the Dark Night of the Soul ?

hi,

I wonder if to overcome chronic pain from TMS you have to be READY to experience some kind of Dark Night of the Soul.
I mean: when you stop to avoid confrontation with feelings that are unbearable, when you make concious all your repressed "dark" emotions pain loses its protective function.... BUT you got exposed necessarily to the emotional pain, much more devastating .
In that liberating transition have you to travel through that very dangerous territory ? Is that experience unavoidable? Minutes (but perhaps hours) of intense scary suffering.
According to E. Tolle: "The dark night of the soul is a kind of death that you die. What dies is the egoic sense of self. Of course, death is always painful, but nothing real has actually died there – only an illusory identity. Now it is probably the case that some people who’ve gone through this transformation realized that they had to go through that, in order to bring about a spiritual awakening. Often it is part of the awakening process, the death of the old self and the birth of the true self."
Any experience of the dark night of the soul? Thanks!

 

Hi, miquel. I don't think it's a good idea to spend time thinking about negative things like "The dark night of the soul." Journaling should only be for about up to 15 minutes a day, if that, and the idea is to discover emotions that cause physical pain, and not to dwell on them. That can be depressing. Dr. Sarno says we don't even have to solve a problem regarding a repressed emotion. Just discovering it is enough to convince the subconscious, and it then stops the pain.

Eckart Tolle is great, but his thoughts on the "dark night" are depressing. I don't think you need to think about all that in order to achieve a spiritual awakening. Try meditating and praying, asking the Higher Power for it.

I hope you can switch your mind from "Dark" to "Light."

 

Hi @miquelb3,
I would like to disagree and agree a little bit with @Walt Oleksy.
In my experience, the journey realizing you have repressed emotions, uncovering those emotions, and working through them does feel like a Dark Night. But in those moments of peace and tranquility when your efforts pay off, the experience is so light, and you think, "Was it always supposed to be this easy?" When the physical symptoms subside and nothing is on your kind and your can be engaged in the present moment, you return to a place where you existed before "all of this" stated....I believe.
Sarno says you don't need to deal with the repressed emotions to feel relief from the physical pain--just acknowledge them. BUT, how can you move forward in your life without working through them? I think the Dark Night is more a spiritual quest you undergo to heal yourself from the pain of the past and to a arrive at a place where you can forgive what has happened to you.

 

I agree with both Walt and Eric in that there can be some very deep work in working through TMS, or there might not be. If you are guided there, through your natural unfolding, then it will be so. I suggest you don't worry too much about this. In fact, just noticing there is fear about this level of inner work can soften your heart: you're afraid that you'll have to undergo difficult experiences to get healing. I suggest you gently explore your fear about this, perhaps through journaling. No one knows where the soul will take us, so I would not be too concerned. Even if it gets scary, it is also very enlivening, as Eric suggests!

 

Hi, Walt

My experience: I finished a long period of debilitating back pain with an horrific "dark night". Later I discovered the TMS approach... and the pain has never come back !
With that precious information at hand, probably I had avoided hours of scary emotional pain. Just guessing. All the best.

 

The Dark Night of the Soul is a spiritual trial and ought not be confused with shallow psychological waters. Sarno is as far as far can be from the luminary St. John of the Cross. The Dark Night is the province of the Soul not feeling a bit crappy about your life. I thank you for raising this not the least because it hints at the complexity and utter beauty of life and of death. If tms leads you to these deeper waters you should thank god for it. Precious few possess the backbone and heart to face the darkness and most of us fail many times in our attempts to even acknowledge it. To be with it in all its raw and brutal truth makes us more human than angel. Most people here will be content to be out of pain and far from fear and I honour that. It makes sense. And yet some of us are called to go the distance and for us physical and emotional pain is the tendering and the passion.

 

Sarno describes one example of a patient who had a nervous breakdown, suicidal thoughts, total emotional devastation for couple days. Once she got through it, she fully recovered. But he admits that he knows only one case like that. Many people experience less dramatic but slow, yet still painful emotional path.