The dark night of the soul comes just before revelation. When everything is lost, and all seems darkness, then comes the new life and all that is needed.
-- Joseph Campbell, 1983, A Joseph Campbell Companion, p. 39
Note from the channel Thomas Workman: This text was directly channeled; The Guides want us to know that as many face a dark night at this time, the Universe only creates and expands. But to make room for something better, it must at times destroy what now is. Evolution brings only improvement. Above all, The Guides want us to remember that the night is always followed by the dawn.
THE FLOOR BENEATH
An intimate conversation from 'The Guides' about transformation
Source: The Joy Blog @SpeakingFromSource
Every aspect of your current incarnation – your life, as it were – rests on a foundation of beliefs, routines, patterns and structures that are, above all else, a place for you to stand. You have, without much trying, created a framework of decisions and a sense of the circumstances that surround you and how life should be. You know and understand your past and present environment, and that knowledge produces a set of expectations and shapes your beliefs and desires.
You form, in essence, a solid ground from which you are able to exist. Whether satisfying or not, the firmness of the floor – the certitudes that guide the interpretation of all your life experience – provides you confidence, reliability, and predictability as you move and act each day. Stated simply, the floor provides you the equilibrium and stability you need to live.
A great deal rests on this floor. Your entire sense of self, your beliefs about the universe, God, other humans, fate, fortune, luck, and love find solidity here.
The metaphorical floor beneath your feet at this very moment guides your perceptions of reality. What you see, what you feel, what you hear, taste, and smell find its basis on this floor, deciding what needs attention and what to ignore. The floor grounds the interpretation of each stimulus, enabling you to choose what you will process and how you will process it. It recognizes the familiar and questions the unfamiliar. The floor helps you consider new information based on conclusions long since drawn: What is good or bad, right or wrong, safe or dangerous, allowed or forbidden, in-bounds or out. You easily sort out what is wisdom and what is nonsense.
You may love the floor on which you stand. You may find the security pleasant, the routine comforting. You may feel dissatisfaction and longing, feeling restless on this foundation. Regardless of your current appreciation or desire, the floor on which you stand, formed by your own knowledge and conclusions about every aspect of yourself and your life, serve as a solid and secure place from which to dream. Without it, processing occupies your every moment. With it, you can get on with the business of this current incarnation.
Occasionally, and often in response, you notice small cracks in this floor. Tiny indications of inconsistency, incongruity. You steady your stance as the floor shakes at times, weakened by the growing gusts of wind around you. You reinforce as best you can, reassuring yourself at times, looking away at others. Constant distraction is available; something else to think about. You give in, glad for the reason not to pay attention to the danger or dysfunction. There are easier thoughts to be found.
At many stages of your incarnation, you consider reinforcing or revising the floor. Planks of the floor are replaced, requiring only that they fit the planks that surround it; a new piece of information or slight change of circumstance, perhaps, inspires you to reconsider a premise and adjust an expectation or routine without disturbing the floor as a whole. You change your job, your style of clothing, your home, your geographic location. You make new relationships and let go of others. Your physical body ages, finding new abilities and disabilities that shift your position on the floor. The security of the foundation that you stand on allows you to make such minor shifts without the overwhelming burden of change. You remain in full control, adjusting only as you see fit. You look for quick fixes.
You may decide that no shifts or improvements are needed. Whether by acceptance, satisfaction, resignation, or sheer resistance, you might conclude that the premises you have established and routines and habits formed from them must remain constant and unmalleable. You stand and move and live on the floor you have created, and rely on its constancy to guide you, without exception.
The floor under your feet is not solid, however. The universe, true to its nature, is always creating and expanding. The environment that humans find themselves in is constantly shifting and reforming with the goal of evolving all sentient life. There is no standing still, no static state. An uninvited momentum, like a tornado, is suddenly upon you. It will not be denied or dismissed. It cannot be ignored. It comes from inside you.
The rumble beneath your feet is deafening. Routines unravel. Expected outcomes fail. Everything you know begins to dissolve. God, however you understand this universal force, demands that you abandon the familiar stance in search of what lies ahead; to move out of the world you know and fly, head first, into the unknown. You enter into a place that is purposely uncomfortable and unpredictable. Equilibrium is upended. Beliefs and conclusions come into question. Familiarity is lost.
The floor, as you know and rely upon it, is collapsing.
The collapse need not be violent, though it is always as dramatic as your soul needs it to be. It demands your attention through whatever means necessary. Parts of the floor that serve you the least may be the first to give way, or the entire base might drop at once. Either way, you fall as the floor you have stood so confidently upon crumbles at your feet. There may be injury, shock, disbelief, pain. There is always darkness. The effects are instant and may feel eternal. The dark night of the soul, as it has been called, has begun.
Devastation forces a decision: recover or forfeit. The human soul always has the choice to end its incarnation and return to non-physical form, an eternal escape button that ends the suffering but halts the intended harvest. The choice is always yours.
Choosing recovery forces you to consider why the floor collapsed in the first place, bringing you closer to the most important premises of your soul’s journey. The time allotted for you to lick your wounds feels inadequate. Lost and confused, you know you must stand.
But on what? You grab at fragments of floor that leave enough room for some balance and grieve what was lost. The attachments to familiar comforts, of all that has reassured you, sting as they detach from any recognizable form. You are sure only that you are alone and vulnerable. Even your time to mourn feels rushed.
Help is nearby, but it waits for you to reach out your hand. It cannot rescue, cannot remove the pain, even if it wanted to. It only helps you up, steadies you as you try to find balance, and gently observes your first steps.
Recovery requires your attention without distraction, offering only brief moments of relief. Slowly, you reconsider even the simplest of premises and relationships, you contemplate, perhaps for the first time, what you once assumed was true and reliable. There are no quick rewards. Few booming revelations. The wisdom slowly pools near your feet, forcing you to bend and fetch it. Encouragement is plentiful, but not always the way you want it.
In time, with great humility, you realize: the floor collapsed because it cannot hold the weight of the you that wishes to emerge, regardless of your satisfaction or desire. The old floor could not sustain the life experiences that await you, the possibilities that are out of the reach of your current imagination. The floor must give way in order for you to discover what lies just beyond, created by you and waiting just for you.
The floor beneath.
You realize: You, through some larger force, brought the old floor to ruin. There is no culprit hiding in the bushes. You wished without wishing for the greater version of yourself, and knowing the difficulty you have in letting go, agreed that familiarity was to be ripped from your clenched hands. You, the hero, knew the journey was yours to take, and that, for you, an earthquake was required.
Now able to catch your breath, you inhale resurrection as if new to air. Rebirth rises like the sun. You feel new ground under your feet.
At first, this new floor may be unrecognizable, unbelievable. Beyond even your desires and dreams, it peeks out from the rubble, dimly at first, slowly coming into focus. You may brace as you step on it, expecting more collapse, not trusting its new premises and conclusions. You adjust to its strange feel, and in the adjustment, find support. Some aspects feel the same. Some feel profoundly different. You are profoundly different. You are standing in the place where the floor collapsed. Yet, nothing looks the same. Nothing is the same.
Now a great deal of help, both physical and spiritual, find you. You remember truths that surprise you. You find peace that you did not know was possible. On the floor beneath, you are reborn, and a new life awaits. In time, you realize how much richer you are for the journey.
For now, you just breathe. Allow. Be.
