by Gregg Braden
In those feelings, we find the things that we long for in ourselves, the things that are still with us yet are hidden in our masks of who we believe we are. It’s natural and human. Understanding what our feelings about others are really saying about us may become our most powerful tool in discovering our greatest power.
THE FOURTH MIRROR:
REFLECTIONS OF OUR DARK
NIGHT OF THE SOUL
“That which you have will save you
if you bring it forth from yourselves.”5
— The Gospel of Thomas
During the high-tech boom of the early 1990s, Gerald (not his real name) was an engineer in Silicon Valley, California. He had two beautiful young daughters and was married to an equally beautiful wife. They’d been together for nearly 15 years. When I met him, his company had recently given him an award for his fifth year with them as a senior troubleshooter for a specialized kind of software. His position had made him a valuable asset to the company, and the need for his expertise extended well beyond the typical 8-to-5 workday.
To meet the demand for his skills, Gerald began to work late evenings and weekends and travel to trade shows and expos out of town with his software. Before long, he found himself spending more time with his co-workers than he did with his family. I could see the hurt in his eyes as he described how they’d grown apart. By the time Gerald arrived home in the evenings, his wife and children were sleeping, and he was at his office in the morning before they even started their day. Soon he began to feel like a stranger in his own home. He knew more about the families of people in his office than he did his own.
That’s when Gerald’s life took a dramatic turn. He happened to come to see me for a counseling session while I was writing a book entitled Walking Between the Worlds: The Science of Compassion, describing how the “mirrors” of relationships play out in our lives. More than 2,200 years ago, the authors of the Dead Sea Scrolls identified seven specific patterns that we may expect to see in our interactions with other people. As Gerald’s story unfolded, it was clear that he was describing one of them, which is life’s reflection of our greatest fear, commonly known as the “Dark Night of the Soul.”
Among the engineers in his office was a brilliant young programmer who was about his age. He’d found himself teamed up with this woman for assignments that sometimes lasted for days at a time and took them to cities throughout the country. Before long, he felt as though he knew her better than he did his own wife. At this point in the story, I suspected that I knew where it would end. What I didn’t know was what happened next and why Gerald was so upset.
Before long, he believed that he was in love with his co-worker and made the choice to leave his wife and daughters to begin a new life with her. This decision made perfect sense at the time, as they had so much in common. Within a few short weeks, however, his new partner was transferred to a project in L.A. By calling in a few favors, Gerald was able to finagle a transfer to the same office.
Immediately, things began to go wrong, and Gerald found that he’d lost more than he’d bargained for. Friends that he and his wife had known for years suddenly became distant and unavailable. His co-workers thought he was “off the wall” for leaving the position and projects that he’d worked so hard for. Even his parents were angry that he’d broken up the family. Although he was hurt, Gerald rationalized that this was simply the price of change. He was off to a great new life. What more could he ask for?
This is where the mirror of balance and the Dark Night of the Soul come in. Just as everything appeared to be falling into place, Gerald discovered that everything was actually falling apart! Within weeks, his new love announced that their relationship wasn’t what she’d expected. She ended it suddenly and asked him to leave. Just like that, he was on his own, alone and devastated. “After all that I’ve done for her, how could she?” he moaned. He’d left his wife, children, friends, and job—in short, he’d surrendered everything that he loved.
Soon he began to perform poorly at his job. Following several warnings and a less-than-stellar performance review, his department eventually laid him off. As Gerald’s story unfolded, it was clear what had really happened: His life had gone from the highest of highs, with all the prospects of a new relationship, new job, and greater income, to the lowest of lows, as all of those dreams disappeared. The night that Gerald came to see me, he was asking a single question: “What happened?” How could things that looked so good have turned out so bad?
OUR DARK NLGHT OF THE SOUL:
RECOGNLZLNG THE TRLGGER
By the time I met him, Gerald had lost everything that he loved. The reason why is the key to this story. Rather than releasing the things he loved because he felt complete and was moving on, he made his choices only when he believed that there was something better to take their place. In other words, he played it safe. Because of his fear that he might not find anything better, he physically stayed with his marriage and family long after he’d left emotionally. There’s a subtle yet significant difference between leaving our jobs, friends, and romances because we’re complete and staying with them because of the fear that there’s nothing else for us!
There can be a tendency in all kinds of relationships to cling to the status quo until something better comes along. This attachment may come from being unaware of what we’re doing, or it may exist because we’re afraid to rock the boat and face the uncertainty of not knowing what comes next. Although it may very well represent a pattern that we aren’t conscious of, it’s a pattern nonetheless. Whether it’s a job, a romance, or our lifestyle, we can find ourselves in a holding pattern where we aren’t really happy yet have never honestly communicated this to the people in our lives. So even while the world believes that our lives are business as usual, inside we may be screaming for change and feeling frustrated because we don’t know how to share this need with those who are close to us.
