The Darker The Night Of Your Soul, The More You Are Meant To Serve
There is a moment when the identity you have built your whole life around stops making sense. Old roles feel hollow, relationships shift, and you find yourself in a kind of no man's land where you cannot go back to who you were and do not yet know who you are becoming. In this episode, Lorin breaks down the three distinct phases of the dark night of the soul, dissolution, the void, and dawn, so listeners can recognize exactly where they stand in their own process.
He then shares five practices to work with this experience directly rather than bypass it: resisting the urge to force a solution, grieving the old self the way you would grieve any real loss, moving the body and getting into nature, finding someone who can witness the transformation without pulling you back into old patterns, and journaling as a way to let the process speak for itself. Lorin also names a trap he says almost no one talks about: mistaking the sense that nothing matters for spiritual truth, when it is actually a form of bypassing.
Lorin closes with a practical reframe: this stripping away is not punishment, it is preparation for a deeper calling, and the goal is not to figure everything out immediately but to trust the ground will return.
Mentioned in this episode:
Healing Your Relationship with the Masculine
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Healing Your Inner Child
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Transcript
You cannot truly serve someone if you haven't descended into your own underworld, if you haven't faced your own darkness, your own confusion, your moment where everything is breaking down and the only thing keeping you somewhat stable is trust, is surrender.
Speaker A:That experience, that breaking down, is something all the great mystics had to face.
Speaker A:And so do you.
Speaker A:Welcome to the Core.
Speaker A:My name is Lorin Kren, and I help people to get to the core of their deepest challenges in relationships, purpose, and life, and to create real change at the root.
Speaker A:If you haven't subscribed yet, subscribe now so you never miss an episode.
Speaker A:Today I'm going to walk you through the exact three phases of the dark night of the soul so you can pinpoint exactly where you're at in your journey right now.
Speaker A:So everything starts to make sense at a deeper level.
Speaker A:I will also share with you five immensely powerful practices that you can start to apply immediately after you watch or listen to this episode.
Speaker A:And as well, the one subtle hidden trap that keeps people unnecessarily stuck in the dark night of the soul that almost no one knows or speaks about.
Speaker A:I really invite you to listen or watch all the way to the end of this episode.
Speaker A:The dark night of the soul can be described as a spiritual death, an identity loss.
Speaker A:What you once identified with for who you thought yourself to be no longer has the same meaning, or maybe no longer any meaning at all.
Speaker A:Friendships fall away.
Speaker A:A relationship is no longer the same as it was before.
Speaker A:You start seeing things with a level of clarity that can bring a deep level of sadness.
Speaker A:Maybe you hoped things or people, a profession or something to be a certain way, but now you can clearly see it can never fulfill the that function.
Speaker A:You find yourself in this no man's land where you realize you can never, ever fully go back to your old self.
Speaker A:Or you could, but you would just deceive yourself in doing so.
Speaker A:But at the same time, you don't yet know who you are becoming and what's on the other side.
Speaker A:And this uncertainty feels intolerable.
Speaker A:Your mind is trying to latch on to a sense of what what is going on.
Speaker A:You might have even beliefs that say, am I going insane?
Speaker A:Am I crazy?
Speaker A:Because suddenly you're filled with all these doubts.
Speaker A:The fabric of who you believe yourself to be, which is your identity, is being shaken.
Speaker A:And the darker the night of your soul, the deeper you are meant to serve.
Speaker A:Why?
Speaker A:Because in that shaking, something deeper is meant to come through you, be born through you.
Speaker A:So many things that we believe who ourselves to be or where we believe we need to go or to do in this life come from conditioning.
Speaker A:They're not even our dreams, our true interests, our true desires.
Speaker A:They come from a place of wounding and by everything being shaken, what is revealed is what is true.
Speaker A:And everything else you're stripped of.
Speaker A:John of the Cross, a mystic, wrote about exactly this, and he defined the dark night of the soul as the soul being stripped of everything familiar in order to find union with something greater than yourself.
Speaker A:Something deeper is meant to be born in this process.
Speaker A:And why specifically service?
