The Dark Night of the Soul

In this podcast episode, Susan Sutherland discusses the concept of the dark night of the soul and how it is a natural part of our spiritual journey. She shares personal stories of her own experiences and offers guidance on how to navigate through this challenging period. Susan emphasizes the importance of accepting and sitting with the discomfort, asking for help and guidance, and releasing old expectations and attachments. She encourages listeners to embrace the chaos and use it as an opportunity for growth and transformation.

Keywords
dark night of the soul, spiritual journey, discomfort, guidance, acceptance, growth, transformation

Takeaways

• The dark night of the soul is a natural part of our spiritual journey and an opportunity for growth and transformation.
• It is important to accept and sit with the discomfort, rather than running from it or numbing it.
• Ask for help and guidance from a higher power or spiritual source.
• Release old expectations and attachments that no longer serve you.
• Embrace the chaos and use it as an opportunity to find new meaning and purpose in your life.

Transcript

Susan Sutherland (00:01)
Hi family. Thanks for joining me today. This podcast is going to be out on time, unlike last week. And it's a funny story because I did record it in my hotel room. I uploaded it. I did everything on time because it's so important to me to show up in that way. Like it's been my discipline. I make a big deal out of with my family. Like I have to do my podcast blah, blah, blah. And Mark has said before, does it really matter if it's

the next day and I am adamant that it does matter. It matters to me very much. And after my tennis match, I went to the beach and the following day, I, you know, kind of took it easy, whatever, and decided I would share the link on social media on Wednesday. And when I went to get the link, the podcast had not uploaded correctly and I had no idea. And

If you recall me sharing about my daughter who gets so obsessed with her homework and then didn't turn in her project on the day it was like this whole mishap that happened and she didn't get her project turned in and got 30 points off even though it was perfect. And I decided that the lesson she needed to know is that that's okay. You know, I'm not gonna go fight on her behalf because it was actually.

Okay that she got a 70 on this project because she learned that the world still turned and daggum it did I get the same lesson you guys like I didn't learn from her experience and I'm still like I have to do this right now did it did it did it and so I got it I got it hand delivered to me with my podcast last week so it was late even though it was recorded on time because I needed to know that the earth

still turned, still turned. And nobody even said, hey, where are you? But anyway, so I also want to tell you about my tennis match one day, but I think I'll make a whole episode out of it. But we were in the finals and I'll tell you this little, little bit, but we were in the finals. And the day before when it was the semi -finals, I watched my opponent who would be my opponent in singles. I watched her play.

And how 40 and up works with USTA in North Carolina, because I don't think everywhere's the same, is stupid in my opinion, in that you play four lines or four matches, one singles and three doubles, which means you can split. You can have two matches win from your team and two from the other. And so then if it's two and two, it comes down to sets. And then if you had the same amount of sets, one or lost,

then it comes down to games. And that morning we had the rain delay and I recorded the podcast and I was doing my stuff and I had this intuitive hit, right? Like this information came in and the information was you only saw first gear of my opponent. She won her semi -finals match 1 -0 and so I was thinking, okay, totally fine. I can totally handle that.

but it was like this intuitive knowing that she didn't have to work hard in that match. I didn't see how well she played because it was not necessary even a little bit. She could just hit the ball back a few times and win the point. And then there was an intuitive hit that it will come down to games. So anyway, we're out there playing and I'm the last man standing. I'm the last one out on court and she was very good.

