The Dark Night of the Soul Unwrapped

• 11. "I hadn't realised that it wasn't just me going through it." With Paul Currie

  After fifteen years of disciplined meditation and spiritual seeking, Paul hit a brick wall. He got ME/CFS, lost his job, his ideas about spirituality crumbled, and he lost interest in all the teachings he had tried so assiduously to follow. With no role in life, and no sense of direction, he felt like he was falling into a bottomless pit. Occasionally, a deeper sense of peace came out of nowhere, but he doubted himself, calling himself crazy. Eventually, after several years, he found himself ready to have a role in the world again.Amongst other things, Paul and I talk about the impossibility of “achieving” surrender; putting on a brave face and trying not to feel our feelings; the myth of enlightenment; and how therapeutic and spiritual interventions frequently feel like coercion or violation during the dark night. We also discuss drinking the "meditation Kool-Aid", and the blind alley of trying to be a detached witness to our experience. We run with Paul’s metaphor of Sisyphus endlessly rolling the boulder up the hill; we ponder what we’d say to our younger selves; we wonder at how the dark night stretched our capacity to be with ourselves; and we mull over the paradox of being grateful for having suffered.Paul Currie worked as an actor as a young adult, before eventually becoming disillusioned and unfulfilled by performance and deciding to embark on a spiritual search. In his mid thirties he experienced a dark night of the soul process during which everything seemed to fall apart, especially all of his notions of becoming a spiritual person or an enlightened person. Following this experience he trained as a counsellor and psychotherapist and now dedicates his time to being with people experiencing challenging and difficult states.Connect with PaulFiona Robertson is the author of The Dark Night of the Soul: A Journey from Absence to Presence, and Eve Was a Realist: Poems for the Untamed Heart. She works one to one with people who are going through a dark night or spiritual emergency, accompanying them in this challenging terrain as they rediscover and deepen into their real selves. She also offers a monthly dark night gathering group, and occasional workshops and a reflective space for therapists and counsellors.Connect with FionaIf you’ve enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and share.You’re welcome to contact The Dark Night of the Soul Unwrapped via email. [email protected] by James Waring / Design by Adam McKillop / Artwork by Stefan Armoneit

  --------  

  52:15

  --------

  52:15
• 10. "It only needs one other person to have been to that place to disperse the loneliness." With John Ablett

  Having been interested in mythological and spiritual artwork from a young age, John went to university to study comparative symbolism. At twenty-one – while feeling directionless and reading intense philosophy, including Krishnamurti – his sense of self completely disintegrated. He dropped out of his degree course and, for about six months, became a barefoot guru (having left his shoes in an art gallery). He travelled and taught, living in the homes of people who supported him, until he realised that the guru phenomenon – or "circus", as he calls it – didn’t feel congruent. He went back to his family, volunteered at a playgroup to learn how to play, and gradually built a life.For ten years, he “couldn’t touch” the whole experience. Eventually, however, he came across Stanislav Grof and Holotropic Breathwork, and began the slow process of embodying and integrating everything that had transpired during his guru period. Amongst other things, John and I discuss the pitfalls of being a guru; learning how to navigate in a place of unknowing; the necessity of having maps that resonate; and how we can bear witness to ourselves. We also talk a little about his work with the Spiritual Crisis Network, and share an important pause towards the end of the episode.John Ablett is the author of The Accidental Guru, one of the accounts in Breaking Open: Finding a Way Through Spiritual Emergency. He has had a variety of careers, including being a graphic designer, a computer programmer, and a social worker. He co-facilitates a monthly Spiritual Crisis Network peer support group, online and in person in the Sheffield (UK) area, details here. You can see examples of John’s transpersonal artwork on his website, Holotropic Mandalas.Fiona Robertson is the author of The Dark Night of the Soul: A Journey from Absence to Presence, and Eve Was a Realist: Poems for the Untamed Heart. She works with many people who are going through a dark night or spiritual emergency, accompanying them in this challenging terrain as they rediscover and deepen into their real selves. She also offers a monthly dark night gathering group, and occasional workshops for therapists and counsellors.Connect with FionaMentionsJohn mentions The Stormy Search for the Self, by Christina Grof and Stanislav Grof. If you’ve enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and share.You’re welcome to contact The Dark Night of the Soul Unwrapped via email: [email protected] by James Waring / Design by Adam McKillop / Artwork by Stefan Armoneit

  --------  

  53:17

  --------

  53:17
• 9. "I couldn't be for myself at first what I was for others." With Li Meuser

  Following on from our first conversation, Li and I begin with the hamster wheel that is capitalism, colonialism and imperialism, and the effects of living within power structures that threaten us in a variety of ways, depending on who we are. We talk about how it was impossible to keep up being an efficient cog in that wheel during our dark nights, and how it’s natural to no longer want to participate in “this deadening culture.”We discuss the “con job” that often masquerades as spirituality; how the dark night rattles the construction of personhood and all our ideas about who we are, who we’re supposed to be and who we shouldn’t be; our somatic survival patterns and the nature of what Li calls the mental body; and the wisdom and clarity of the heart body. We also touch into the undoing of binaries; the expanding capacity for love and compassion towards ourselves and others; times when there’s been a starvation of heart and huge amounts of shame towards ourselves; and totally unexpected moments of grace. Finally, we lean into the realm of unconditionality and connecting to the actual – breath, gravity – and the ongoing dance of being on this planet.Li Meuser is a full-time student of being fully human, and is deeply passionate about connecting and interrelating. As a somatic therapist, integrative primary prevention trainer, and creative writing facilitator, Li utilizes transformational and wisdom-based practices in supporting people with their somatic intelligence/energies. In learning how to embody our creativity, we are able to consciously choose to discover, move into and remember the realms of interdependency and liberation for all. Li has an extensive collection of science-based recordings to regulate the brain and nervous system on the Insight Timer app.Connect with LiFiona Robertson is the author of The Dark Night of the Soul: A Journey from Absence to Presence, and Eve Was a Realist: Poems for the Untamed Heart. She works with many people who are going through a dark night or spiritual emergency, accompanying them in this challenging terrain as they rediscover and deepen into their real selves. She also offers both a monthly dark night gathering group, and occasional workshops for therapists and counsellors.Connect with FionaIf you’ve enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and share.You’re welcome to contact The Dark Night of the Soul Unwrapped via email: [email protected] by James Waring / Design by Adam McKillop / Artwork by Stefan Armoneit