This is a pattern that builds negativity. Our true feelings are disguised as tension, hostility, or sometimes just being absent from the relationship. Each day we go through the motions of our job or of sharing our life and home with another person, while we’re emotionally distant and off in another world. Whether our problem is with a boss, a lover, or even ourselves, we rationalize, compromise, and wait. Then one day, just like that—boom!—it happens. Seemingly from out of nowhere, the very things that we’ve waited and longed for in our lives suddenly appear. When they do, we may lunge for them like there’s no tomorrow.
In Gerald’s case, when he moved to a new city with his new relationship, he left behind an unresolved void into which his world collapsed. Now, having lost all that he loved, Gerald sat across from me with huge tears rolling down his cheeks. “How can I get back my job and my family? Just tell me what to do!”
As I handed him the box of tissues that I kept on the nearby table for moments just like this one, I said something that caught Gerald completely off guard: “This time in your life isn’t about getting back what you’ve lost, although that may be just what happens. What you’ve created for yourself goes much deeper than your job and your family. You’ve just awakened a force within you that may become your most powerful ally. When you’ve come through this experience, you’ll have a new confidence that’s unshakable. You’ve entered a time the ancients recognized and called the Dark Night of the Soul.”
Gerald wiped his eyes and sat back in his chair. “What do you mean the ‘Dark Night of the Soul’?” he asked. “How come I’ve never heard of it?”
“A Dark Night of the Soul is a time in your life when you’ll be drawn into a situation that represents what, for you, are your worst fears,” I answered. “A time like this generally comes when you least expect it, and usually without warning. The thing is,” I continued, “you can only be drawn into this dynamic when your mastery of life signals that you’re ready! Then, just when it looks like life is perfect, the balance that you’ve achieved is the signal that you’re ready for change. The lure to creat
e the change will be something that you long for in life, something that you simply can’t resist. Otherwise, you’d never take the leap!”
“Do you mean a lure like a new relationship?” Gerald asked.
“Precisely like a new relationship,” I replied. “A relationship is the kind of catalyst that promises we’ll move forward in life.” I went on to explain how even if we know that we’re perfectly capable of surviving whatever life throws our way, it’s not our nature to wake up one morning and say, “Hmm … today I think I’ll give away all that I love and hold dear to enter my Dark Night of the Soul.” We just don’t seem to work that way! As is so often the case, the great tests of our Dark Night seem to come at a time when we least expect them.
The possibility that life brings us exactly what we need precisely when we need it makes perfect sense. Just as we can’t fill a cup with water until we turn the tap to “on,” having a full emotional toolbox is the trigger that signals the faucet of life to bring on change. Until we trigger the flow, nothing can happen. The flip side of this dynamic is that when we do find ourselves in a Dark Night of the Soul, it may be reassuring to know that the only way we could have gotten to such a place in life is that we were the ones who flipped the switch. Knowingly or not, we’re always ready for whatever life may serve.
OUR GREATEST FEARS
The purpose of the Dark Night of the Soul is for us to experience and heal our own great fears. The really interesting thing about the Dark Night is that because everyone’s fears are different, what looks like a frightening experience for one person may be no big deal to someone else. For example, Gerald admitted that his worst fear was being left by himself. I’d spoken with a woman earlier the same evening who told me that “being alone” was her greatest joy.
It’s not uncommon for someone who fears being alone to become a master at relationships in which they’ll experience their fear. Gerald, for example, described romances, friendships, and jobs in his past that never could have lasted in a million years! Yet when each one ended, he believed that the relationship had “failed.” In reality, they were so successful that each allowed him to see his greatest fear of being alone come to pass. Because he’d never healed or even recognized the patterns in his life before, however, he found himself in situations where his fear became less and less subtle. Ultimately, life led him to the point where this emotion was so present that he had to address it before he could continue.
While we may go through many Dark Nights of the Soul throughout our lifetimes, the first one is usually the toughest. It’s also frequently the most powerful agent of change. Once we understand why we hurt so much, the experience begins to take on new meaning. As we recognize the signposts of a Dark Night, we can say, “Aha! I know that pattern! Yup, it’s definitely a Dark Night of the Soul all right. Now, what is it that I’m being asked to master?”
I know people who are so empowered once they heal their Dark Night experiences that they almost dare the universe to bring on the next one! They do so simply because they know that if they’ve survived the first, they can survive anything. It’s only when we have such experiences without understanding what they are or why we’re having them that we can find ourselves locked into years, or even lifetimes, of a pattern that can literally steal the very things from us that we hold most dear … such as life itself.
