A dark night

of the soul

Last night I woke up around 3am and couldn’t fall back asleep. There was fear and sadness bubbling in the middle of my heart. Rather than turn away, I tended to it and looked at the feelings directly. And then I lost control of my body. Something had seized my mind and wouldn’t let go.

I’d suffered from sleep paralysis before, but this was different. Unsure of how to respond, I surrendered to it and allowed my awareness to expand and wrap around what was happening. This was followed by a powerful tingling in my head and a penetrating terror that shook me to my bones.

The wave ended not long after, thankfully. I then started to think about the phenomenon of emptiness, a fundamental concept and experience in Buddhist meditative practices. The idea, as I understand it, is that everything lacks an essence; it’s ephemeral, constantly shifting. Even emptiness itself is subject to emptiness.

I wasn’t sure if what had just happened was related to my recent meditations and readings about it, but it seemed to make things worse in the moment. A second wave of tingling and terror overcame me, and again, I let myself be taken. As with bad or challenging psychedelic trips, it’s not always easy to let go and swim with the currents. I sensed that I wanted to scream for help from my roommate just down the hall but I literally couldn’t if I tried. Eventually, again, things settled, before a third and final wave swept me up.

I fell asleep shortly after the wave subsided and had a strange dream involving a close friend that was being evicted from a shared apartment. I woke up, dazed and oddly calm, and crawled to the couch in the living room. Before my roommate left for work, I asked for a tight hug. I wanted to squeeze harder but didn’t.

Part of me thinks this whole episode is linked to my meditation practice. I think I should stop, at least for a hot second, but I’m also curious about going deeper. Like, how is it that I experienced what I just experienced and still feel relatively calm and centered? How did I become so suddenly helpless by simply thinking about an idea and its implications? I want to keep meditating and find out what else is possible, and it’s not like I can stop meditating even if I tried. It’s built into my fundamental experience of life at this point.

But also, for one day, I’d like to feel more ordinary. This is, of course, always a possibility, always available to me and everyone else. The point of practice is to learn and truly see that it’s there, kind of like a mask you can put on and take off.