Our Spiritual Cleansings
Through the Dark Nights
Part II
The Dark Night of the Spirit
"The soul which God is about to lead onward is not led by His Majesty into this night of the spirit as soon as it goes forth from the aridities and trials of the first purgation and night of sense; rather it is wont to pass a long time, even years..." St. John
It was seventeen years later that this second dark night began for me, and it was precipitated because of doubts in my inner hearing, or clairaudience. It is not necessarily sin that God is focusing on in this second dark night (most people at this stage already love God and already are walking in fear of Him), but on our human nature itself - our natural habits and beliefs, our self-reliance and self-love and all our "natural habits" that do not reflect Him. These are attitudes and belief systems that God wants to expose and eliminate because they often become the "roots" of our sin.
“Since the divine extreme strikes in order to renew the soul and divinize it (by stripping it of the habitual affections and properties of the old man to which it is strongly united, attached, and conformed), it so disentangles and dissolves the spiritual substance–absorbing it in a profound darkness–that the soul at the sight of its miseries feels that it is melting away and being undone by a cruel spiritual death; ...It is fitting that the soul be in this sepulcher of dark death in order that it attain the spiritual resurrection for which it hopes.” Saint John
God forces us to look at things that we normally don't see as being in conflict with the Lord: our reason, our hopes, our affections, our views, even our zeal for the Lord. We are also forced to look at all that we learned from our culture, our religion and even our spiritual and religious experiences, and most especially our belief systems that often feed our pride and human ego and our self-life. These must be exposed and uprooted.
These human ways come from our upbringing and what we have accepted as real that have helped shape our preconceived value systems, our habits and thought processes. While we can never get beyond our humanness while remaining in our bodies, still God shows us through this dark night what needs to be put to the death and sacrificed on the cross so that we may enter the holy of holies within us where God dwells in our heart.
"Wherefore, in this night following, both parts of the soul are purged together, and it is for this end that it is well to have passed through the corrections of the first night, and the period of tranquility which proceeds from it, in order that, sense being united with spirit, both may be purged after a certain manner and may then suffer with greater fortitude. For very great fortitude is needful for so violent and severe a purgation, since, if the weakness of the lower part has not first been corrected and fortitude has not been gained from God through the sweet and delectable communion which the soul has afterwards enjoyed with Him, its nature will not have the strength or the disposition to bear it." St. John
I was doing all the right things to make myself holy, I believed, but in reality following all the rules does not make one holy. Holiness comes from and through the heart connected to God. So we live on the outer through our senses until we can connect to the inner still small voice within. Connecting to that inner voice began in earnest after I took some training in Health Kinesiology and also prayed to God to help me hear the still small voice within, or my guardian angel, by sending me a signal on my ear to stop and listen. And so my attunement with body signals began, first just on my ear, signaling me to make a prayer, then still my thoughts and tune in. Year after the dark night of the spirit many other body symptoms came to me through the Holy Spirit as a form of communication with heaven.
Daily, for years between the first dark night and this of the spirit, I believed I was listening to heaven's direction. I opened up a healing practice in Montana and helped people uncover their spiritual and emotional blocks that caused pain and illness in their mind and body. It was a very happy time of my life as I felt Christ near me always guiding me and heavenly brothers in spirit doing the same. Then one day I received direction to move to Utah, where my healing practice would inadvertently end and I would experience an astral influence in my hearing ability and learn what it is like to be an outcast in someone's religion where also women were not allowed to communicate their spiritual experiences to others, only the men could.
There are different imperfections each soul takes on, so no two dark nights are the same. One such imperfection involves false visions given by the devil.
"For, as they find so many and such abundant spiritual communications and apprehensions, both in sense and in spirit wherein they often times see imaginary and spiritual visions...(from the devil)" St. John
So this dark night began after many years passed where I believed I was in communication with the spiritual masters and I had many spiritual experiences that could not be explained by natural causes, with many blessings, which only proved to my mind and heart that I was on the right path. While I was listening and believing I was attuned to heaven, I engaged in doubt and fear when I moved to Utah and contacted the astral realm or wherever spirits abide that mediums contact. This I believed was due to the Mormon environment and its beginnings with the founder Joseph Smith, who said he contacted an angel he called Moroni, who dictated to him information he included in the Book of Mormon. Moroni is not a heavenly created angel. Mormon's believe that ordinary men become angels after they are resurrected and go to heaven.
