I’m writing this series on the Dark Night of the Soul — or what I’m now calling the Phoenix Era — for a few reasons. One reason is to suggest re-naming the Dark Night of the Soul to something that is a bit more hopeful. The darkness of self-transformation ultimately brings light, so redubbing it as ‘The Phoenix Era’ emphasizes the part where you re-emerge from the ashes renewed.
I also want to bring awareness to the fact that this is, like, a thing people go through. It’s not an anomaly. When you’re in the Phoenix Era, it can feel like everyone else’s life is going as it ‘should’ — i.e. they’re progressing and they’re happy (thank you, Western Culture, for the false narrative that this should be baseline) — and you’re the weirdo who is having a catastrophic meltdown. Unfortunately, this perception only compounds feeling lost and isolated. In reality, self-transformations like these are, essentially, what make life — and everyone encounters them at some point. Self-transformation is a rite of passage and an initiation into the mysteries of life, and a re-connection to your true self. Western culture has forgotten this, and with that forgetting, we have lost the wisdom that guides us through the layers upon layers of these experiences.
These challenges have slowly unfolded in my own Phoenix Era(s), continuously surprising me that there are still somehow more challenges awaiting. All of this has taught me the complexity of human ‘being-ness,’ and I figure I might as well share what I’ve learned through all the suffering I’ve endured.
I also strongly believe and anticipate that we can expect many more people to experience this kind of destructuring-restructuring as the Psychedelic Renaissance takes off. So, yeah, let’s get into it.
In the previous post (Integration (Personal Edition)), I wrote about how you need to reconstruct yourself after the Phoenix Era. I also discussed how integration helps lock in the new changes through cognitive, emotional, and lifestyle updates. This post is about the social aspect of integrating those changes.
It’s common to think that after the Phoenix Era you can comfortably slip back into your old life, as though you are a puzzle piece that temporarily exited a completed puzzle to pick up new colors and you’re now returning to take your original place in the puzzle. But what you haven’t realized yet — and only becomes glaringly apparent when trying to fit back in where you came from — is that not only have you gained new colors, but you’ve also changed shape. Some of your edges easily fit back into the puzzle (relief!), but some of the other sides no longer fit (horror!). Wait, you hadn’t anticipated this. You didn’t want this. It just happened and you couldn’t control it. And, horror of all horrors, you can’t go back because you like the new shape, the new you.
Enter the ‘Social Edition’ of integration.
As I mentioned in the previous two posts — The Phoenix Era and Integration: The Personal Edition — the Dark Night of the Soul is often about coming back to your true self, or the version of you that isn’t trying to conform to anyone’s standards but your own. While this sounds easy, it’s actually quite difficult because these behavioral patterns run deep and have unconsciously shaped your relationships. As you change, the relationships will change, too.
This can be understood through the lens of attachment theory. According to attachment theory, from childhood, we adapt our behaviors and even alter our self-expression to secure affection and maintain emotional bonds with our caregivers, a pattern that often extends into adult relationships. An example: when a child grows up in an environment where being loud gets them punished, they may subconsciously adopt the belief that, “When I’m loud, I am unloved, so I must be quiet to be loved.” Self-transformation is the undoing of these patterns.
How might that shake out?
Let’s take an example. Maybe you realize that you suppress some of your innate interests because you don’t want to be considered weird by your friends. You decide not to do that anymore. You want to be authentic. It could go well — some of your friends may be interested in those things, too! Now you have a new common interest. But other friends may, well, think you’re weird and withdraw.
For me, when I was integrating my spiritual side with my scientific side, I noticed that I would automatically present/project my skeptical scientific side when interacting with people, because that’s what I thought they were expecting of me. After my spiritual transformation, this was inauthentic because that wasn’t entirely who I was anymore. I was now a skeptical scientist who was also spiritually-open-minded. Behaving in that way, however, took quite some time. It takes courage to be your true self when you’ve been acting like someone else for many years. Sometimes that takes practice, and that’s okay. I was hard on myself whenever I downplayed the spiritual stuff that I was newly interested in during a social interaction, feeling disappointed that I failed to be the new me. But your body and psyche are complex, and sometimes it just takes time to feel safe to express yourself. It took me a while to realize that’s okay. That’s where self-compassion comes in. You’ll do it when you’re ready.
Another example: maybe during your Phoenix Era you identified your tendency to avoid conflict. Now, you intend to directly address interpersonal issues that come up. But the people in your life aren’t on the same page. They liked the old conflict-avoidant you. When you consciously begin behaving in new ways, new dynamics and tensions emerge in your relationships. Some of these dynamics will settle in and drastically improve the relationships. But some of them won’t, and you will lose people.
In theory, losing people who are out of alignment with you is what should happen. Truly being yourself involves aligning with people, places, and things that resonate with you. But, in practice there are scarcely words for how much this can pierce your heart and hurt. You may find yourself drifting from people who were integral to your self-concept, like childhood friends or significant others. They’re not like a pair of shoes you can easily throw away. Prior to your transformation, it might have been hard to imagine ever growing apart, yet here you are, stuck in a space where you know continuing the relationship exactly as it was before doesn’t feel right, but also being unable to envision your life without them. This transitional space is one of the most challenging parts of the Dark Night — and that’s putting it lightly.
Another friction point that emerges in social conditions is that you can find yourself struggling to explain what you’re going through to the people in your life since our culture has no concept for it, leaving a communication gap. That’s why it would be helpful to have a concept like the Phoenix Era in the cultural zeitgeist, to convey that you’re undergoing a huge personal transformation, that you will not be the same person by the end of it, and that this is a good thing. Also, it could convey that the thing you need most from the people in your life is support and grace.
Something else that doesn’t get emphasized as much as it should is that these dynamics can take time to fully unfold, especially as you continue to integrate your personal changes. To return to the puzzle metaphor, it’s like the two sides that haven’t changed click into place, igniting a sense of excitement in you – only to be utterly crushed when you realize the other two sides no longer fit in the puzzle. This slow unfolding makes it feel like the dark night will never end — like you’re walking in a dark forest, unsure when you’ll walk face-first into another tree. I have this image in my head, too: the new you is happily walking out of the forest onto a familiar path, relief flowing from head to toe, only to realize that the path is cracking underfoot with each step, turning to dust, and falling away into a sinkhole while taking you along. This is something I really wish someone had told me, so I’m passing it on here: don’t try to find the finish line. Just keep swimming (as Dory says). And to balance the heaviness of these mini crises that pop up, do those true you things that light up your soul, whether it’s being in nature, eating gummy bears, or unapologetically playing Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour on repeat.
At times, the Phoenix Era feels like life or death because it is. It is a literal death and rebirth of not only who you are, but also your entire world. I cannot emphasize enough how important self-compassion is. One of my personal mantras became: you just have to make it through today.
But is it worth it? F*ck yes. The Dark Night/Phoenix Era is the toll you pay. It’s an act of personal rebellion to reclaim your power, and flip the script on a life that doesn’t fit you, the real you.
These are just some of the social snags that can come up during any type of self-transformation. Next time, I’ll write about some that are specific to flipping a worldview when that worldview isn’t aligned with mainstream Western Culture’s.
This blog was originally posted on Cosmos, Coffee, & Consciousness
