I woke, as I often do, hours before dawn. This time, however, something felt different.

An initial sense of inner expansion quickly took a turn and in just seconds I was filled first with a sense of dread, then panic, then outright terror.

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

Yet there was no source for any of it, no ‘bad’ thoughts. One moment I was in a deep, dreamless sleep, the next I was struggling to breathe from the worst fear of my life.

What was happening to me?

The Dislocation of Self

The terror was accompanied by a dark, intensely heavy energy, its message clear: I was utterly and completely alone, not just in this life, but on this planet, across the cosmos itself. It was as if a lifetime of fear had coalesced into this one moment.

My heart felt as if it would explode from the terror, the sense of dislocation, of desolation.

Still in bed, I rolled onto my hands and knees, rocked back and forth, begged God to make the pain stop. It seemed as if I was losing my mind.

The idea of the dark night of the soul briefly flashed into my consciousness. Was that what this was?

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

I rose from bed, began pacing the room, a million horrible thoughts suddenly and simultaneously vying for attention.

“Please, please, please make this stop!”

It’s Got Me

I don’t know how long the terror continued, but at some point I must have returned to bed and to sleep. Morning light roused me and I immediately felt gratitude the darkness of the night was behind me, that malignant energy gone.

But I felt terrible, as if I’d been bludgeoned by a 2 x 4. I rose to take a shower, eager to feel warm water on my skin, to speed my return to normalcy. For a moment, it worked.

And then, just like that, the energy and its terror came flooding back. Oh my God, please, not again, please. I began to weep, please make this stop.

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

The day progressed in a surreal, low-grade panic. I’d try to work, but the terror would return, again and again, and send me scurrying outside where the simple act of walking helped. A bit.

Ego Death is Real

As bedtime beckoned,

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.

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.