THE FIFTH MIRROR:
REFLECTIONS OF OUR
GREATEST ACT OF COMPASSION
“Show to me the stone which the builders
have rejected. That one is the cornerstone.”6
— The Gospel of Thomas
In the late 1980s, my office was in a huge multistory building in the foothills of Denver. Although the building was enormous, the end of the Cold War and cutbacks in government spending made it necessary for the company where I worked to “downsize” and consolidate. As other divisions of the company moved into our facility, space was at a premium. I shared my office with another employee, a woman performing a function very different from mine within the department. There was no competition or shared responsibilities, and we quickly became good friends, exchanging stories of our family weekends, friends, and the joys and sorrows of life outside of the company.
One day, we’d just returned from lunch when she retrieved the messages that had come in on her voice mail while we were gone. From the corner of my eye, I saw her become very still and then sit down with a glazed look in her eyes. Her face turned pasty white except for the makeup on her lips and cheeks. After she hung up the phone, I gave her a moment to compose herself, then asked what had happened. She looked at me and began a story that I found sad and at the same time powerful.
A good friend of hers had a young daughter with a much-envied combination of beauty, athletic skills, and artistic talents, each of which she’d cultivated since early childhood. As the girl got older, she searched for a way to combine all of her attributes into a single career and chose to be a fashion model. Her family supported her decision and helped her in whatever way they could to fulfill her dream. As she shopped her portfolio to the ad agencies, she found that many responded with enthusiasm. She had offers of travel, education, and more support than she could have imagined. To everyone looking in from the outside, her life couldn’t have seemed better.
On a subtle, almost imperceptible level, however, those who really knew her could see that something was changing. Her enthusiasm was giving way to concern. The agencies she was working with were searching for a certain kind of look in the women they would promote. While this young girl certainly had a unique beauty, it wasn’t quite what the agencies wanted in the late ’80s. Haunted by what it took to get that special something, the young girl asked her family to help her with a series of cosmetic procedures that she felt would mold her body into what the industry was searching for.
She began with the most obvious enhancements, nips, and tucks. While bringing her closer to her goal, she still didn’t have quite the “look” and began even more extreme procedures. Since childhood she’d always had a slight overbite, with her chin and jaw recessed slightly. She agreed to a restructuring that involved breaking and resetting her jaw to create better symmetry. Her mouth had been wired shut for about six weeks while the bones healed, and she’d eaten only liquids during that time. Afterward, the wires were removed, and she did have a beautifully symmetrical face with accentuated cheekbones, and the overbite was gone. Looking at a photograph that my office mate had of her friend’s daughter, I personally could see little difference between the before- and after-surgery images.
Having lost weight from weeks of being on a liquid diet, this beautiful young woman began to notice that her body no longer had the V shape that it had before the surgery. The reality was that due to her weight loss, her upper body had lost the muscle tone that had given her the “model” proportions. Her perception, however, was that there was a problem that could be surgically remedied, and she underwent a procedure to remove her lower “floating” ribs in order to acquire greater definition and proportion.
The stress from all of her procedures put her body into a tailspin. She discovered that she could no longer control the addition or loss of a pound here and there. Her body was in a “lose-weight” mode and she was losing on a daily basis. By the time her parents recognized what was happening and hospitalized her, it was too late: Attributed to a series of complications rather than any one thing, my office mate’s friend had passed away that morning. That was the phone message she received after lunch.
You may know people on a similar path, although hopefully a less extreme one. I use this example to emphasize a point. The young woman in this story had an image of perfection in her mind’s eye, and that image became her standard of comparison. She constantly held herself in the shadow of that point of reference, using her mental image as the measure of comparison for her physical appearance. Her beliefs said that she was somehow imperfect the way she was, and that her “imperfections” could be fixed through the mi
racle of modern technology. What happened to this woman, however, runs much deeper than the procedures used to fix her perceived flaws—it goes directly to the heart of this mirror.
Why did the woman feel that such extremes were necessary for her success? Why did her family and friends support her in her drive for perfection? Why did this young person, already beautiful in her own right, feel so compelled to become something other than who she was from the time of her birth? What fear (or fears) became so powerful in her life that she tried to change her appearance to meet the approval of others? Perhaps an even greater question is: What can we learn from her experience? What do we use as our yardstick of comparison? What is the point of reference that we hold ourselves accountable to as we gauge our own successes and failures in life?
THE “IMPERFECTIONS” ARE THE
PERFECTION
I often share this story in my workshops. Immediately afterward, I’ll ask participants to complete a simple chart, where they evaluate themselves in areas such as educational, romantic, professional, and athletic accomplishments. The rating system is made up of four categories that range from “really good” to “really bad.” The key here is that I give them very little time to complete the forms. And I do this for a reason: The actual response on paper is less important than the thinking that goes into it.
Whatever the answers, the reality is that anything less than perfect is a participant judging him- or herself. The only way that people can possibly rate themselves as a success or failure is by comparison to something outside of their experience. As we all know, we are our own toughest critics. For this reason, this mirror is known as our greatest act of compassion. It’s about compassion for ourselves—what we are and who we’ve become.