Yesterday, after bursting into inconsolable crying several times in my beloved’s arms, I finally lay down exhausted against her chest. Then she gently asked: “Do you know what the dark night of the soul means? “Yes, I know.” “You’re going through it now.”

I had heard about the dark night of the soul, that is, about how people go through a rollercoaster of emotions at some point in their spiritual opening, which takes them to experience all the deepest emotions crowded into their mind as one torrent that destroys everything. I had sometimes wondered why I hadn’t experienced anything like that. Had I perhaps already “advanced” so much on this spiritual journey that I no longer needed to go into the dark night of the soul. Well, I wasn’t 🙂

This week has felt as if I had walked and sometimes crawled across some huge and multi-lane highway, on which great emotional trucks rumbled past me and over me sometimes from the left and sometimes from the right and sometimes from a completely different direction. In other words, I have once and for all gone to pieces and disintegrated into thousands of emotional fragments fluttering in the wind. So cool!

Now I know what the dark night of the soul means. It brought out and confronted me with all the feelings that more than 60 years ago, as a small innocent boy, I did not dare to express to my parents, who themselves were struggling with the shadows of their own subconscious feelings. I couldn’t afford to express my own feelings of fear, anger, confusion and anxiety at the time, as they might have jeopardized the love and care of my parents, on whom I was totally dependent. So I pushed those forbidden feelings into the depths of my subconscious, from where they ventured out this week to face me, because I finally felt that I was loved, that is, that there is a person next to me who can accept my breakdown without falling apart. How long has it taken!

The dark night of my soul began with a subtle irritation that I experienced when my beloved did not want to meet me when I suggested it. Over the course of the evening, it caught on to new topics of anger, which I tried to face in my usual way by turning the feelings into joy and gratitude. I didn’t quite succeed this time and the feeling kept growing and gnawing at my mind.

In the morning, the irritation had already grown into great anger and annoyance, which I tried my best to face. It subsided eventually, because I already knew that even if it was triggered by my loved one’s actions or words, those feelings were still mine alone. That is, I didn’t start blaming my feelings on someone else, which made it easier to face them.

But the next day, a huge truck of sadness rushed into my mind, which also appeared in the mirror of my beloved’s actions, even though everything still happened only in my mind. I sobbed and sobbed in the grip of that extreme sadness the entire evening. I felt that I was losing the openness of love that I had just been able to experience, and I was afraid that my loved one would die or disappear from my life. The sadness seemed to have no end, but I knew how to accept it quite openly and calmly. For some reason, I understood that sadness only needs to be felt until the end. I cried myself to sleep.

On the third day, after extreme feelings of anger and sadness, my mind was dominated by fighting and pushing my loved one away. She evokes too strong emotions and is therefore too dangerous. I must leave her and get some other company. I knew how to go through these feelings myself and didn’t drag my lover along with them. I knew those feelings as my own.

And on the fourth day, yesterday, I was finally ready to ask for help. I sat smoking my pipe in the yard and felt alone and truly helpless. I realized that all my life I have kept all these boundless feelings of an innocent child stuffed in the recesses of my subconscious. Like a good child, I had stored them away in the recesses of my mind, waiting for the moment when I would feel loved enough to dare to express my big feelings. I’ve been doing all this on my own until now, but I can’t do it anymore. I need help!

I sent my loved one a message and told her that I was coming to visit. I didn’t even wait for her answer before I started driving, because I just had to meet her. I was about to break into a thousand pieces. I was broken and absolutely exhausted.

She communicated that I was welcome a little before my arrival. It made it easier, because in that emotional state I wasn’t at all sure if she wanted to meet me. I’m must just be too much!

That delicate woman receives me with a sweet smile and when she hears that I’m about to fall apart, she smiles even wider. Everything is amazingly well!

We sit on the couch and while telling about my feelings of the last few days, I fall apart several times in his arms. I am crying in such a deep distress, which until these days I have not believed that anyone could receive. No one has ever loved me so much that I would have dared to feel these emotions that I had buried deep inside. And my beloved smiles peacefully beside me and strokes my graying hair. It’s about time!

* * *

I wrote and published the book “When a Man’s Heart Opens” seven years ago. I imagined then that I had already experienced that opening and understood something great about my innermost feelings. I was mistaken, as I have been many times before, but I set a course for my research. I wanted to explore this field of emotions. I wanted to open my heart, even though I didn’t even know what that really meant.

Looking at the peace of this moment, those feelings brought up by the dark night of the soul are clearly the feelings that I did not dare and could not feel in front of my parents as a child. In my childish love, I have not wanted to burden their clearly confused minds with my own great feelings. I have been silent just like almost everyone else in this land of repressed emotions. 

Experiencing emotions is neither dangerous nor difficult, as long as you learn to remember that there is never another being responsible for them than yourself. If I start throwing guilt at my parents, wives or other loved ones, I lose all my power and responsibility over my own state of mind and get lost in the jungle of accusations and counter-accusations.

Only by experiencing and facing all the challenging emotions myself did I survive the dark night of the soul so easily. And what a happiness and relief it was to cry out the inconsolable final cries of that night in the arms of my beloved. In her love, I finally dared to experience my feelings, I dared to open my heart. Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!