The Dark Night of the Soul Unwrapped

Before his dark night began, Bart was a highly intellectual physician with no interest whatsoever in spirituality. He had, as he says, “worked for a long time cutting off bodily feelings.” Then an injury ended his ability to function, leaving him depressed and unable to work. When he saw an eight-foot angel fish at the end of his bed, and began to dream vividly, he was prompted to venture into the imaginal and somatic realms. Since then, he has explored his inner terrain in a variety of ways including dream work, embodied inquiry, spiritual teachings, and plant medicines.

Am...

The dark night “pulled” at Melanie in her twenties, but it wasn’t until her forties that she was willing and able to hear its calling. As her work and marriage fell apart, she found herself in a dark, heavy place, and “went down into a different space of me.” Having always been a “good little girl” who walked on eggshells and did her best to please everyone, she began to encounter everything that lay beneath her persona. Like an archaeologist, she painstakingly worked through many layers of self-hatred and shame.

Amongst many other things, Melanie and I talk about f...

Kristy’s first dark night experience began when her dog – her attachment figure – died when she was ten, and she lost her trust in life. Over the next twenty years, things seemed to improve; she left home, learnt how to meditate, began training as a counsellor, and started to explore her childhood trauma. During a somatic experiencing session, she had a profound recognition, which at the time seemed little more than a subtle “click”. The ensuing sense of grace and effortlessness – very different from her usually tumultuous inner world – lasted for a couple of weeks. After that, it was as if a thresh...

Following on from our previous conversation, Tim and I touch on the profound mattering of every life, even in the face of futility and nihilism. We discuss the reckoning with mortality that occurs in the dark night, and he proposes that, rather than fixed objects, we are dynamic processes in time, and thus the possibility of radical newness is inherent with us.

Tim shares his philosophy of death, which is informed by his experiences of being with dying people, and by extensive research on NDEs (Near Death Experiences) and terminal lucidity. He suggests that, while the biological...

Tim began asking questions about the nature of life, death, suffering, and the world from an early age, and has never stopped. His first transformative awakening experience happened when he was twelve, and he became a philosopher, spending decades studying, writing, speaking, and leading experiential retreats. Over the last few years, he’s had a radical change of mind and is now in the process of laying out his new philosophy on the evolutionary nature of existence – and much else besides – in his podbook, Why Your Life Really Matters.

In this conversation, Tim and I tentatively begin to cre...

Following on from our first conversation, Jen and I explore how culture skews us towards pathologically trying to fix ourselves, and the sighs of relief that come when we put down the glaring searchlights; coming into and tending to our inner houses with care and gentleness even amidst collapse, dismantling, mess, renovation, reconstruction, and expansion; the importance of “trusting the alchemy of your own house” such that it becomes a safe and unconditionally loving place to be; and the usefulness of understanding the dark night as a non-linear process of alchemical transformation.

In addition, we talk about Jen’...

Jen’s dark night began in 2011, when she found herself “smack dab in the face of true love with a huge bag of unresolved trauma.” A lifetime of internal suffering culminated in collapse; for months, she lay among the trees in her backyard, and started to tend to the wounding that had begun when she was treated for cancer as a baby, and kept snowballing throughout her traumatic childhood. In the fourteen years since, her quest to understand what happened that summer has taken her into both academia (in the form of a PhD) and profound creativity as a writer...

After fifteen years of disciplined meditation and spiritual seeking, Paul hit a brick wall. He got ME/CFS, lost his job, his ideas about spirituality crumbled, and he lost interest in all the teachings he had tried so assiduously to follow. With no role in life, and no sense of direction, he felt like he was falling into a bottomless pit. Occasionally, a deeper sense of peace came out of nowhere, but he doubted himself, calling himself crazy. Eventually, after several years, he found himself ready to have a role in the world again.

Amongst other things...

Having been interested in mythological and spiritual artwork from a young age, John went to university to study comparative symbolism. At twenty-one – while feeling directionless and reading intense philosophy, including Krishnamurti – his sense of self completely disintegrated. He dropped out of his degree course and, for about six months, became a barefoot guru (having left his shoes in an art gallery). He travelled and taught, living in the homes of people who supported him, until he realised that the guru phenomenon – or "circus", as he calls it – didn’t feel congruent. He went back to his family, volunteered at a playgrou...

Following on from our first conversation, Li and I begin with the hamster wheel that is capitalism, colonialism and imperialism, and the effects of living within power structures that threaten us in a variety of ways, depending on who we are. We talk about how it was impossible to keep up being an efficient cog in that wheel during our dark nights, and how it’s natural to no longer want to participate in “this deadening culture.”

