Dark night of the ego

The dark night of the ego is the becoming aware of and breaking down of you limited identity. It is a deconstruction of your beliefs about who you are. A becoming aware of the constructs of the mind. This process occurs for those who desire the truth. The ones who deeply desire to know the true meaning of life, those who desire self realisation. Often this desire comes from a lot of suffering through out ones life and a feeling of dissatisfaction. As the desire for self realisation becomes stronger and stronger and you come closer to the truth all the constructs of the mind start to be seen for what they are, your conditioning and everything you have believed about yourself and the world is questioned. You cannot realise the truth and still believe you are who you believe to be. Because this is a deconstruction of the ego which is what you have identified as it can feel very confronting, the mind will try to fight it desperately holding on to its beliefs about its self. Of course nothing actually dies but it can often feel that way. This is what is called the dark night of the ego.

Life will present situations and experiences that will challenge who you believe to be. The more you try to uphold your limited identity the more resistance you have to the truth the more suffering there will be. If you do not surrender to this process it will be more intense. Often you can feel alone, depressed, sad and confused. You can feel as if you are in some kind of limbo land where you feel lost between dis believing what you have believed and not fully releasing the truth of what you are. There can be many phases of the dark night of the ego. Many of your traumas can start to arise and you can feel overwhelmed. By surrendering to the process these patterns move through you, making you aware of them. You start to become aware of the filters and beliefs in which you perceive yourself and the world.

You can often feel as if something has gone wrong on the spiritual path feeling as if you have gone backwards. It can feel like you are having an inner crisis. This is because at the beginning the spiritual path can feel good you gain new information and the practices can make us feel a lot better. You may feel better in yourself through your practices and it seems as if your life gets better. The real transformation is a breaking down rather than a building up. You don’t become what you already are rather the process is a breaking down of who you believe to be. You have to go beyond what you believe to be and this means your beliefs are challenged.