  --------  

  1:04:01

  --------

  1:04:01
• 8. "I wanted to be as real as real could be." With Li Meuser

  Li’s first dark night began when a relationship suddenly ended, and they found themself beset by heartbreak, their survival strategies stripped. Some time later, an abusive intimate relationship took Li even deeper in, splitting them open in what they describe as “a total unravelling of the wounded me.” They started to feel all the fear – and other emotions – that they’d been masking, denying, avoiding, and hiding. Slowly, Li began to feel the excruciating pain of aloneness and separation – which was, eventually, freeing – and gradually came into a remembering of interconnectedness.In this episode, we talk about false spiritual narratives and the shame of feeling fear; wanting to die while simultaneously waking up from our wounds; moments of gratitude for the mundane; and craving realness. We also touch into our creatureness; moving beyond the colonial mindset of right or wrong into a place of kindness and tenderness; discovering the kind of wisdom that comes from falling apart; and the phase of not being able to see the light at the end of the dark. And we laugh about how much crying we did during our dark nights, and how Li could track their emotional state by the size of their water bill.Li Meuser is a full-time student of being fully human, and is deeply passionate about connecting and interrelating. As a somatic therapist, integrative primary prevention trainer, and creative writing facilitator, Li utilizes transformational and wisdom-based practices in supporting people with their somatic intelligence/energies. In learning how to embody our creativity, we are able to consciously choose to discover, move into and remember the realms of interdependency and liberation for all. Li has an extensive collection of science-based recordings to regulate the brain and nervous system on the Insight Timer app.Connect with LiFiona Robertson is the author of The Dark Night of the Soul: A Journey from Absence to Presence, and Eve Was a Realist: Poems for the Untamed Heart. She works one to one with people who are going through a dark night or spiritual emergency, accompanying them in this challenging terrain as they rediscover and deepen into their real selves. She also offers a monthly dark night gathering, and occasional workshops and a reflective space for therapists and counsellors.Connect with FionaIf you’ve enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and share.You’re welcome to contact The Dark Night of the Soul Unwrapped via email: [email protected] by James Waring / Design by Adam McKillop / Artwork by Stefan Armoneit

  --------  

  50:15

  --------

  50:15
• 7. "It's very much a question of what works for the individual." With Dr Mike Rush

  Mike recently completely his PhD on the empirical evidence for interventions in spiritual crisis. Always interested in myth, magic, and mysticism, he has extensively studied religious and spiritual phenomena through the lens of transpersonal psychology. His research brings much-needed academic attention to an experience so often overlooked by both the spiritual and therapeutic worlds, and is deeply informed by his work supporting people going through spiritual crisis.In this episode, we talk about a central aspect of Mike’s research; the strands of what he broadly refers to as grounding – the practices, attitudes, and behaviours that might support a move from disconnection towards connection, or ungroundedness towards groundedness, during spiritual crisis. In the order we discuss them, these themes are: a connection to self, world, and others (including the transpersonal other); keeping a foot in both worlds; cultivating a relationship with experience; word-weaving with embodied metaphors; a centred, balanced, and embodied self; a balance between containment and release; resonance or contagion; and last but by no means least, a sense of humour. We also discuss the importance of creative expression; the difference between naming and labelling; and the interplay between culture and spiritual crisis.Dr Mike Rush is a researcher, hypno-psychotherapist, and co-director of The Spiritual Crisis Network in the UK. He has published in a variety of academic journals on subjects as varied as Near Death Experiences, the neuroscience of religious experience, and Western Esotericism. He co-facilitates online and in-person peer support groups for people going through spiritual crisis, and also offers one to one counselling and consultation.Connect with MikeFiona Robertson is the author of The Dark Night of the Soul: A Journey from Absence to Presence, and Eve Was a Realist: Poems for the Untamed Heart. She works one to one with people who are going through a dark night or spiritual emergency, accompanying them in this challenging terrain as they rediscover and deepen into their real selves. She also offers both a monthly dark night gathering group, and occasional workshops and a reflective space for therapists and counsellors.Connect with FionaMentionsMike mentions the following organisation and individuals:The Spiritual Crisis Network UK.Marie-Grace Brook’s list of 84 possible grounding or integration practices.Emma Bragdon.If you’ve enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and share.You’re welcome to contact The Dark Night of the Soul Unwrapped via email: [email protected] by James Waring / Design by Adam McKillop / Artwork by Stefan Armoneit

  --------  

  1:00:04

  --------

  1:00:04

Fler podcasts i Hälsa och motion

Trendiga poddar i Hälsa och motion

Om The Dark Night of the Soul Unwrapped