very good in the most annoying way for me because she hit topspin lobs to set up every point. That's not all she had. It was her way of getting me backed up to hit short balls or I hit a short return and she came in and just like smashed it away at me. It was her way of setting up the point, not just she is just a lobber. She was a very brilliant player and

fitter than I and faster than I and just incredible and so daggum sweet, just so sweet. Anyway, she won the first set and I went down a break straight away in the second set and I was down to 0 -3 and I remember hearing, it'll come down to games, it'll come down to games. And so I battled back and even when I was serving four or five, I had a couple break points to get it to five all and I didn't do it. And a

one of my teammates said we need a set and She was saying that to encourage me like we have to have a set to win keep fighting keep fighting Well, I didn't get the break points and on the first match point she closed it out and she won six four six four and My heart sank first of all because I didn't get the set my teammate said I needed but also because I

kind of then was questioning what I'd received and I don't like losing anyway. I don't like it at all. But anyway, it did come down to games. We won the state championship by one game. Isn't that wild? So I'll tell you more. There's so much more I learned from that experience, but it was a great day and it is great to be part of a team sometimes when you know.

that you can do, you can lose and still win, isn't that fun? All right, that's not what today is about. Today is about the dark night of the soul. So probably if you are listening, you have heard that term before, but it is something we all go through, whether or not you realize that's what you're going through, whether or not you run from it or lean into

it's, it's part of our process. It's part of how our,

spiritual education and evolution takes place here. And so I really want to dedicate this episode into, first of all, if you're going through this, know that you're not alone. Know that we all go through these times and it is really about.

redirecting you or allowing the death of the ego, the part of your ego that needs to be released so that you can move forward on, on the next part of your journey.

you know what it makes me think of, we're going to talk about the mind and body connection next week. But what I'm going to tell you right now is a friend of mine has back issues.

pretty serious back issues to where she has seen somebody about potentially having surgery on her back. And I asked her one day, can I tap in and see what's going on? And I did. And spirit was super clear and said her back is so strong for what she needs to carry today. She can carry today. She's good to go. The problem is that she is carrying

the weight of 40 something years, the shoulds, the expectations, the almost deception of who she is to her family or the deception of who she is to herself. She's carrying this burden with her and her back can't sustain it. And so her body is talking to her to say, hey, hey, hey, we got to deal with this. We got to put this stuff down. And so it is a call to her.

to just be present in this moment, to release what was so that she can move forward on the next part of her journey. And so a lot of times dark nights can come through in physical manifestations, in physical issues. A lot of us are kind of contracted that, hey, work with me through my body. So we'll talk more about that. But a lot of times a dark night of the soul feels like,

spiritual depression. It feels like lack of motivation to go on. Which is interesting that our Course in Miracles, the lessons that we did, started with an exercise where you go through and you look around the room and you say, that lamp has no meaning. That cat has no meaning.

This door has no meaning. That picture has no meaning. And you say that nothing has meaning. Because basically we have given everything in our life the meaning that it has. And so sometimes what a dark night of the soul is, is recognizing that everything is meaningless. It is coming to the realization that what we have given human meaning to doesn't have meaning.

And so there's a call to say, okay, then what does have meaning? And so I like to, you know, think of a dark night of the soul. If you walk into a room that is brightly lit, you do not turn on the light, right? It's already lit. So you don't, you don't make a change. You don't take action in a way to brighten things because it's already lit.

But if you walk into a dark room, you flick the light on. And sometimes, I mean, everybody's got their different level of lighting requirements, you know, but consider your life on a dimmer. And sometimes things will just keep getting a little darker, a little darker, a little darker until you have that moment to reach for the light switch. So we'll talk about lip.

reaching for the light switch means. What does that mean? But another way I think of it is a dark night of the soul is your call to awakening. Now this is wake up with Susan. It's all about awakening. But a lot of times we need to get to that place to be pushed to wake up. And a lot of times it will happen several times over the course of your life.

Once you have awakened, it is not meaning that you will never go through any darkness, any struggle, any push, because we are in this constant evolution in our soul's journey. And maybe you're finding yourself stuck in a relationship, stuck in a job, stuck in a mindset that requires an alarm. And I know with my children, I am super lucky that all of them wake up.

easily. They do prefer different styles of waking up. One likes a song, one gets a song even though I don't know that's her preference but she gets a song and a little leg tap and then one gets a call to like just hey time to get up it's time to get up. He's apparently outgrown the rise and shine and give God your glory song which is unfortunate.

