Dark Night Meditation

aka: Dark Night of the Soul, Shadow Self Meditation, Dark Soul Journey, The Dark Mirror Meditation, Facing One's Inner Demons

Content Warning: Self Harm, Abuse, Nauseating Descriptions

Fluffy Bunny Quote

I moved my feet to the edge of the grass, where the green blades gave way to packed brown earth. The bare ground surrounded a gaping hole nearly four feet across. It was so deep that nothing within it was illuminated by the dim forest light.
I stared down at the hole. It was my subconscious mind down there in the darkness. Everything that I didn’t let myself know about myself was down there. All the suppressed feelings, dark desires, hidden agendas, and unnamed sins were crawling in those shadows.
I’d stood at the edge of this hole before, several times. It didn’t matter. It was familiar, but there was no confidence or comfort in the familiarity. No matter how often I looked into my heart and soul, I found new pain and more secrets to face down.
It was my own mind, but I could never defeat the monsters down there.
I took a deep breath and stepped to the edge of the hole. I straightened my shoulders and clenched my jaw. And I jumped, feet first, into the darkness.

~ Nicola, Fluffy Bunny

The Dark Night is a highly advanced meditative self-exploration closely related to the practice of Magic/Psychic Abilities. It is not dangerous, per se, but there is always some level of trauma for the one who engages in the practice. However, the benefits are as extreme as the psychological risks.
It is key to breaking through once one reaches a certain level of wisdom and experience. It allows one to move past one's own flawed existance, not by ignoring it but by embracing it.

Guidance

While many have tried a group Dark Night experience, they have had only partial success with it. The fact is one must face one's sins alone.

History

Many traditions have some variation of the Dark Night meditation.
Some traditions subscribe to an overly optimistic view of spirituality, even to the extreme of becoming part of the cult of positivity. Members of such traditions are commonly either unable to complete the Dark Night meditation successfully, or find the experience traumatic enough to cause long-term psychological effects. Those who can get through even part of it successfully frequently find their philosophy no longer meshes with the philosophy of groups that subscribe to the cult of positivity.

Execution

Fluffy Bunny Quote

Rock after endless rock scraped my hands and knees, grating along my shins. My throat was dry and my hair stuck up all over from the wind of my fall and the exertion of my climbing. I leaned for a moment against the latest rock after sliding down it.
A sound roared out in the darkness. I gasped and lost my grip, falling off the rock I was trying to climb. My right foot struck the stone, banging against the toes that were missing in the physical realm. I bit down on my tongue to suppress a cry of pain. A second roar rang through the cave.
I backed up until I was pressed against a stone that rose up just higher than my head. I stared into the darkness. I felt more than heard a movement to my left, and I turned toward it. A scattering of gravel to my right jerked my attention that way.
I heard growling and snarling on the rock behind me, and the fear crept down my legs, turning them to jelly. I fell to my knees and pressed against the rock, holding the light high, desperately trying to see... anything.

~ Nicola, Fluffy Bunny

In the meditation, the participant must decend into their own subconscious. They are almost universally naked and in the dark, and pursued by their inner demons. They must find a way to encounter their inner demons. This usually ends up being their inner child - not the font of innocence and creativity. It is instead the participant's picture of Dorian Grey. This is the part of themselves that took upon itself all of the abuse and flaws and pain that the participant has done to others. It is the innocence tainted by imperfect, and inconsiderate, behaviors.
If the participant can find the broken child within their demon and accept that they themselves broke the innocent, they can begin to heal the wounds they have inflicted upon the world, and upon their own soul as a reflection of those actions. This is a long, painful, heartwrenching process, as most of us do not want to admit what we are responsible for in terms of the pain of our own and of others' lives.
Fluffy Bunny Quote

What I was hearing was simply my mind’s way of understanding the message. Even though I could hear words, I knew it was just my interpretation of the feelings of accusation that the voice was really projecting.
“Bad, bad, bad, bad,” it chanted.
I allowed my thoughts to stretch out, reaching towards the voice. I didn’t put words into the thought. I spoke to myself in symbols, feelings, and only sometimes words, and I was dealing with deep, hidden parts of my mind. So I didn’t ask a question when I responded, I just sent out the feeling of a question.
“I am bad,” the voice said. “You are bad. We are bad.”
I sent the feeling of “what” to the voice.
“Nooooooooooooo!” the voice cried, denial slapping at me.
A scaled face lunged at mine, snapping jaws just inches from my nose. The voice snarled at me. “You did this! I did this! We did this!”
I doubled over as feelings of anger and guilt mixed with flashes of memory. I felt the tears falling down my cheeks.

