[ambivalents]

May I ask what your practices were that led you to the dark night, and how you then came out the other side? After years of meditation I've kicked it up a notch this past year, and feel like I'm approaching that dark night period. My feelings are somewhat muted, my previous interests and passions have dulled. It's hard to see the point in doing anything.

>> feeling a calling to do something to help others or even the whole world

I would like to get to this place. I try to remember this from A Course in Miracles when I'm feeling pressured to perform:

I am here only to be truly helpful. I am here to represent Him Who sent me. I do not have to worry about what to say or what to do, because He Who sent me will direct me. I am content to be wherever He wishes, knowing He goes there with me. I will be healed as I let Him teach me to heal. (T‑4.XI.8:2‑6)

[zackmorris]

For me, the dark night came on gradually as more and more that I loved was taken from my reality. I've experienced depression and anxiety during the spiritual hardships leading up to the pandemic, but this is different in that it came from a deeper understanding of my connection with it all.

Before, at least I had a scapegoat and could blame other people or trauma or any number of things. But after learning about stuff like manifestation and source consciousness, that we're all one, I had to face myself. That's when I realized that my perceived failures were things that I had largely brought on myself. And that even the trials of life might be teachings that we volunteered for before we incarnated in this life. Like life doesn't happen to us, it happens for us, as messed up as that seems sometimes.

I heard of A Course in Miracles from Marianne Williamson, who is someone that I admire. But I haven't read it yet. With spiritual learnings, it often feels like wisdom comes to us, and then validation when we read that the ideas are ancient. Versus scientific thinking where maybe there is so much obsession with evidence that skepticism rules and sometimes we have trouble seeing the obvious truths before us.

On that note, I feel that "modern" culture is so obsessed with determinism that it forgets that science may never be able to explain something as basic as consciousness. And that all subjective experience comes down to chaos (magic). I believe that quantum physics is an attempt to explain the foundations of chaos. And that any macro-scale stochastic/emergent behavior follows the same rules as quantum physics because it's rooted in the same chaos. Meaning that our thoughts and interactions with others create deterministic effects in the world as surely as our conscious application of scientific principles.

I've just started learning about reality shifting and the application of magic. I've dabbled in manifestation over the years and found that it works, but that manifesting from the ego can backfire. Now when I meditate, I might set an intension like "help me find a more equitable reality for everyone" or something along those lines that is more love-based.

Something that helped me is, even if we're all one, maybe there's still something more. A higher power beyond us, that somehow created all of this. It's endlessly loving and forgiving and doesn't mind that it took us all this time to even begin to notice it. Maybe that's our soul, or source consciousness, or higher self, or a creator or creation itself. Maybe it's aliens, I don't know. But since it's not deterministic, it isn't bounded by space or time or effort. It just is. It can create an entire universe just to house a single consciousness for any of us as easily as we turn on a light switch. For me, that mystery creates a sense of meaning, bringing me back to the central miracle of conscious awareness.