Sometimes he still gets it, but they all had different requirements for awakening. My husband and I have different requirements for awakening. I set an alarm and when that alarm goes off, my feet are going to the floor. I think that all started that I find it hard to go back to sleep anyway. And so I set my alarm for the time that I intend to get up.

whereas he falls back to sleep very easily. So he will say, yes, I'm getting up early tomorrow and set the alarm. His alarm goes off. I wake up and he stays in the bed. His requirements for waking are different. Now some people need, they got to be shook, right? They need a shake. They need 15 snooze buttons and then they might get up. And this is our experience with the dark night as well is sometimes,

It just takes a little nudge. And sometimes you have got to go through it. You have got to have the bucket of water dumped on your head to be like, wake up, wake up. It is time to wake up. And that's okay. Like there's no right or wrong for this process, but it is about understanding that the meaning that you have given things,

Maybe they're changing. Maybe you are getting to the point of understanding that life isn't what you thought it was gonna be. The expectations that you had for life

they're going to be. You are having to release the idea.

of where you thought you were going, who you thought you were going to be with, what you thought you were going to do in this life. And sometimes as we resist that, as we resist it, we build into this dark night of the soul, or we realize, my gosh, I put so much value into all these things and they don't matter at all. They don't fulfill me. They don't make me happy.

I chased this, I dreamt of this job and now I'm miserable in it. And you have to sit with that. And if you sit with that, you're doing it right. Because a lot of times what happens is we run from it. We try to escape the bad feelings by busying ourselves, by drinking, by vegging out in front of the TV or getting high, whatever it is.

You are not acknowledging where you are. You are escaping it. And so as with everything, what you resist persists. And it's like that alarm that if you don't get up, it gets a little louder and then it gets a little louder and then it gets a little louder, which is a very good one for me. Now my alarm is set to a volume that's perfect. But if I go other places, I wear hearing aids.

I do not wear them at night. And so my level of volume needs to be louder than somebody else's. So I need it to increase and increase and increase. And that's how these dark nights work is it's going to keep increasing until you can sit there and say, all right, here I am. This is what's happening for me, for me. This is what's happening for me, not to me.

because you're not being punished. You are not being punished. You are giving, being given opportunities for growth, opportunities for expansion, opportunities to understand who you are, what truly matters, to release the expectations that you held to be redirected onto your divine path.

That's what this dart night is for.

So if the dark night of the soul is God's call, it is God's call to say, hey, wake up, wake up. How do you answer the call?

How do you pick up the phone? How do you turn off the alarm and say, all right, I'm here.

First of all, I would say that our life, this journey is the path from who am I to I am. But it takes a long time. It takes a dark night. It takes evolution to get to the point of even saying, who am I? So a lot of the times the dark night is to prompt those questions.

to say, all right, what am I struggling with? What is my purpose? That's what I want to know. Who am I? That's what I want to know. Why am I in this relationship? That's what I want to know. Why am I struggling to find work, to have abundance? Why do I attract the wrong people? These are the questions that are starting to generate through struggle.

and they're not bad to have. It means you're on the path of learning, of asking that question, who am I? Who am I? So that you can start releasing the labels and the definitions and the expectations that have been placed upon you. Some you chose, maybe some you stuck the labels on yourself, but a lot of times they were assigned by everybody else. This is who you are.

This is who you are supposed to be because you were born here, because you look like this, because you have these parents, because you grew up here, because you went to school here.

and you start realizing none of that matters. That's not who I am, but who am I? And we need to ask those questions.

if you were asking those questions, if you are deciding that nothing has meaning like you thought it meant,

You're in the right place. Isn't it hard that when things suck, you might be in the right place? It doesn't mean it's easy.

But a lot of times when we can start accepting it for what it is, you're in your cocoon.

You're building your foundation.

You're doing the work that you need to do, which sometimes before you build back, you have to blow up.