We discuss the “con job” that often masquerades as spirituality; how the dark night rattles the construction of personhood and all our id...

Li’s first dark night began when a relationship suddenly ended, and they found themself beset by heartbreak, their survival strategies stripped. Some time later, an abusive intimate relationship took Li even deeper in, splitting them open in what they describe as “a total unravelling of the wounded me.” They started to feel all the fear – and other emotions – that they’d been masking, denying, avoiding, and hiding. Slowly, Li began to feel the excruciating pain of aloneness and separation – which was, eventually, freeing – and gradually came into a remembering of interconnectedness.

In this episode, we talk about false spir...

Mike recently completely his PhD on the empirical evidence for interventions in spiritual crisis. Always interested in myth, magic, and mysticism, he has extensively studied religious and spiritual phenomena through the lens of transpersonal psychology. His research brings much-needed academic attention to an experience so often overlooked by both the spiritual and therapeutic worlds, and is deeply informed by his work supporting people going through spiritual crisis.

In this episode, we talk about a central aspect of Mike’s research; the strands of what he broadly refers to as grounding – the practices, attitudes, and behaviours that might supp...

Hany’s dark night began in earnest in his forties, although he’d been aware of feeling different since he was eight. As a child, he’d tried to express to the adults around him what he was experiencing, but it wasn’t until a therapist suggested many years later that he was in a dark night that he began to understand what might have been happening throughout his life. After going through countless rock bottoms and navigating blindly in the dark, he started to follow his own river and found himself gradually coming back to his life.

Amongs...

Following on from our first conversation, Jessica and I delve into the moment she first heard the term ‘spiritual bypassing’ and realised that’s what she’d been doing, and we explore the rejection or exclusion of the body which is central to spiritual bypassing. Based on our childhood experiences, we touch into cPTSD (complex post-traumatic stress disorder) and the extent to which many of the teachings of self-negating non-duality mirror the messages of narcissistic abuse, shaming the self and its expression. We reflect on being drawn to the teachings that replicated our survival strategies and how, in Jessica’s words, “...

Jessica’s dark night began a few years after she became immersed in the teachings of self-negating nonduality as a way to silence her ruminating mind and disappear her intense emotional suffering. Initially, she experienced the dissolution of her sense of self described by the Neo Advaita gurus, and felt that she’d found the magic wand that would erase her, leaving only boundlessness. Gradually, however, she became increasingly and disturbingly dissociated and unable to relate. Terrified that she might have irretrievably damaged her fundamental human capacities, she embarked on the slow and painful task of reclaiming the parts that...

After many years of inner healing and therapy work, an inner knowing came clearly to Helen; “I have to keep my heart open, no matter what.” Recognising that she had been living in her head, disconnected from her heart, she took the risk of speaking what was in her heart. Doing so triggered a profound energetic and emotional reaction. It was as if she was looking over the edge of a cliff with no option but to step off.

Amongst other things, we talk about having to feel all the material we were never going to reach by o...

Following on from our first conversation, Julianne describes how things began to change when she came to a kind of acceptance of the limitations of her physical health. We discuss the difference between the idea of surrendering, and the energetics of being brought to an actual surrender. Our conversation also covers how she sought order in the outer world as a way to control the chaos of her inner world; the layers of shame and judgement around being a victim, and how shaming spiritual teachings can be; searching for enlightenment because it’s too painful to be in our bo...

*Please note that in the first few moments of this episode Julianne mentions the sudden death of a child. If you'd prefer not to listen to this section, skip to 01.15.

Julianne’s dark night began with a tragedy, and spiralled when a mystery illness took hold. She lost her job and her home, and had brain fog so bad there were times she couldn’t work out how to feed herself. Previously focused on a successful banking career, she found herself with no choice but to turn inward. She began to explore the perfectionism that masked her sens...

Welcome to The Dark Night of the Soul Unwrapped, a podcast for anyone who is going through or curious about spiritual emergency, existential crisis, or the dark night of the soul. My guests and I share our experiences of being in - and emerging out of - this lonely and sometimes terrifying terrain, without glossing over the realities. We discuss - amongst many other things - how it relates to trauma, illness, embodiment, spiritual teachings and ideas about awakening, and the state of the wider world. Expect openness, honesty, love, groundedness, rawness, nuance, laughter, and a lack of dogma.<...