A: The dark night of the soul is a term that goes back a long time. Yes, I have also experienced i

A few weeks back, I discovered on Facebook a piece of Eckhart Tolle (author of A New Earth ) on The Dark Night of the Soul (please see his statement below, at the bottom madame sher of my post). I wasn t familiar with the concept, but was with the experience. From that virtual discovery, things went very fast and far, geographically-speaking as I experienced an amazing synchronicity with a new friend in Sri Lanka (South Asia). I mean amazing because, through our exchange, and my telling him about my experience of that fateful dark night, I came to mention a similar, mundane event that took place 8 years apart or so: playing table tennis at a YMCA; first in Colombo, Sri Lanka, in September1982, madame sher and then again in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, in November 1990. I was truly floored by this happenstance, so to speak, that had nothing to do with random events even more interesting is that both events resurfaced in a single point of time so long after their first occurrence.
Some day in November 1990 is when I experienced MY dark night of the soul. I was then studying in graduate school and had only set foot in Wisconsin in January of that year. The wonderful feelings of newness and excitement (a phase generally called honeymoon madame sher ) had gone by and I was left with the routine of going to school again, after seven years of professional experience. Interestingly, what felt most difficult to overcome then was an absence of meaning of feeling productive, that is. I had been employed for seven years, three of them spent in French-speaking Africa, and I had grown tremendously through heart to heart exchanges, especially in the Congo. Wisconsin autumn felt cold and a bit dull in comparison and I harbored the feeling of not contributing anything to society. In addition, graduation madame sher wasn t part of the picture for another two years, and it seemed like eons away.
I don t remember the exact day when IT happened, although I remember the setting, the name of the classroom, and the instructor. We had a test that morning in a class related to knowledge of industrial psychology and I did very poorly. I felt awful after flunking the test and the feeling remained with me throughout the afternoon. At night, I went to the local YMCA to play table tennis with a few friends. This is when, suddenly, the floor of my life collapsed. It felt as if what had been supporting me my desire to study and complete my studies, madame sher to become a bilingual professional was no longer there; I had nothing to lean on, but darkness, emptiness and meaninglessness; madame sher in one word, nothingness. Either the tunnel had no end in sight, or I was looking toward the wrong end of it. My life had gotten devoid of meaning, very much like the way Eckhart Tolle describes it.
As soon as I got home (I was renting a room at an old lady s house; Dorothy was her name), I called the International Students Advisor. I know it was so serious that I had to seek out help as soon as possible. She and many others gratitude flows, guys helped me through this difficult time which lasted madame sher for about six to eight months, before I finally resurfaced as a fully functioning human being. Interestingly, I would not say that I found new meaning out of this dark experience I was still intent on finishing my studies and I did, adding another degree in the course of the next three years. Yet, I can t tell that I found a new direction in life, or that my spiritual life had taken off in a different turn.
Rather, from what I clearly madame sher remember, I felt in the ensuing few months that a crevasse had opened up in my life, so that the imprisoned emotions of the young child especially anger and sadness could start their way up and out. It took me a long time to take care of that painful crevasse. Fifteen years of assiduous Buddhist practice and developmental work helped as I painstakingly transformed the pain and residues from my childhood into a fertile terrain for what would come next, one day, at some point. As in many situations, madame sher there is (and there was then, for me) no other way for us than honoring and doing the (inner) work we have to do. As we often say, and the saying goes back to the idea of plowing the soil for future use, we cannot put the cart before the horse. [In French, the expression becomes we cannot put the plow before the oxen, which dates back to sixteenth century farmers practices.]
Eckhart madame sher Tolle on the ‘Dark Night of the Soul’ Q: Have you ever experienced the dark night of the soul? Your teachings have been so helpful through this difficult period. Can you address this subject?
A: The dark night of the soul is a term that goes back a long time. Yes, I have also experienced it. It is a term used to describe what one could call a collapse of a perceived meaning in life an eruption into your life of a deep sense of meaninglessness. The inner state in some cases is very close to what is conventionally called depression. Nothing makes sense anymore, there s no