And sitting in there, sitting while the dynamite goes off is not easy. It is not easy to watch everything around you

Everything that you thought would make you happy, you realize won't.

not saying it's easy, but I am saying it's purposeful. And when you see

it is necessary for your transformation.

when you could say, okay, what am I meant to learn from this? God, my plan's not working. Can you show me yours? This is kind of what the dark night is meant for, is releasing the parts of your ego that are ready for that ego death. It is a death of expectation of what you have known and a rebirth.

of what you can

So what do

If you are experiencing the dark night of the soul, the first is accept that you are. You don't have to place meaning on it. It's not bad.

It's just what you're going through and will likely go through again. As you're ready to level up, you have you have to conquer a new dragon,

even see it as, you know, we we sign up for this wild ride and you didn't come here to ride a monorail. How freaking boring would that be? But if you can think back,

maybe you still ride roller coasters or maybe you're like me where now I don't know if something happens in my equilibrium and I feel super nauseous after them. So I always kind of judged my mom for being the stand by mom and not getting on the roller coasters. And now I'm like, it made her sick. Fair. I never thought that would be me, but it does make me feel awful. So anyway, when you are getting on the roller coaster and you're going up, it's like click, click, click,

And as you go up, you have all that anxiety and all those nerves and you know, like it is setting you up for the wee, but you have to go up. You have to keep

keep struggling, keep going, going, going until you get to the fun part. And that's what the dark night of the soul, it is, it is your opportunity.

to lay the foundation for the new version of you that is ready to be born. But can you imagine, can you imagine going and buying a brand new dress, like the most beautiful dress you've ever seen in your life and then wearing it over your pajamas? It doesn't work, y 'all. You have got to take off the old. You have got to remove what is no longer serving you. What...

what doesn't go with your new dress. You've got to take it off in order to proceed. So if you are running from your dark night, stop, just pause, just sit in it and know that it's going to pass. I promise you when I was going through my super cocoon state, I very

like people. It was, it was this new,

awareness of things and it made me ultra sensitive.

but it just, I don't know. I just, I felt a verse to society. It's like I had this new awareness, but I hadn't gotten through it to where I genuinely have compassion and love for people. And even if they don't agree with me, even if they're, they're not on a spiritual path or doing their thing, I honor their journey. But that took a long time to get me there for a while. It was just like, I don't,

I don't get people. I don't really like people. I want to sit on my bench by myself. And I thought, wow,

I can't be out here forever. Can I? But I, I decided I was just going to do that. And I am very lucky that I had that opportunity. I had that freedom to just kind of lean into the suck a little

you know, I journaled, I worked out, but I had to withdraw a lot because I didn't understand what was happening to me. I felt sad and alone and scared and like, I felt like there should be more, but I didn't understand what it was. And I felt so confused. And I would definitely describe it as a spiritual depression because I felt like it was around.

the meaning of life, whereas I don't think all dark nights of the soul are. I think they can be very much triggered by financial situations, career situations, relationship

It kind of depends on what you need, what kind of trigger you need

But that's just my experience was just this loneliness, this real spiritual depression that I...

I didn't understand what was going on and I just sat in the suck. It's almost like if you are in quicksand and you try to get

you are going to make things worse. But if you sit there and you call for help and you say, Hey, I don't know what's going on. I just know I can't get through it alone and you can call on anything you like.

You can call on your higher self. You can call on God. You can call on Jesus. You can call on your angels. I say, whatever resonates for you, that is where you call and you ask for

you say, Hey, I can't do this alone. I know I'm not alone. I can't do this alone. Please help me. my God. You can get that help. I promise

I will also tell you that I've had opportunities that in retrospect were very much opportunities for spiritual awakening that I must not have been ready for at the time because I didn't have the

And I chose to run instead. I chose to numb instead. And so if that has been you, don't feel guilty. Don't feel guilty. You weren't ready. But now if you're listening to this podcast and you're going through a dark night of the soul, you are ready. You are ready to have that awakening experience. I was stunned by a bee in the neck.

