Normal Depression Or Dark Night Of The Soul

[haai14]

im on this path for about 1 year and in the last 6 months im having periods of about 5 6 days whit strong negative emotions, depression, social anxiety and fear. I feel so not in touch whit reality, in a day i feel like i lived 5 different lives. I cant find joy in anything. Im still being productive (meditating, exercise, cold showers...). I didnt have any spiritual awakenings before. Could this be dark night of the soul or some strong purging process. Its hard for me to accept that all this negativity is just for nothing.

[Torkys]

I can't tell you why but do some shadow work and find out. Sit down with the feeling and just feel it, don't escape it. Maybe the Do Nothing meditation technique would help you too.

I think people @Shin, @ajasatya and @Joseph Maynor have more experience with this kind of stuff.

[Markus]

Whether it's a dark night or not (pretty sure it's not from what you describe), it's something you need to go through. It's silly to wish it were a dark night so it would be meaningful somehow. All ego crap. Negative emotions and experiences are normal on the path. What you can do is continue meditating and if something is being debilitating to the point where it disturbs your functioning and it does not go away, do shadow work. If things become really bad for a long period of time and meditation & shadow work doesn't take the edge off, go to a psychiatrist. 5-6 day periods sound normal, you're just processing some shit.

love ya,
Markus

[Nahm]

@haai14 it’s food. Probably. Maybe not.

[Leo Gura]

Dark Night is when you have a deep spiritual breakthrough, you see God, and you realize everything  you've known was wrong. It's not your run of the mill depression.

Dark Night is something a fundamentalist Christian or Trump might experience if he snorts some 5-MeO for example.

[hinawashi]

I would say that there is a big difference, even though it's hard to tell. In a nutshell, Dark Night has hope attached to it, like the light at the end of the tunnel, or a "silver lining" telling you that the truth is better than everything that you used to believe. You will eventually come out of it and actually be in the light. Depression, on the other hand, is just pure darkness with no light at the end of the tunnel. no sliver lining, and no hope. It drags you down and cripples your mind.

That's my personal interpretation of it. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.

[Extreme Z7]

1 hour ago, hinawashi said:

I would say that there is a big difference, even though it's hard to tell. In a nutshell, Dark Night has hope attached to it, like the light at the end of the tunnel, or a "silver lining" telling you that the truth is better than everything that you used to believe. You will eventually come out of it and actually be in the light. Depression, on the other hand, is just pure darkness with no light at the end of the tunnel. no sliver lining, and no hope. It drags you down and cripples your mind.

That's my personal interpretation of it. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.

Dark Night involves more hopelessness in my opinion.

Most depression is usually caused by deep but temporary strong negative emotions. The majority of people who get out of depression do so because they either tried to commit suicide but failed or they didn't take action at all.

It's interesting how gun control can reduce the number of suicides simply because choosing a gun to kill yourself has a higher success rate than other methods.

[heisenburger]

@haai14

When you’re feeling happiness, when you’re feeling joy…it’s because you have somehow positioned your personal vibration in alignment. How? Through your definitions, your belief systems, your perspectives on life. Through the point of view of Existence that you adopt, and its position—that is, where you have placed your point of view into the vibrational spectrum of creation. If you feel happy, you have placed it somewhere along the line of your alignment, somewhere in the center of your being, in the truth of your true Self.

It is because you have positioned yourself vibrationally in alignment with your true self, that you feel joy. And you feel connection—as if you belong to all of creation, and that creation belongs to you—that there is an inseparability. You feel like everything is possible, that there is infinite abundance—everywhere, and all the time!

Now, this is somewhat an extreme version of the experience of alignment, but it is possible and accessible. Whenever you are happy, you are downloading some version of this alignment. When you are feeling depressed or sad—not that these things are bad, not that they have to be pushed away—but these feelings should be understood. You need to understand that when you are feeling depressed, anxious, stressed, sad, grieving, any of these ideas, these feelings…it is because you have positioned your vibrational perspective, your point of view on life, in a frequency that is out of alignment with the truth of your being.

For example, if you take the perspective, “I just lost my grandfather,” or “I just lost my dog”—then, that perspective of lack, that you are lacking your dog, lacking love, feeling abandoned by your dog or your grandfather, or whatever might be “lacking,” you feel bad. But if your lack definitions were true, it would feel great to define life in that way. If it was an actual truth that you were lacking something, you would feel ecstatic about it. With a different perspective, the same event would feel amazing and exciting.

We don’t feel pain because our grandfather died or because our dog died; we feel pain because the position we have taken on the matter, the point of view we have adopted on what happened, on the circumstance, is out of vibrational alignment. Our position is removed from the true frequency of the nature of reality, of who we really are, of what we really are, of what is actually, fundamentally, universally true.