I dealt with my doubts in the purity of prayer and demanding in the name of Christ for any voices to be gone if they be not of the Light. One day while I was in my morning prayer work I was interrupted to take a message to give to my outer guru, something that would help her heal. The intent of the message was to precipitate in me a crisis. Would I give the message I knew that I shouldn't give my guru or risk disobeying a spiritual master's direction and not pass on the message? Of course the guru should be able to receive her own messages, but still since she had already been diagnosed with mental problems (and a few months later with Alzheimer), she was not in the best state to help herself. So I sent the message and promptly received back a rebuke from her stating that I was not receiving messages from the masters or my own higher self and I better cease and desist or I would be dismissed from the church. I was accused of taking psychic messages and that I needed a lot of healing.
I was so shaken by her words I felt the rock of Christ I believed I was standing on was kicked out from under me. There was no way I could continue my life as it had been listening to the voice within and the ascended masters when my guru was telling me I was not receiving messages from them or my God self, but the psychic. Yet that first week after I received that letter I flashed back to all my interactions, spiritual experiences, and words received since I began my spiritual path and I could find no experiences that confirmed these voices or messages were psychic. Rather one by one I put them on the side of holy that I believed had brought forth good fruits. Nevertheless, I chose to follow the guru regardless of what I believed, and to no longer listen to the inner voice.
"He (God) strips their faculties, affections and feelings, both spiritual and sensual, both outward and inward, leaving the understanding dark, the will dry, the memory empty and the affections in the deepest affliction, bitterness and constraint, taking from the soul the pleasure and experience of spiritual blessings which it had aforetime, in order to make of this privation one of the principles which are requisite in the spirit so that there may be introduced into it and united with it the spiritual form of the spirit, which is the union of love." St. John
Thus began my dark night where I was plunged into a darkness where I felt cut off from God and all the heavenly companions who had previously guided my life and appeared to have given me so much love and support. Yet I was the one who chose to cut off my contact because I was told that my spiritual experiences were not real. I felt bereft without my almost daily communion with heaven. I could no longer trust my spiritual work, my prayers and decrees, in fact, I felt like I could not know one iota of truth from a lie and trust anything I had previously believed as the truth. I promptly broke my foot and could not walk for weeks. I lost my entire Health Kinesiology workbook and text that had everything I knew from all my classes and that I needed to do healing sessions. The day after I broke my foot I had a trip to Idaho planned to take a healing course. I had not yet gone to the doctors to find out what had happened to my foot, but I knew something was seriously wrong as it was very swollen and I could not stand on it. I hobbled to the car and put my workbook on the roof until I could get everything in the car, and then drove off, not realizing until I got to Idaho that I had left it on the roof!
I never found the workbook and it was irreplaceable. One of my fellow classmates in the courses lovingly spent hours copying every page of her book and sending it to me by mail. Yet it was not my book with my notes, and I missed my book dearly. So I lost my spiritual contact with my inner hearing and my ability to use kinesiology, which was another means of spiritual contact with the Light.
While I existed and appeared to function normally so that even my husband did not know how I suffered within for my loss of contact with heaven, I felt like half of me was dead. It was all an interior suffering. I was led to see that I had been co-dependent on the guru. Whether it was a heavenly guru or my earthly guru of my church, I wanted to do God's will so much that I put aside my intuitive knowing of what is right and wrong for my life.
When I was growing up I rarely would ask my parents for anything, nor did I seek their help. My mother told me later that she learned that she better have heard me ask for something the first time because I would never ask again. I never wanted to be a burden to anyone so I relied on myself. Even when I had injuries, suffered from weeks with tonsillitis, a bladder infection, an ear infection, etc. I would not say a word to anyone and suffer through my maladies until they would cease on their own. Self-discipline was learned through my childhood and learning self-dependence. I never asked for money, I just went out and got a job at a very early age. When I wanted new clothes I would take my earnings and buy them myself. I bought my first car in cash and put myself through college with a little help from college grants.
I also seemed to know everything I needed to know for my immediate future. I knew when to start college and what to study. I knew what kind of job to train for while in high school. I knew I would marry young and have four children. I just unquestionably knew these things and possibly thought it was just very ordinary for everyone to know as I did. It was not like I was told anything, nor did I hear any voices, at least I don't remember doing so until I married and then I heard a voice for the first time ask me if I really loved my husband!