Speaker A:Because you cannot truly serve someone if you haven't descended into your own underworld, if you haven't faced your own darkness, your own confusion, your moment where everything is breaking down and the only thing keeping you somewhat stable is trust, is surrender.
Speaker A:That experience, that breaking down is something all the great mystics had to face, and so do you.
Speaker A:You cannot guide another through the depths of this or whatever they might be facing if you haven't gone through these depths yourself.
Speaker A:You need to emerge from the darkness to become a beacon of light.
Speaker A:So this is your process to serve.
Speaker A:And we'll talk later in this episode about what this service actually might mean.
Speaker A:Now, let's make all of this much more practical.
Speaker A:Let's talk about the three phases that most people are not aware of and that allow you to pinpoint exactly where you're at in your journey right now.
Speaker A:Phase number one, we can call dissolution.
Speaker A:This is where you are still trying to fit into your old identity.
Speaker A:Fulfill certain roles, go to certain places, be with certain people.
Speaker A:And you start to realize that it no longer has the same level of meaning.
Speaker A:It might even feel meaningless, it might feel hollow.
Speaker A:This old identity still has momentum inside you, because that's when you do something many times.
Speaker A:You condition yourself right?
Speaker A:It becomes automated.
Speaker A:It becomes a program, so to speak.
Speaker A:So now the old program is still running, but your awareness and your perspective has shifted entirely.
Speaker A:So we can call this dissolution because it's dissolving.
Speaker A:In that moment, your relationship with everything is changing, or with most things is changing at a fundamental level.
Speaker A:And this is very disorientating because suddenly you relate to people, things, or profession in a completely different way.
Speaker A:The second phase, we can call the void.
Speaker A:And this is where most people get stuck.
Speaker A:And it's also the phase that most people try to bypass because it is that uncomfortable.
Speaker A:Imagine floating on the sea or the open water.
Speaker A:There is no land anywhere in sight.
Speaker A:That is the void.
Speaker A:It symbolizes that you have left your old identity, your old self.
Speaker A:You cannot really go back anymore.
Speaker A:You have lost it, so to speak.
Speaker A:Because you can only lose what is not true, what is not your highest nature.
Speaker A:But at the same time, you can't see in the horizon any land, any shore.
Speaker A:So in this void, you are in this no man's land that I described before.
Speaker A:You need to allow yourself to keep floating.
Speaker A:You need to trust or you will suffer.
Speaker A:You don't need to do anything.
Speaker A:But if you don't trust or surrender to the process, you will suffer greatly.
Speaker A:Because your mind is going to try to hold onto something.
Speaker A:But there is nothing.
Speaker A:It's just open water.
Speaker A:Visualize it like your mind trying to hold itself on waves.
Speaker A:But it can't hold the water.
Speaker A:It can't get a grip.
Speaker A:And each time you try this, you become more confused, you become more disorientated.
Speaker A:But you need to allow yourself to float.
Speaker A:You need to allow your soul to go through that journey.
Speaker A:That's where the great surrender has to happen.
Speaker A:That's the most uncomfortable bit.
Speaker A:And that's where most people get stuck.
Speaker A:The third phase we can call dawn.
Speaker A:This is where a moment of insight, a moment of clarity arrives.
Speaker A:A moment where a very subtle realization occurs.
Speaker A:A moment where you start to feel solid ground underneath your feet again.
Speaker A:And inside of what you're meant to do, where you're meant to go, things are becoming clearer.
Speaker A:And with that clarity comes a deep sense of peace that washes over you.
Speaker A:It doesn't yet mean you know exactly all the details and you don't have to, but you're starting to feel a level of certainty that perhaps for a long time you haven't felt.
Speaker A:This is where you start to feel the ground underneath your feet again.
Speaker A:You're able to walk.
Speaker A:You find shore.
Speaker A:And the path is becoming clear in front of you.
Speaker A:You can see it.
Speaker A:So now you only have to walk it and to find what you're truly meant to find.
Speaker A:But you have solid ground.
Speaker A:You can walk.
Speaker A:You know there is a destination.
Speaker A:You're not just floating in space or floating in water and having to trust something greater than yourself.
Speaker A:Now let's talk about the five practices that you can start applying immediately.
Speaker A:In order for you to have something to actually work with, something that doesn't make you more stuck or create more.
