Trauma As Initiation: The Dark Night Of The Soul
(This is an excerpt from a University Of Metaphysical Sciences course at www.umsonline.org, please feel free to visit the school website)
Just as fear
serves a physical purpose in our lives by providing the motivation
for survival, so trauma serves a spiritual purpose by teaching us
to have courage. Living through severe injury and tragedy requires
strength and resilience. When we have seen the worst that life has
to offer and know that we have survived in spite of it, a potential
threat no longer causes us to lose our nerve. At the crucial moment
we survivors find ourselves equal to whatever challenge we must face,
and though fear may still rise up inside us, it cannot overwhelm
us. This is the meaning of courage. Jamie Sams says in Dancing The
Dream (1999), “All Dark
Nights of the Soul ultimately teach us how to let go of cowardice.”
Now that we understand how traumatic experiences relate to spiritual development, let’s examine the types of trauma and how they correspond to different steps on the path of spiritual initiation. Such traumatic experiences can be divided into four basic types: physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual. Each type of trauma has a “Dark Night of the Soul” or spiritual initiation associated with it. Jamie Sams continues in Dancing The Dream (1999) saying that, “In human life, we experience these four passages into darkness on the spiritual, emotional, psychological, and physical levels. At these times, we feel that the light in the window representing the safety of home has vanished, we think that there is no way out, or we feel that we have lost our connection to the Great Mystery, God, the creator.” A loss of spiritual connectedness can also be compounded by a loss of social connectedness. Jamie Sams tells us, “We may feel abandoned or alone; we may think that no one understands our passage in life and that there are unseen forces working against us.” Healing from trauma must therefore include a reforging of the connection between self and Divine, as well as the creation of supportive human relationships between ourselves and others.