Yet all that self reliance and knowing was usurped by my belief that a guru and teacher was above me and I should obey their direction, when in truth I had the greatest direction direct from God. I don't know how God reached me but I knew my relationship with God was good. I started sacrificing to God at an early age and easily took up fasting on a regular basis, doing novenas and such after I joined the Ascended Master Teachings. After my inner hearing was given to me I became dependent on this guidance to tell me about myself, which at first is probably lawful to help you see what you cannot see about yourself. Yet like every child that has to grow up and leave home and start making their own decisions, I had to leave behind the inner instruction and find not only my previous knowing I had had before following a guru, but even to come up higher to become a leader that would give other people guidance.
"These habitual imperfections belong to all those who have not passed beyond this state of the proficient; they cannot coexist, as we say, with the perfect state of union through love." St. John
So through those two years of experiencing this dark night I made decisions without any inner knowing or guidance. I didn't make any major decisions except to stop every practice I had ever done that I was told to do. Somehow I knew, as I was led to unconsciously do, to create a life where you do what you do because you love to do it, not because you have to or should. I don't mean that we stop cooking and cleaning and going to work, I continued doing all the necessary jobs a mother and wife do. What I changed most especially were my spiritual practices. I first stopped all the rituals and gradually found my own spiritual daily work that I believed was not only helping me on my path but assisting others in the world.
"Inasmuch as God here purges the soul according to the substance of its sense and spirit, and according to the interior and exterior faculties, the soul must needs be in all its parts reduced to a state of emptiness, poverty and abandonment and must be left dry and empty and in darkness." St. John
I had been in the Ascended Master Teachings for twenty years when I experienced this dark night. Previously I experienced how the chelas of the ascended masters believed we had the highest and purest teachings on the planet—a belief that is also common in some churches and New Age groups, beginning with the Jewish faith and their belief that they are the "chosen ones" of God. Now I was a "gentile", meaning that I was not Mormon. Anyone outside the Mormon faith is called a gentile. In other words, my husband and I were looked upon by some of our neighbors and coworkers as the Jews looked upon those of the pagan nations, a people outside of God.
I discovered that to open a business, put on a lecture, meet new friends or be part of a neighborhood community was not going to happen if we were not a Mormon. Everything I tried would not come to fruition because I was the outcast. The first thing one of our neighbors asked me, as we were introduced was, "Are you a Latter Day Saint?" I was appalled. Where in the world would someone ask you your religion as the first important exchange of words? In Utah. Some of the Mormons we met had to know if you were Mormon first before they would talk to you so they could determine whether to be friends with you or not.
Consequently, I could not find clients for my healing practice. After I got my real estate license I could not sell but a few homes that were to non Mormons. I made no new friends the five years we lived there, outside of coworkers and our business friendships. God was teaching me what it feels like to be outside of the "people of God." Here I thought I was on a high path of Christ and God Truth and I found myself looked upon by others as being on a path of practically a heathen! The effect was that I was knocked down quite a few notches in my sense of purity in my faith and relationship with God. I was being humbled. My husband had begun his own path that he felt was superior to the previous organization of the Summit Lighthouse we had belonged to, and he did not share his newfound beliefs with me. There was no one I could share my faith and beliefs with leaving me to feel like a lone ship at sea.
"All this God brings to pass by means of this dark contemplation; wherein the soul not only suffers this emptiness and the suspension of these natural supports and perceptions, which is a most afflictive suffering (as if a man were suspended or held in the air so that he could not breathe), but likewise He is purging the soul, annihilating it, emptying it or consuming in it... all the affections and imperfect habits which it has contracted in its whole life." St. John
Here I had believed that suffering for the world was a sign of a true saint. I easily accepted suffering and that suffering for others was saintly and right. Would my suffering make any sense if all around me people looked down upon me as being far below a saint? One day my dentist suggested I cap two teeth, so I agreed and had the teeth prepared. After the Novocaine wore off I was in pain. After a day with no end to the pain I called the dentist. He told me to wait and see if things subside. Well, I waited and no relief. So he suggested that the nerve was dying and I needed a root canal. Since the two teeth were next to each other it was hard to tell which one was the cause of the pain, although the endodontist chose one from his exam and I had the root canal.
