I Am Experiencing the Dark Knight of the Soul! Any Advice?

[Jordan Welsh]

I am a daily meditator who has been experiencing feelings of absolute meaningless and I am unable to motivate myself to do anything worth-while. These feelings began the previous Monday. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

[cetus]

@Jordan Welsh Type in "Ego Backlashes" in the search menu.

[Matt8800]

9 minutes ago, Jordan Welsh said:

I am a daily meditator who has been experiencing feelings of absolute meaningless and I am unable to motivate myself to do anything worth-while. These feelings began the previous Monday. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

When I went through this, I remember walking outside and it suddenly hit me that my feelings of meaninglessness and the associated dread simply didnt matter. Matter to whom and why? When I realized that, I was done with the dark night.

Some things to consider:

1. Just because objective meaning doesnt exist, dont underestimate subjective meaning. If subjective meaning doesnt seem that important, you dont understand your true nature (divinity).

2. I determined my subjective highest values were beauty, love and truth. My purpose was to evolve and continue evolving. This gave me a path with direction.

There is a great book on Leo's book list called Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha. It does a great job of explaining the dark night and how to move through it.

Heres some more good info - https://alohadharma.com/2011/06/12/the-dark-night/

 

Edited December 22, 2018 by Matt8800

[Rilles]

Introduce a little... anarchy?

[cetus]

11 minutes ago, Rilles said:

Introduce a little... anarchy?

@Rilles  Like cutting in your baby teeth it only hurts for a short while. But such is growth.

@Jordan Welsh This too shall pass.

[Toby]

28 minutes ago, Jordan Welsh said:

I am a daily meditator who has been experiencing feelings of absolute meaningless and I am unable to motivate myself to do anything worth-while. These feelings began the previous Monday. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

So you feel a little bit sad and depressed for 5 days and think this is a dark night of the soul?

[NoSelfSelf]

Good you are making progress,sometimes when you feel really bad its sign of getting really close but dont label it that its something bad or wrong about you...

[Jordan Welsh]

Thank you all so very much for your replays. I will hopefully begin reading Mastering the Core Teachings of the Budda very Shortly. The spiritual-journey is not necessarily always pleasant and involves emotional-labour repeatedly, but the ultimate reward or rather realisation and transformation is beyond words.

[Jordan Welsh]

Just before I began experiencing the dark night of the soul I was having an emotional-high with oneness and being conscious of the absolute beauty of the world. 

[Hellspeed]

Don't resist the pain or fear. Go with them, indulge.

[FoxFoxFox]

This is mostly depression. The dark night of the soul is something else entirely.

[Emerald]

5 hours ago, Rilles said:

Introduce a little... anarchy?

Simple.... Kill the Batman ?

Edited December 23, 2018 by Emerald

[Emerald]

5 hours ago, Jordan Welsh said:

I am a daily meditator who has been experiencing feelings of absolute meaningless and I am unable to motivate myself to do anything worth-while. These feelings began the previous Monday. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

The feelings are correct, so you must surrender to them.

There is no such thing as value, meaning, significance, "having a point", purpose, or anything else of this nature outside of the human mind. These are merely the measuring sticks that people must use to deal with 99.9% of tasks. They are only of practical value but tell you nothing of how things are existentially.

This is what causes existential crisis. People go looking for meaning in a universe that doesn't have any meaning, because they think their measuring sticks are the thing that determines validity. So, if we can't define the value/meaning/significance/point/etc. of reality itself, then we think this means that everything is invalid. We have learned that things that have no meaning are invalid.

But this is not true. Human projection of meaning doesn't make something valid or invalid. Everything is already valid. And our human measuring sticks are inadequate to fathom of reality.

So, reality is neither meaningful nor meaningless. It is simply empty of the concept of meaning that the human mind believes is so important, since it needs that for practical functioning. But meaning is only in the mind and nowhere else.

Likewise, reality is neither significant nor insignificant, neither having purpose nor having no point, neither important nor unimportant. The concepts are not adequate to fathom of reality.

So, embrace these feelings of meaninglessness and surrender to them so that you can transcend the illusion of meaning, value, significance, and purpose. Then you will be free from the prison of your attachment to your measuring sticks.