The spiritual-death that the adept incurs in the Dark Night of the Spirit is like joining Old Jonah in the Belly of the Whale. Yet the adept must continue to abide in this dark-confining tomb until the Dark Ray of Infused Contemplation has completed its task and the great day of ascension dawns. What the adept most acutely experiences during this confinement is that even spiritual agencies have abandoned him. On the relative plane even close friends and associations have departed and no longer provide any source of comforting support. Not only this apparent humiliation, but the Dark Contemplation also has the effect of making the adept realizing one’s own abject spiritual-poverty and misery. It’s like hanging over the dark precipice not even being able to breathe. The adept is not even made aware of what is actually occurring, and that is the Unborn Spirit consuming all the deeply-rooted habit energy that has afflicted the adept throughout his entire life.
Undergoing this purgation is much harder in this day and age than during the 16th century in which John of the Cross wrote his spiritual treatises. With today’s compounded insidious garbage that one has to sift-through on a daily basis, it is little wonder that most cannot even begin to comprehend what the Dark Night means in our context in this series. “The Dark Night” has been hijacked and is now limited to mere psychophysical verbiage: “Oh gee, I’m in the depths of depression and I can’t get out”! Or “Getting rid of one’s ‘ego’ in order to embrace some higher-level of self.” One can surmise from our series that this IS NOT what the Dark Night entails; it is not limited to psychophysical stuff, but a very real purgation of natural and spiritual faculties. It’s been stated that this real “Dark Night of the Spirit” is like being entrapped in a perpetual three o’clock in the morning—not being able to rest and the morning light is never going to arrive.
Today’s accompanying image is a perfect snapshot of what the process is truly like. It’s like being in that belly of the beast, yet it’s not an enlarged cavity like the inside of a whale, but rather being unable to move in very tight and cramped quarters. The only light available is a flickering-flame of a tiny candle, one that is about to be extinguished thus leaving no element of light at all. The only thing that is left is that element of Trust we discussed earlier in the series. Trusting that at some junction, the feeble point of light will return and we are able to ascend to the surface once again. One also learns that the Unborn wants you for ITSELF ALONE, with no other rivals vying for your attention and affection. They are ALL purged here. Yea, ordinary affection becomes transformed into an extraordinary-one, one that can only be meant for the Unborn and no-thing else. It’s unlike any other experience, and no-one else could ever begin to understand what you are going through, cannot ever fathom what this transcendent love is like. The mystics call this form of love “agape”, beyond the limited fabric of mere eros. In the belly of that beast one soon learns to trust in this form of mystical-love and no other, for IT alone will transform your spirit in such a fashion that anything less than the Absolute Agape of the Unborn is simply UN-desirable. After this dark-tempest is past, one discovers oneself being washed-up on the other shore of suchness where nothing is ever distinguishable again, for ALL is of ONE immutable quality.