~ Nicola, Fluffy Bunny

Neither the inner demon nor the child, broken or healed, can speak in words. However, they communicate in wailing, moaning, and the mental sending of feelings and images. Often, the healed child will want a promise that speaks directly to the immediate spiritual growth of the participant. However, the repercussions of breaking this promise can be severe, including spiritual or emotional self-sabotage or blockages.

Fluffy Bunny Quote - Read with Emotional Caution

Standing before me was a horrible-looking creature, slimy and scaly, dripping with tangles of long, patchy hair. Spikes stood out along its body in asymmetrical, random places, interspersed with gaping sores that oozed bright yellow-green pus streaked with red blood. The creature’s mouth was skewed to one side, so it looked like a clay model that had fallen on the floor and not been fixed. Teeth of all shapes and sizes jutted out of its jaw at odd angles. Its stubby tail had skin torn off in patches along its length.
One deep red eye sat on top of its head, like the eye of a frog, but with the odd rectangular pupil of a goat. The other eye was pale orange and sat low, to one side of the nose, and seemed to have no pupil at all. It wheezed every breath with a mucousy rattle, and an odor of rotting meat and diseased shit surrounded it, wafting towards me with every micro-gust in the air.
I gulped down the bile that rose at the sight of the creature. It was everything horrible and disgusting in the world. I felt repelled by it at every level of my being. I stared at the creature, willing myself to do what I had to do. There was only one way to be rid of it.
I spread my arms wide, and the creature tensed. Before it could react, I stepped forward and wrapped my arms around it. It struggled to get away, thrashing in my arms. It snarled and snapped at my face. Despite its greater size, I was stronger, and I held on tight. The creature whined its vomit-like sound, and I could feel the wetness of pus and slime smearing across my body, dripping down my legs and off my arms. It panted, wheezing and hacking mucus into my face.
I lost track of time, and it seemed sudden when the change happened. In a blink, I was no longer rocking the shrunken body of a filthy beast. Instead, my arms held a little girl of about three or four years old.
She was naked, like me, and her body was covered in gashes and deep purple and yellow bruises. Scars crisscrossed her skin and her dark hair was tangled and matted. Her voice croaked with sobs as she cried out her pain in my arms. I rocked her and sang to her, patting her back gently and stroking her hair, sending love from my heart to hers.
I squeezed the girl who was both my own inner child and the embodiment of my faults and weaknesses, abused by the hurts that had been visited on me and the hurts I had visited on others, and I loved her without judgment. I held her and accepted both what I had done and what had been done to me.
As the child fell asleep, I took a deep breath. Accepting what had been done didn’t mean forgiving or forgetting. It didn’t mean pretending it had never happened or walking away without demanding restitution.

~ Nicola, Fluffy Bunny

Participants

The Dark Night meditation is a highly personalized meditation, only to be taken on by those experienced in both meditation and in the darker aspects of spirituality.

Risk:

High psychological risk is involved. It is similar to an intense type of therapy.

Repetition:

No one wants to repeat a Dark Night meditation, but it should be done every few years to allow continued spiritual growth.

Safety:

It is recommended that one have a trusted person waiting for them when they have completed the Dark Night. Comfort should be offered liberally, as well as drink. Food may also be needed.

Immediate Effects:

The immediate effects are variable, but some are more common, such as crying, hysteria, anger, and, if the meditation was not successfully completed to allow for healing/forgiveness, self harming. Many people sleep for several hours to recover, and hunger, as if the psycho-emotional effort had been a physical effort, is not uncommon.