Speaker A:Creates more confusion and doubt, or something hollow that doesn't actually shift anything, but something real that you can hold on to, something that you can grip and that will support you tremendously in your dark night of the soul.
Speaker A:And by the way, we can have many dark nights of the soul.
Speaker A:This is not something to fear, not Everyone does.
Speaker A:But if it's meant to happen, then trust there is a deeper reason for it.
Speaker A:Number one is practice not trying to fix it.
Speaker A:And let me make this practical.
Speaker A:What does that mean?
Speaker A:The mind wants to fix by jumping to conclusions.
Speaker A:I now need to do this.
Speaker A:But when you are spiritually disorientated, it is very difficult to make grounded choices that come from your soul, that come from a deeper place.
Speaker A:So stop trying to fix it, meaning stop trying to jump to.
Speaker A:To conclusions impatiently.
Speaker A:And instead, if you notice that there is a false sense of urgency, I need to do this.
Speaker A:This means this, this means that.
Speaker A:And you feel that pressure rising, notice that you might not be fully rooted in yourself.
Speaker A:So what can you do?
Speaker A:You can say this mantra, I don't yet need to know, and that is enough for now.
Speaker A:I don't yet need to know, and that is enough for now.
Speaker A:Just feel that for a moment.
Speaker A:Come back to this, because this is you interrupting your mind on the open water, trying to hold on to waves and feeling more drained and exhausted and disorientated each time it does it.
Speaker A:Practice.
Speaker A:Number two, grieve.
Speaker A:And by grieve, I mean grieve your old self, as if you're grieving the death of a loved one.
Speaker A:Let this land for a moment.
Speaker A:I did an episode, maybe about a year ago now, an amazing interview on the podcast with Dr. Peter Levin, and he was talking about that we misunderstand grief as a society because we see grief as losing a loved one, which, of course, is a deep grief or the deepest grief.
Speaker A:But grief is also losing the old self, losing parts of you who you thought yourself to be, parts where you once said, this is me.
Speaker A:And paradoxical as this sounds, we need to grieve the old self or allow space for grief and sadness to emerge.
Speaker A:Otherwise, we push it away.
Speaker A:Otherwise we're trying to jump immediately to, okay, I'm going through this, but I'm now spitting this into this is my deeper service.
Speaker A:No.
Speaker A:Yes, it is.
Speaker A:But don't try to bypass it.
Speaker A:Don't try to get yourself somewhere.
Speaker A:Allow the grief to mold your soul into who it is meant to become.
Speaker A:I like to say that grief is the chisel and your soul is the sculpture.
Speaker A:This doesn't mean getting stuck in grief or just lingering in grief all day, but it does mean do not push it away.
Speaker A:Allow it to wash over you.
Speaker A:Let the tears roll.
Speaker A:If there are tears or just a silent sadness, allow it to be there.
Speaker A:Invite it.
Speaker A:Welcome it into your space when you do this, the surrender, the trusting and the Shortening of just how dark the darkness of the soul feels takes place.
Speaker A:It doesn't mean it's easy, but it becomes easier.
Speaker A:And that is the key thing.
Speaker A:It's not as dark as it needs to be.
Speaker A:Practice number three.
Speaker A:Get into your body every single day.
Speaker A:Day especially, or one of the most powerful ways of doing this is going into nature.
Speaker A:Whether that's a forest, a lake, the mountains, the beach, nature allows you to connect with your body.
Speaker A:To get into your body, you feel held by the great mother Pachamama, by something greater than yourself, or seeing animals, feeling the earth, bare feet.
Speaker A:These are incredibly anchoring things that you can do because the mind will try to come to some form of solution, but it can't because it's a deeper process that unfolds, that is beyond your mind and beyond the limitations of thinking and logic.
Speaker A:So what happens is that your mind starts to overthink and it gets more and more confused.
Speaker A:It tries to get to a certain place, but in doing that, it feels even more lost and disorientated.
Speaker A:And by making it a habit and priority.
Speaker A:And you should do this anyway, whether you are experiencing a dark night of the soul or not.
Speaker A:To get into your body, nature is one of the most powerful ways.
