A member of the website wrote recently on the Forum:

I read a post by another Forum contributor the other night, and was real pleased I stopped being depressed and had not had any more depressive episodes since Divine Openings.

Well, last night I had what you would call a Dark Night of The Soul. I have experienced similar episodes like last night, but what made it particularly terrifying is that I thought I would not have to experience them anymore since Divine Openings.

At one point I had suicidal thoughts. I was in such a terrifying place.

The painting The Scream sums up how I felt.

I have always been told I am a very deep person. Well I went somewhere hellish, beyond depression. The place made me feel total isolation. Totally alone, no-one listening, no-one caring. An existential hell. I could not sleep. Could not go to work this morning and I still feel real fear about getting back in bed this evening.

All this is in total contrast to how I have been feeling since Divine Openings.
I am not even sure of why I am typing this out here to be honest.

The place I was in last night felt like being at the bottom of the ocean, with no light penetrating, and 10,000 leagues above was the state of Boredom which I had thought I had stabilized at - a long, long, long way away.

I'm OK as I am sitting here at present typing this - but there are dark thoughts swirling around saying "That place will be always there - and you will always have to return there.
It's a place where there is no light and no God. You are alone". It's a terrifying thought.

I just needed to post this, in the hope something great will come out of posting my experience - but I can't see what.

I really hope I have not depressed anyone - I really do.

Much Love to You All
Terry xxxxxx

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Note from Lola: You might think such things would frighten me and put a heavy weight on me as a teacher, but it does not. The dark night of the soul is a valuable and even auspicious event. It heralds new and higher states. But first you have to get through it!

I wrote to him on the Forum:
Terry, I had a dark night two days ago! I want you to know that spirituality, or Divine Openings, is not immunization from any feeling. The dark night of the soul is actually a door, a powerful next-level initiation. It was classically considered auspicious to get one. Sort of like the descent into hell that only the very powerful rise from.

Good news is they used to last years (Mother Teresa's lasted 40 years, we find out after her death),
but I've seen them being very short. A day to a week. Divine Openings does do that by Grace, and you part is not to resist, but to dive in consciously and be with it. (Things Are Going Great In My Absence tells how to do this, for those who haven't read it.)

Increasingly during that dark day and night I couldn't find my inner light and felt very alone. Tried to meditate and felt deprssed or numb. Just hopelessness and darkness inside. Couldn't sleep easily.

I was thinking things like this: .....if I truly "lost my light" I couldn't teach anymore.... what's the use of living then? ... life is boring (I've been working and not playing enough this week)..... just blah compared to the usual excitement. Downside of living in the now? Now is eternity! Oh, well, once we get happy again, that's eternity too.

Because of Divine Openings, I knew to just be with it. Embrace it. Don't run from it. Spirituality in the real world.

In the night a light being came (not in a dream - in the room) and reached a hand down to me. I sat up in bed and said, "No!" because I was startled. This kind of thing doesn't happen often to me. The Presence is the silence and a feeling in me, not embodied or in form.

Then I went back to sleep and was worked with more subtly, remembering only murmurs and gentle laughter, and woke feeling fabulous.

The next day in a conversation with a Divine Openings Giver it came clear that I had hit a wall, and that deep darkness that had been vibrating down there had popped up out of me..... and it was time to feel and see and move some things I'd been resisting or not moving forward into. It took that to get my attention.

I've had several of these, Terry, and every time if you be with it, you will come out the other side, right back up where you were or higher, usually.

ANYTHING you can be with moves. ANYTHING.

Let it be OK to feel anything. There's no wrong feeling, no matter how dark.
Go inside and just be with that dark emptiness.
It's actually very powerful, and you don't need to feel love or bliss or connection.
Feel the nothing.
You can do it.

But if you need a session, get it.

Love,
Lola

He did indeed move through it. It shouldn't be surprising, but he said his dark night happened on the same day as mine.

Here's his followup note:

Hi, Lola (other Divine Openings Guides had supported him on the Forum too),

Thank you all so much for all your support. I did indeed come through it all OK. In fact I have been on a High for most of the week.

I have felt so much better that I had almost forgot about the whole experience LOL. As Lola said ANYTHING you can be with moves - it certainly did.

Turns out Lola's experience happened the same day as well - WOW!!

I'm really not sure what to say now really - I'm just feeling absolutely OK and have been real busy all week.

I guess with Divine Openings we really do move through things very quick and come out the other side.

Thankfully the experience didn't last 40 years - only an evening!!

So once again thank you all for your support and I appreciate sharing this wonderful Divine Openings journey with all of you.

Love

Terry xxx