.”

The ‘primary temptation’

It is noted in various places that this ‘primary temptation’ is the apparent separateness of our personality from our individuality, or ourselves from God. Separateness is a source of evil in our consciousness, and when we succumb to the belief that we are separate, we are rejecting the Unity that is God.

For the Kabballers (Kabbalah dorks) out there, here is Yetziratic text in full: “The Twenty-fifth Path is the Intelligence of Probation or Temptation, and is so called because it is the primary temptation, by which the Creator trieth all righteous persons.”

What does separateness feel like?

Whether conscious of it or not, we are constantly giving into the illusion of separateness. Most people refer to the ‘Dark Night of the Soul’ when they are going through a tough time in their spiritual journey. The fact is, our spiritual journeys will contain many tough times, and they are not all a ‘Dark Night of the Soul.’ 

The imagery of ‘Dark Night of the Soul’ refers specifically to the removal of Light from the Soul from God, like how a mother weans her child off breast-feeding. This process leaves the soul entirely to its own resources, and with little more assistance than that of Faith in the almighty design (which would never give you anything you couldn’t handle in this life).

How each of us experience a Dark Night of the Soul comes from the unique programming by our spiritual DNA of your spiritual virtues. The specific adversity we experience in the Dark Night of the Soul is the result of the interaction of our spiritual virtues with our evolutionary journey. We always have everything we need to cure the apparent separateness we are feeling in the Dark Night of the Soul by leveraging our existing spiritual resources. 

In this way, we can always feel safe engaging in our spiritual journey and trust that the lessons we are learning will truly lead somewhere, as there are no dead-ends on our path to Divine Union—uniting our Soul with God.

Rather than leaning on God’s Light, the Dark Night of the Soul is a call by God for us to pull up our skirts/pants and stand on our own two feet, finding in our own resources the way through darkness into Light, Light that we ourselves create, rather than relying on God’s Light, which we already know is Limitless and ever-present. If you think about it, this is a very empowering experience to go through, and is in alignment with the evolution and maturity of our Soul in God’s kingdom.

When was the last time you felt the weight of you separateness? How did it show up? How did you move through this experience? What state or experience did you end up in?