when I was 16 years old and had anaphylactic response and I was going to Elton John Billy Joel concert with a friend of mine and we went through a drive through and the beast on my neck and my lips started swelling and I told her, look, my lips are swelling and she said, are you okay? And I said, yes, I'm okay. And the next thing I remember, I woke up in a hospital. Now she,

happened to be my smart friend. We're just very lucky because she went straight to a gas station. This is before cell phones. She went straight to a gas station called 911 and there was an ambulance like 30 seconds away that came to get me and took me to the hospital. You would think that that would be an amazing opportunity for me to have an awakening to say, my gosh.

What is this life about? It was not. It was not that. Shortly after

went to a mental hospital, not related, even a little bit. I was suffering from clinical depression, I think from wearing people's energy in high school. And I was meeting with my therapist and he said, do you ever think about suicide? To which I was like, yes.

And I did not know at the time that saying yes to that was as good as saying I am going to commit suicide. They are treated the same. I would not have. Do I think about it? Yes, I feel like shit. I am so depressed. Anyway.

three hours later, I'm in a mental hospital and I didn't want to be there. Like I resisted that entire time. It was awful. but then maybe six months later, I had gotten to the point where things were bad enough that I said, mom, I really, I need help. I really need help. And I went to Duke university hospital, mental hospital, and that is where I was actually taught.

cognitive behavioral therapy, it's mindset training. And so when I was 17 years old was my first exposure to the power of your mind. And it's not like I had that experience and it's been smooth sailing since. Lord, no. However, that was very much a platform for me to build on. I needed to be broken.

to be broken so much that I'm like, yes, please take me back to a mental institute. This is a good, good choice for me. But there I was giving given tools that I still use to this day. Absolutely still use to this day. And it has been monumental for me. And so instead

I don't know, looking back and feeling like, sorry for myself. That was really valuable that I had that kind of exposure that early on in life, especially because a year and a half later, my mother passed away. That could have also spurred on the spiritual awakening. It did not. It spurred on very bad behavior as far as numbing goes with.

substances or alcohol or relationships. It was a bit of a train

and so if you have had lots of opportunities that was God knocking saying, Hey, I want to redirect to lean into me, lean into your spiritual practice and you didn't do it. Same Z's, same Z's. It's okay. It's okay because you're here now.

And we always get the alarm will keep going. It'll keep going until you start asking those questions. And when you're ready to level up, you'll have a new dragon and that's

Just remember that chaos is part of this experience. We think that once you're on a spiritual path, if you have been on a spiritual path and then, you know, things turn over again and you're like, how is this happening to me? I've done this work. How is this happening? Chaos

of God.

It is not just peace and tranquility that is of God. Chaos is also of God. It is figuring out how to find your inner peace when you are in the chaos, when it is finding that, all right, there's something for me here. There's a lesson for me here. It's almost like being in the hurricane is

is terrible. But when you get in the eye of the storm, that is where it's calm. It doesn't mean that when you start this practice, there's not going to be hurricanes. It is how quickly you can get to center, how quickly you can find that inner peace, that tranquility within that says, this shit is chaos. This is crazy. There must be something magnificent for me here.

For me to be in the center of this, there is big change happening. And this is a big level. I am about to level up in a huge way.

So how you move through it, how you recognize that you're in the dark night of the soul is when your heart hurts,

when you can't find meaning and what used to have meaning,

when you think there's no purpose in what you've been doing, it is to look for new purpose.

So stop resisting it. Stop resisting. Stop running from it and sit with it. How am I feeling? What am I feeling? Have I lost meaning in this stuff I had given meaning to? And again, like that's step one of A Course in Miracles is to erase, to clean the slate of the meaning that you have given everything.

So if things have lost meaning, you're on the right path.

Because the human world that which we assign meaning to here, well, that's not of your biggest self. That's not your true identity. That's not your divine self. And so sometimes we have to recognize that these are fun things to enjoy, but they're not our meaning. They're not our purpose.

witness your experience as an observer.