Speaker A:But if you can't or alongside shaking, shaking your body is one of the most powerful practices you can allow yourself.
Speaker A:10, 15 Minutes of just shaking your body, like an animal shakes when it is experienced a traumatic or challenging moment.
Speaker A:Make sure that in your shaking you don't get stuck in linear movements, because that's the mind overthinking really allow your body to express and discharge stuck energy in that moment.
Speaker A:Because all that doubt, all that confusion, if you're sitting, your shoulders slumped over, your posture is collapsed, it's time to get in your body.
Speaker A:It's time to move.
Speaker A:It's time to be in nature.
Speaker A:This gives you an anchor.
Speaker A:It gives you some form of stability.
Speaker A:In this you feel held by something greater, by a deeper intelligence.
Speaker A:Practice number four.
Speaker A:Find a person who can witness you.
Speaker A:It might be a friend or it might even be your partner.
Speaker A:They shouldn't turn into your therapist because that takes the intimacy completely away.
Speaker A:But it's a different episode for different time and a different theme.
Speaker A:But find a person, if you can, who does not try to pull you back into your old self, has no judgment and can hold space for who you are becoming in this process.
Speaker A:Someone like that is an anchor because many people, and that's why sometimes isolation can be more powerful, but only when it's the Wrong people.
Speaker A:Being on your own is more powerful, even though it's not the best, because we heal through community, through union, communion with another, right?
Speaker A:But it's still better than being with people who are trying desperately to pull you back into your old self.
Speaker A:While they're doing that, in order to affirm their sense of self, if they are living not from their highest truth, then they will try to pull you back into it to further identify and hide behind that reality.
Speaker A:This is quite deep, and I'm not going to go deeper into this right now, but to make it perhaps more practical, because I explained it slightly abstract, is if people do not live from their true soul and don't do what they're truly meant to do in this life, then they will need you to be part of that illusion.
Speaker A:Seeing you and really witnessing you would also mean that they have to see through the roles they might be playing, the areas and places where they are inauthentic, where they are not in alignment with their true soul and true desires and nature.
Speaker A:So they won't.
Speaker A:These people are the most training.
Speaker A:That is why there might be a period where you feel alone or where you might want to seek solitude.
Speaker A:That is fine.
Speaker A:Just don't get stuck there.
Speaker A:There are people who understand.
Speaker A:There are people who can see and witness you.
Speaker A:And this is some of the work I do with private clients or in my groups is so powerful to realize that you are not going insane.
Speaker A:But another is fully seeing the depth of what is really happening inside you, the transformation that you are going through.
Speaker A:Solitude is fine, but don't stay there.
Speaker A:Eventually you're meant to move back into relationships.
Speaker A:And if you have the blessing of having someone in your life who understands, or at least who's open and doesn't judge, then speak to them.
Speaker A:Don't hide.
Speaker A:Don't push others away.
Speaker A:You are not doing yourself a favor unless they're trying to pull you back into the old identity.
Speaker A:That's a different story and practice Number five.
Speaker A:Journal.
Speaker A:Allow your stream of consciousness to be put on paper.
Speaker A:Journaling is to put the soul on paper.
Speaker A:I've journaled hundreds of hundreds of hundreds of pages, if not thousands.
Speaker A:By now it has changed my life.
Speaker A:And especially when you feel spiritually disorientated when you are in this no man's land, no longer your old self and not yet fully rooted in who you're meant to be.
Speaker A:That is when allowing your stream of consciousness to be put on paper will give you deep insights, will give you an awareness, and realizations that are incredibly potent.
Speaker A:Don't try to put it into a concept, don't try to mold it into something specific yet that's going back to trying to get somewhere.
Speaker A:You're not trying to get somewhere.
Speaker A:You're surrendering to the deeper process and allowing it to unfold through you.
Speaker A:Now let's talk about the subtle trap that so many people fall into.
Speaker A:And that is that nothing has any meaning anymore.
Speaker A:It becomes a state of almost spiritual nihilism.
Speaker A:A state where you say nothing matters, but that is not the truth and it's confusing.
Speaker A:A very powerful experience of this solution as the highest reality.
Speaker A:It doesn't mean that nothing matters.
