I woke, as I often do, hours before dawn. This time, however, something felt different. Initially, there was a sense of inner expansion, as if my consciousness was filling the space.

Because it’s happened before I didn’t think much of it. Neither pleasant nor unpleasant, I simply laid there and observed the sensation.

Abruptly, however, a sense of fear appeared, subtle at first, then stronger and stronger. Strangely, nothing had prompted the fear, no after-taste of a bad dream, no thoughts or anxieties of the day ahead. Just fear for fear’s sake.

And then came the recognition I was irrevocably separate and alone – not just in that room or this life or even the universe itself. Instead I saw – actually experienced – I was isolated and alone across eternity itself.

“The soul feels itself perishing … as if it were being swallowed up in darkness.” – St. John of the Cross

The sense of desolation, of existential dread, was unparalleled, like nothing I’d ever experienced. And in its recognition the fear swelled to panic and then complete terror.

I took great, gasping breaths, a fish suddenly thrust out of water. Desperate to escape that inner terror, I rolled over onto my knees and elbows, rocked back and forth, begged God to make it stop. It felt as if I was disconnecting from reality, going mad.

Ego Death

I rose from bed, began pacing the room, my heart feeling as if it would explode from my chest (later that day my midsection felt as if it had been bludgeoned).

Briefly the thought arose that the fear was akin to what I’d experienced two months earlier during the early stages of a heroic dose of psilocybin (it’s called ‘heroic’ for a reason).

“The feeling remains that God is absent, though He is closer than ever.” – St. Teresa of Avila

Then, as in that nighttime room, it felt as if I, Doug, was being ripped from my moorings, from everything I’d ever known to be ‘real.’ Here, words fail, because to describe the feeling is not the same as to experience it. But imagine, for a moment, that everything – literally everything – you’ve held to be true is seen to be false or unreal: the people, the history and events, all of it. The only you you’ve ever known is collapsing like an ice shelf.

Why me?

I can only surmise a combination of my years-long quest for spiritual truth and more recent research into perennial wisdom teachings. Among them are numerous references to ego death, a process St. John of the Cross (1542–1591) likened to the dark night of the soul.

Ego Death is Real

At some point I drifted back to sleep. When I woke to sun shining through the window I felt an uneasy admixture of relief and dread – relief that ‘I’ seemed to be back also a sense of dread that whatever that was was still there waiting to strike again.

“The dark night represents a profound experiential death of the old identity.” – Stanislav Grof

Grateful for the reprieve, I climbed into the shower. For a brief moment the feeling of warm water on skin gave me a false sense of security, as if the sensory inputs grounded me in reality.

But just like that, the fear returned and quickly reached a level of existential terror. My heart pounded and I against gasped for air. It felt as if I was being wrenched into a different dimension and that I might not ‘make it back.’

“Not again,” I wept, “please not again.” My mind reeled – what was happening to me?

Later that morning I researched the dark night of the soul and discovered I wasn’t alone. The symptoms seemed almost universal: overwhelming feelings of inner torment and dread; fear of eternal damnation; spiritual desolation; loss of meaning; feeling abandoned by God; the dread one is going insane.

Further, I discovered that far from being limited to nighttime or a single occurrence, the dark night of the soul is a process that can continue for days, weeks, or even years (Mother Teresa is said to have struggled with it for most of her life). It is a deeply disorienting, destabilizing experience.

To Be Continued

Throughout the following day, waves of fear continued to sweep over me with little rhyme or reason. I struggled to maintain conversation or to enjoy even the most mundane activities including meals. Dread became my constant companion and as nightfall came I felt a panic at the idea of sleep.

Would ‘it’ return? Would it be worse? Was I losing my mind? Was I a danger to myself or others?

“Faith means trust in advance in what will only make sense in reverse.” – Thomas Merton

Exhausted, I nevertheless opted to leave the lights on and to play a comedy on my laptop. Maybe an overload of sensory stimulation would keep the vampires at bay.

But at some point the fear started to elbow its way back into my consciousness, so much so that while I could hear the words of the program their meaning was no longer registering.

I closed the laptop and turned off the lights. I pulled out my phone and played a recording from one of my favorite spiritual teachers. Maybe, I thought, if I meet this thing half-way and show my sincerity it will leave me alone.

The fear intensified and with it the very real understanding that I was never again going to escape or evade or otherwise avoid my fears. After a lifetime of this behavior, it was clear my spiritual journey was delivering on what I’d been asking for: surrender and the unknown that comes with it.

SUBHEAD

Exhausted, terrified, I relented, closed the laptop, turned off the light. Well, almost relented. I played the familiar voice of a teacher on my phone.

The volume on the fear cranked up and with it the undeniable message: “Uh-uh, the old strategies won’t work anymore. I’m here and you have to deal with this. Wherever you go I’ll be there, whatever you distract yourself I’ll be pushing my way forward. Deal with this!”

Heart thudding in my chest, I turned off the recording, rolled over in bed to race the ceiling, and began repeating the words: “Fear not, I am always with you. Fear not, I am always with you….”

A complete blackness began to press down on me, to absorb me much the way ayahuasca had tried 20 years earlier until my fear had chased it off. This time, the fear stood no chance. I’d been offering to surrender too many times. The offer was being accepted.

Like a great existential tide, the blackness rolled into to swallow me up, then retreated, rolled back in, and so on, repeatedly.

At some point amidst this came the image of an impossibly discordant mishmash of jet-black, smashed-together geometric shapes and the communication: “This is your fear. It is here, inside you, not out there. Nothing out there can cause this, it is all within you.”

Sleep eventually returned. Across the ensuing days the fear returned, albeit not as strong, increasingly subtle reminders of its presence, of its message. .

Ask and You Shall Receive

It’s been some time since that fear has returned. What did it mean? What did it want from me?

I think – and although this is only conjecture it ‘feels’ right – it was a gift, a monumental wakeup call reminding me that I cannot serve two masters, I cannot surrender to God and still live the life of Doug Jr. One of us has to be let go.

I also sense that if I want to live out the remainder of my days as Doug Jr. it’s perfectly fine. But I’d never to give up on the idea I am on some kind of authentic, earnest spiritual journey, because it would be a charade.

The truth is (and I’ve actually penned these words before, clearly without fully understanding them), the ego can start an honest spiritual journey but it cannot complete it. There isn’t room for God AND Doug Jr.

Maybe that’s what my dark night of the soul was all about, a powerful reminder that I’ve been trying to have my cake and eat it too. Doug Jr. may think he’s truly surrendering, but he’s still trying to sneak along for the ride.

While I don’t want to revisit that dark night (well, many dark nights), I’m grateful for what they showed me. If I’m honest I’m still uneasy at how completely in its grip I found myself, a child in the grip of a giant.

But maybe that, too, was part of the package, a reminder of just how muscular this fearful ego of mine has become, how resistant it is to letting go.

Whether I remain true to the offering remains to be seen.