Almost like, like peel yourself up, up, up out of the picture and look down on you and say, okay, let's look at it from this perspective. I'm just going to like angel float above you and look down and say, all right, what are you experiencing?

Name it. Name your feelings. Name your struggles.

Is it that things that you expected haven't happened?

life hasn't turned out the way you thought it would. You've lost somebody.

that you relied on to make you feel whole and complete that you love dearly.

What's happening? Name it. Name your feelings, witness them, but try to do it as an observer. This is what Susan is going through right

do it in third person.

When you do it in the third person, you're able to do it from a place of, this is what she's experiencing. Almost have you, have you ever tried, I know in school we would have to read plays, and so it has like the connotations and it's like, and then Susan laid on the floor and cried. And so that is not part of what is written, but they are telling you what the actor will do. If you could write your story, what you're feeling,

in that way. It would give you so much insight.

into what's coming up for you. What are you releasing?

Maybe it's the expectations that your parents had for who you're going to be.

that your husband has.

that you had as a kid and things just haven't panned out the way you thought. But the cool thing is, is you don't know the divine order.

You don't know if maybe it just hasn't been your time or there's something greater. There's a different soul journey of what you're meant to experience, what you're meant to grow through and learn through in this lifetime. And so when we stop comparing what we're experiencing from, for what we thought we would experience, and we can just accept things for what they are. Not bad, not good. This is,

It is what it is. It is what it is.

If you are experiencing this, then say to yourself, Spirit is calling, God is calling, the universe is calling, and I must answer.

Next, start asking questions. Be willing to wait for the answer, but you have to ask the questions. You have to ask for help. You have to ask for guidance. You have to be asked to show what should I release? What is my next step? If you are taking action and nothing's happening, you're not moving in the right direction, it might not be the right time.

What would you have me know? What would you have me do?

My way is not working. Please show me.

And then write, write down what your fears are. What were your expectations? What are your dreams?

Start a new process of getting to know yourself as you are right now.

What would you like tomorrow to be?

What would you like next year to be? How would you like to feel? Not what would you like to have. How would you like to feel? Maybe you don't know the perfect course to that feeling.

But when you start having this dialogue with God, with spirit, with Jesus, with your angels, with Mohammed, whoever, when you have this conversation.

and surrender your expectations.

to what is meant for you.

That's when the quicksand sand starts kind of moving away.

You can get lighter. You can let go of the burdens that are weighing your back down. You can let go of the old versions of you that are not part of this new life.

You can say goodbye to the building that needs to blow up.

For the foundation of the new building you're laying. The foundation you're laying for the new building you're building. Maybe that's better. But you hear me. You hear me. We have to let go of the old.

We have to let go of the old to embrace the new. And that is hard. It is hard. Sometimes we love those versions of ourselves. But when you continue to live in the past, you are not allowing for what is now. Embrace now. And even if that means embracing the now in the dark night of the soul, embrace it. You are here. You are transforming.

Better is coming. So don't resist it. Don't numb it out. Just accept it. It's your cocoon. All right.

I think that's all I have for today.

If you are struggling, know that I love you for whatever that's worth. There are other people out there who are in this battle too.

who are trying to find a breath, trying to find a day of ease. So sometimes when we are most alone, just know that on the other side of it is a new version of you. And if you have heard, my gosh, there are so many stories of tragedy, of near death experiences or car crashes or loss.

And on the other side, I don't know that I've ever heard somebody say, I wish that wouldn't have happened. Because it is all part of their growth, part of their expansion, part of their experience. And it's part of yours too.

Thank you for listening. I'm here. If you need someone to work with, I love mentoring people. It is my favorite thing to do. I love doing intuitive readings, but really connecting with people and helping them work through their issues is a passion. I absolutely love it. So if you'd like to work with me, reach out. If not, no.

that there is support available. You are not alone and I do love you. So have a great day.