Yet that did not end the pain. It continued for a month. The pain was so intolerable that I took ibuprofen around the clock. One night I awoke in extreme pain. I had forgotten to take the ibuprofen before I went to sleep. I got down on my knees and I begged God to take the pain from me. I told God that my suffering was not real suffering because I was taking pain killers to end the suffering, so what was the purpose of this pain? I heard back, "You want this pain!"
I had previously called the endodontist and told him my pain was continuing and I needed the other tooth to have a root canal. A day after my waking up in pain I went in to get the work done, but by then the pain had seemed to be subsiding, just a bit. Then, while waiting in the waiting room for my appointment, the doctor comes out and sits next to me and asked me, "Do you really want this procedure? I think you should wait." I was so surprised that I did leave without the work being done! And lo and behold in two days the pain was all gone.
I knew that the Holy Spirit had intervened and taken the pain away from me, and its cause, and the doctor was also led by the Holy Spirit not to perform his operation on my tooth. It was unheard of that a doctor would come out to the patient in the waiting room and convince them to not have a procedure done. After hearing the words of the Holy Spirit that I wanted this pain, I promptly replied back, "I do not want it!" Yet I knew the message was that at some level of my soul I brought this pain to me and God was going to show me that not all suffering is for God, but from wrong beliefs.
Changes After the Dark Night of the Spirit
This did not end my martyrdom, it was but one element of my belief, although in time, and after the dark nights, I believe I came to a healthy and God-like adaption to what true saintly suffering is. Years after this dark night I continued to have inexplicable and unique body experiences where I would have pain that I could not attribute to any known cause. I would research the Internet looking for a cause and find no one who had like symptoms, and if I did, they too found out that no doctor or remedy could find a cure. Yet I was at peace with the pain and would continue with whatever I was given for sometimes months at a time. The longest time was about two years. Most of the times the symptoms would just quietly disappear. Other times I felt a push to do something to stop the longtime pain after I had carried it for some time, and simultaneously, with the thought to look for a cure, the pain would suddenly disappear. It was not that I consciously even noticed when the pain was gone. It would take me sometimes weeks to realize I was free of a certain symptom because I usually gave it little attention learning to live with these odd maladies.
Thus this was just one of the refinements that occurred from my dark nights. I was more at peace with whatever God gave me or took away from me. I was free of attachments and free to love people without any expectations. I no longer cried when separated by loved ones. I felt like we were never separated no matter the distance between us. I also felt a sense of detachment from human love. I did not need others to like or love me to feel whole and complete in God. God was all I needed, and from that feeling of completeness I was able to totally give of myself to others in whatever capacity God needed me to give.
While my habits and thoughforms were unique to me in what God wanted me to see that weren't necessarily sinful acts, but still separated me from God, each person's dark night will be different depending on what character flaws, habits and incorrect thoughts are governing their world and God wants them to see. It took me two years of separation from my close relationship with heaven before I was refined enough to start listening again. I did not instigate the change. Suddenly God Elohim were there in my world directing me to take hypnotherapy training after I received the words, "You are being selfish" not listening to the inner voice anymore. So I decided to myself that okay, I will try again. This time I won't listen in fear and doubt, but in faith and trust in God that no matter what happens, God is in control because I pray daily for God to take command of my world.
After the dark night an intense period of preparation for my mission began that lasted about a year, and I believe was preparation for a service for God. I am not totally aware of what my mission accomplished, but every day brings a new element of understanding as to what its purpose was. After the dark night I once again was in daily communication with heavenly guides that identified themselves as ascended masters. Through their guidance I learned how to follow the Holy Spirit without hearing the inner voice and to surrender and focalize my surrender to God and serve His causes on earth, and to strengthen my will, one with God's. I was not aware that I was in training for a mission other than continuing being a practitioner in the healing arts.
The first part of my mission began a year after the end of my dark night, and would last seven years during which my husband was working side-by-side with me, and then in a blink of an eye we were separated forever. In truth, while we were working quasi together, we were not on the same page, but I was not to know this. Whenever doubts would appear to what my husband really believed about God and was doing in that belief, I would promptly set it aside, reasoning that there was a higher purpose I was not aware of and I would return to peace and faith in God that He was in control. And He was.
That story will continue in another chapter. I am grateful for my dark night experiences and for what I received and became after them, although I would never want to repeat them! God is a mystery to us, but what a grand mystery when we give our lives and will to serve Him and His Holy Purpose.
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Part I the dark night of the soul.