It will hurt and tear you down, rip you apart, force you open, drive you to the end of yourself and back…as it is supposed to and… and it will be worth it.

Almost as a rule change will be difficult and test you on so many levels you couldn’t even imagine before it begins and some of it will be more difficult. It is in a way easier to process change if you still (think you) have your core self intact. You have a place and a stance from which to process things and make them fit what you believe. But what if the change comes exactly to that core self, there is no one to process and make sense of things. You may have already gone through this, have felt glimpses of it or are beginning to feel the sting leaving you confused, lost and numb or you might never get shaken awake, some people don’t.

The dark night of the soul is the deprograming process and it means you’re ready let go all that has been forced into you, to burn off and amputate all that is not in accordance with who you are and who you were supposed to be before the societal symptoms, traumas, expectations and dogmas got programed into you. The name for this phase might be poetic but going through it is chaos incarnated with no rest and no set time span. It could last a few months or plague you for years and they may be more than one through your lifetime. No, you’re most likely not depressed or drained, or burnt out, or lost, or unhappy, you might in fact just be changing and transforming, awakening to what is real.

There will be a few signs that the night has come for the soul – not to keep it forever but to prepare it for a new dawn in which your whole person will be congruent in its thoughts, feelings and actions and living a fuller life than ever before.

1. You’ll feel confused and as if you’re losing you identity, like you have no idea who you are any more, and the things that were once enough to at least entertain you now feel like a void waste of time and life.

2. The rate of change speeds up exponentially. There is no more safe zones with an occasional change, but they keep piling on faster than you can emotionally catch up. This has come to teach you to relinquish the illusion of control and “handling things” and to teach you to let go and trust the process

3. This new mental fog finds echoes in the body with an array of symptoms that cannot be ascribed to any physical pathology – constant sleepiness or pervasive insomnia, rapid weight gain and weight loss, anxiety or complete lethargy, unexplained skin problems, new allergies, gastrointestinal issues, immunity deficiency that’s making you sick all the time… you’ll feel like you’re a hundred and like you have no energy

4. You’ll constantly be pushed further in the chaos on the issues you consider axiomatic for life. You’ll be given really challenging circumstances to force you to dig deep and peal of the layers you’ve built around the axis

5. If you’re lucky you’ll have a dim guideline, a mystical, spiritual or divine experience that will show you a glimpse of what is beyond the lies of the structure. It will serve as a lifeline when it gets to dark, just the remembrance of this light will get you through the night, the memory of a situation where you heard the click of a perfect fit of all things as one

6. You’ll pushed deeper into fear, paranoia and anxiety than ever before, and you’ll have unusual fearful experiences to strange to explain or speak to anyone about. Yet, this time you won’t run away and burry them deep but face them. If you resist and hide you’ll only prolong the dark night

7. Things that lifted you up don’t do the trick any more. You’ll find it impossible to experience pleasure, happiness or joy for a while, you’ll feel empty, numb, like a stone statue pretending to be human and going through the motions

All of this is good, a blessing well disguised. As the ignorance dies off through this painful process it will be substituted by peace. Hold on and accept the darkness of this night, the dawn always follows, always.