Speaker A:You are here for a reason.
Speaker A:Yes, it might not be as real in the sense that certain things, who you believed yourself to be, is all there is.
Speaker A:You now realize there is so much more to you.
Speaker A:There is something much deeper and vaster.
Speaker A:But many people then step into a place of isolation and spiritual bypassing.
Speaker A:They shut off the world and it's all an illusion.
Speaker A:It's not all an illusion.
Speaker A:Participating in this life fully, being fully in relationships, taking responsibility and accountability, that is real.
Speaker A:It's not all of who you are, but it is real.
Speaker A:So that momentarily realization that so many things are an illusion or not as how you thought them to be does not mean that is the highest truth.
Speaker A:It would just mean going from one extreme to the other extreme, being totally identified and being disassociated and everything being hollow and meaningless and an illusion.
Speaker A:And some people who are lost in that can come across as very convincing.
Speaker A:I invite you to not listen to these people, to not take on their energy because they've collapsed.
Speaker A:Something that isn't the highest truth as their highest truth.
Speaker A:If it's negative, if it's nothing has any meaning.
Speaker A:Everything is hollow.
Speaker A:Everything is an illusion.
Speaker A:That is a dressed up spiritual bypassing and isolation and being stuck.
Speaker A:Ultimately everything has meaning and you're experiencing this.
Speaker A:The solution not to push the world away and deem it as hollow and meaningless, but to now relate to the world and to people and to what you're meant to serve the world and others with in a completely different way.
Speaker A:I dare say in a sacred way.
Speaker A:And this is where it all comes back to service so many of our dreams and decisions.
Speaker A:I want to be this.
Speaker A:I'm going to do this.
Speaker A:I'm going to do this.
Speaker A:Come from conditioning and come from wounding.
Speaker A:The dark night of the soul is the stripping away of everything familiar.
Speaker A:As John of the Cross said, for you to step into greater union or to step into union with Something greater than yourself.
Speaker A:A higher calling, a higher purpose, a deeper service.
Speaker A:But that service doesn't necessarily mean you have to do something specific and help others with their dark night of the soul.
Speaker A:Service can be in relationships.
Speaker A:Service can be with the earth, with animals, it does not matter.
Speaker A:You don't need it to be something specific.
Speaker A:But when you arrive at dawn, when you arrive at that level of clarity, this is what's meant to move through me.
Speaker A:Then you will know.
Speaker A:And when you know, you know.
Speaker A:And when you don't know, remember the mantra, I don't yet need to know.
Speaker A:And that is enough for now.
Speaker A:Your greatest service is born not in thinking more or trying to figure life out, but in actually the total breaking down of everything who you thought yourself to be.
Speaker A:And in that process, only what is true remains.
Speaker A:This stripping away is immensely challenging, but it reveals answers to the deepest questions that lead to true spiritual fulfillment.
Speaker A:Who am I?
Speaker A:What medicine is my soul meant to express in this world?
Speaker A:What is my highest calling in this life?
Speaker A:Why am I here?
Speaker A:Suddenly you find answers to these questions, and there is a level of certainty and trust and surrender and union with something greater, because there is a level of security and safety beyond anything.
Speaker A:You feel held, you feel loved, you feel at home.
Speaker A:And that energy you are meant to bring to everything and everyone around you.
Speaker A:The dark night of the soul is never there to punish you, but to reveal who you truly are and to ignite transformation, not just inside you, but transformation all around you.
Speaker A:We could say, in other words, if you are meant to truly awaken in this life, then the dark night of the soul is already programmed as part of your destiny.
Speaker A:And I will leave you with this last sentence.
Speaker A:If you are truly meant to awaken, to realize who you truly are, your highest nature and higher self, then wouldn't you choose a path so hard and challenging where it becomes inevitable, where you are forced to?
Speaker A:You would.
Speaker A:And this is not to romanticize suffering and pain, but to realize that it is part of of your soul's evolution and soul's becoming.
Speaker A:Thank you for listening.
Speaker A:It is a true honor to support you on your path.
Speaker A:If you haven't subscribed yet, subscribe now, so you never miss an episode.
Speaker A:Thank you.
