When Everything Falls Apart, Something Deeper Awakens | Eckhart Tolle

Often what triggers the Dark Night of the Soul, this deep sense of pointlessness and the emotion that goes with it, the deep despondency, the sadness, the heaviness, uh, it's often triggered by— sometimes Dark Night of the Soul, as I mentioned, traditionally It's a religious term connected with the loss of belief in God. So it's not uncommon for humans who grow up with belief in God, suddenly or gradually the belief dissolves or something happens and they suddenly decide, well, that means God must not be real. There are religious people who faithfully go to church every week and practice their religion, but quite often— I have seen it quite a few times— something very challenging happens in their lives, that they experience a very challenging situation. Their partner leaves them or gets seriously ill and then dies, or their child gets seriously ill and dies. Terrible events, or something very destructive happens in their lives, and they say, how could God allow this? Also happens when people— it may not even look at happening to you. You can look at the world situation or something happening to somebody else, all the suffering in this world. You ask, how could God allow this? If I were God, so the narrative goes, I would not allow this. God is supposed to be omnipotent, which means he, she, whatever, could do anything. Omnipotent. Now, if an omnipotent God allows the suffering, all the suffering of this world, then the omnipotent God either has lost interest in humanity completely— is he, she— traditionally, the traditional image of God is associated with the he pronoun. Maybe he's just walked away and lost interest, or maybe now the traditional interpretation in Middle Ages and beyond of of religious people is whenever they experience suffering, they say, "God is punishing us, we deserve it." So that was the traditional interpretation, collective one. Almost everybody subscribed to that. And so God is punishing us. And we need to atone, we need to sacrifice something, all kinds of things people did. But in a way, that mental interpretation of suffering kind of almost helped them a little bit not to fall into— not to be swallowed up in the dark night of the soul, because then it's still there's still some meaning behind it. If God is punishing us, life still has some meaning. However, in modern times, when humans experience suffering either happening to them or in their vicinity— and vicinity could be anywhere on the planet because through our modern devices, we now can witness the suffering that happens in other parts of the planet. And so the modern interpretation often is not that God is punishing us. The modern interpretation tends to be, if there is a God, how can he allow that suffering? If there is a God, God must be omnipotent. If he's omnipotent, how can he allow all that suffering? And now what's the conclusion after— did you draw after that? Therefore, either it means God has become completely irrelevant, he has lost interest in us, so we are justified in losing interest in him, or the interpretation is 'Actually, if I were God, I could—' Many people think that if I were God and omnipotent, I would not allow this suffering. Conclusion: I am actually morally superior to that entity that I call God because I would not allow that he does. I would not. These are thoughts that arise when people contemplate the fact of suffering. Of course, they're all false because they're based on a complete and childish view of the meaning of God. So, but however, so this human then come to the conclusion Actually, it was all a delusion. There is no God. If you were brought up within a religion, that can lead to the dark night of the soul, but that— because that takes you into a sense of a feeling of pointlessness of the feeling that there is no inherent meaning in the universe. It's all random, it's all pointless. That narrative in your mind can be very toxic and harmful, and you— because then you believe in it because you just justify your to yourself that if there were a God, he would not allow this suffering— omnipotent God— therefore, there is no God. So, all this is just— and of course, this ties in with the— what goes back to the 19th century, the theory of evolution. Of Darwin, with whom it started, and which has affected— there is a truth to the theory of evolution because it seems to be the case that there is evolution, yes. But the theory behind this Darwin's theory of evolution is these evolutionary processes are completely random. And so over millions of years, the random developments fortuitously create these life forms. They're ultimately, in modern terms, coming together of atoms and molecules in a random fashion, producing life. Nothing is behind it. There's no purpose to it. It's just a random event. This was the 19th that gradually that belief has affected all of humanity. All the humans who have never heard of Darwin eventually became affected by this collective, became a collective belief in mainstream culture, which has become increasingly non-religious. In mainstream culture, this has become a collective belief It still is, except for there's some exceptions of great scientists were able to transcend that, but many are still trapped in that belief of the randomness of the universe, the pointlessness of it all. And so some humans, when they experience loss in their lives, they become acutely aware They suffer, and then a narrative arises out of the suffering, how pointless this all is. We even have this in the Bible, in the famous book Ecclesiastes in the Old Testament, starts with the writer of this particular book in the Bible, we don't know exactly who, that was, he must have experienced that dark night of the soul. And so he started his famous piece with the phrase, vanity of vanities, all is vanity. Vanity, by the way, had a different— has a— the modern meaning of vanity is an exaggerated pride of your appearance. But vanity, the original meaning of the word vanity means pointlessness, emptiness, meaninglessness. Vanity of vanities, all is vanity. Then, and then he writes about the pointlessness of existence. Um, in more modern translations of the Bible, it's actually translated as, uh, it's all utterly pointless. It's not as poetic as the old, but, but people can relate to it better. It's all utterly pointless. That often underlies the loss of meaning, often underlies the arising of this, the state of consciousness that we call dark night of the soul. Now, it's not always a religious loss of meaning. Your meaning, the meaning that you have given your life may have been a kind of personal one. Your life had meaning because you said you're working towards a career, you're trying to build up your career, and you're trying to succeed in this world. That's great, it gives— it's a good thing, it gives meaning to your life. And every day you got motivated to succeed and to achieve your goals. And that's fine, this could keep you going for the rest of your life. But it's also possible that you suddenly encounter a huge obstacle to what you're doing. You work for years building up a business and then it all collapses. Or you work for years, rising in the company, and suddenly the company is swallowed up by some other company and you lose your job and your sense of identity that was connected to your function. It was all illusory, of course, but it can lead to Dark Night of the Soul. So I used the term illusory, and here we come to an important fact. Often what triggers the dark night of the soul, this deep sense of pointlessness and the emotion that goes with it, the deep despondency, the sadness, the heaviness, It's often triggered by the collapse of a certain— ultimately, a certain narrative that gave meaning to your life. But not only that, the narrative not only gave meaning to your life, it also provided you with a sense of identity, of self. You could also, let's say, your meaning is you have a child or you have children, and your children give meaning to your life, which is wonderful. You do everything for your children. You do everything to help them do better. And then they grow up, or let's say it's one child. And you do everything you— and then the child does something really stupid and walks away from it all, disregards all, all that you have done for him or her, and gets into awful situations, throws everything away, or even worse becomes ill and maybe even dies. It does happen. And you're— if that was the need, everything collapses in your life. Everything. You're, you're not just deeply sad at the death of a loved one, which is normal, but you become despondent and you become consumed by the sadness, and the sadness becomes a darkness that envelops you, and it can go on for a long time. Something has collapsed. But so it's always— there's a narrative that you have that tends to be a common trait in the arising of the dark night of the soul. There's a narrative in your mind that suddenly collapses, and therefore not only the narrative but also your sense of self begins to crumble and collapse. It's very painful.