Many have talked about the Dark Night of the Soul. This is the place where it seems darkest before the dawn. If you feel like you’re in this place of No Man’s Land, this place of not understanding: “Goodness! I did all this meditating, I did all this work on myself, I did all this growth, and now I feel like I’m worse off than I was before I started my spiritual path! I’m more miserable than I was before. I have less interest in humanity now than I did before, I have less ambition to live my life, I really just want to leave. The spiritual path has led me to not wanting to be here at all…” This is the Dark Night of the Soul.

If you’ve reached this place where you feel like you’ve gotten to the end, you can’t get any further, “Aargh! But what’s next? I can’t find that breakthrough!” This is the darkness before the dawn. The wee hours of the morning are often very, very dark. They’re not the twilight, they’re not the dawning, it’s dark!

So what to do with the Dark of the Soul, this place of No Man’s land , this place of not knowing what comes next: “I’ve ended my old life, but my new life hasn’t begun; I feel like I’m just stuck.” Well, be stuck! Sit there and wait in No Man’s Land. If you find yourself in this abyss of not knowing, this place of not having the new life set up, but the momentum of the old life has stopped and the new life hasn’t quite set up yet, then wait!

Do your homework, continue to go within the self, deeper and deeper. You’re on the cusp of enlightenment when this happens. This is actually a time to be joyful, because this is where you are dropping the old self, the old life, and you are becoming born again. You are living a second life in the same body. This is a good thing! But while you are leaving the old and the new is still yet to come, there is going to be a dead zone, like the doldrums in the Pacific Ocean, I believe it is, there’s the doldrums, a place where there is no wind, and the sailboats get stuck for weeks sometimes.

So while in the spiritual doldrums, don’t fear, don’t panic; don’t try to “make something happen.” Being patient with the doldrums is part of what you are supposed to do. Patience is part of it. So carry on what you’re doing, carry on with your meditations, carry on your exploration of the inner self, and don’t fear; the dawn is coming! You’re right on the cusp, right on the edge of enlightenment, don’t give up now! You’ve worked so hard, just to find that you never really needed to have a path in the beginning—that’s the Cosmic Joke. So be at ease in the Dark Night of the Soul; it’s all right. You haven’t missed the boat, you haven’t missed a step. This is just the right step, right now. If in the moment the doldrums are here, then face the doldrums. Spiritual doldrums happen as well as any other type of spiritual experience. If you’re not having those peak spiritual experiences, don’t worry; they’ll come again. Not by you trying, though.

The Dark Night of the Soul is a powerful place to be, a place where you can gather your energy, prepare yourself for the life of service to humanity and its awakening that you are about to embark on. Let the Dark Night of the Soul be all right. It’s darkest before the dawn, and when the dawn comes, you’ll be refreshed and ready, rather than worn out from yearning for it not to be the doldrums anymore. When you’re there, just rest and wait. What you desire will come.

And if you desire to be in service to humanity, there a lot of job positions open. So get ready, because they’re going to use you hard. Might as well rest while you can. There’s a re-organizing going on underneath, a re-formation. You might not be conscious of it yet. Some people think you undergo “cellular re- structuring” and some people think you go through a karmic purging in the Dark Night of the Soul. Whatever it is, just rest there; don’t rush it. Later you might wish that you would have taken the rest that was available there, as you have a lot of work ahead of you, in service to humanity.