the purpose of a "dark night of the soul" period - a time in your life where you feel disoriented, lost, lonely, desperate - is that it reveals the cracks in your old belief system we inevitably carry old beliefs with us from childhood, things like "someone will always be there to save me" or "I'm worthy of love because I'm smart." these beliefs can serve us well, for a time... but they are naive and limited. they can't handle all the tragedy & chaos of adult life so at some point, our belief system breaks down, and we're thrown into the darkness, into the void. from there, we have two choices: we can try to hold on to our old beliefs, desperately clinging to their promised security... or we can let go letting go means staring into the abyss. for example, if my belief is "I'm worthy of love because I'm smart", and I find out that I may not be as smart as I think I am, I now have to face the existential question of "am I actually worthy of love?" that kind of question often feels like a form of death. it can be agony. it is a disconnection from love, a disconnection from even the possibility of love. it is the death of an ancient & innocent part of you but the void is a creative space. it's where form & substance emerge. if we can stay in the void long enough, in that disorientation, without trying to rush to an answer... then eventually an answer appears a new belief system forms, one that allows both the possibility that I can be an idiot AND still have access to love (what a concept!). now I have a mature belief that can carry me forward. now I can have a more truthful relationship with the world but that dark night period is hard. it's brutal. it's so tempting to try to escape it, to try to numb it, to try to rush through it. but the invitation is to embrace it, and to let it change you