After fifteen years of disciplined meditation and spiritual seeking, Paul hit a brick wall. He got ME/CFS, lost his job, his ideas about spirituality crumbled, and he lost interest in all the teachings he had tried so assiduously to follow. With no role in life, and no sense of direction, he felt like he was falling into a bottomless pit. Occasionally, a deeper sense of peace came out of nowhere, but he doubted himself, calling himself crazy. Eventually, after several years, he found himself rea...
Jul 14, 2025•52 min•Ep. 11
Having been interested in mythological and spiritual artwork from a young age, John went to university to study comparative symbolism. At twenty-one – while feeling directionless and reading intense philosophy, including Krishnamurti – his sense of self completely disintegrated. He dropped out of his degree course and, for about six months, became a barefoot guru (having left his shoes in an art gallery). He travelled and taught, living in the homes of people who supported him, until he realised...
Jul 14, 2025•53 min•Ep. 10
Following on from our first conversation, Li and I begin with the hamster wheel that is capitalism, colonialism and imperialism, and the effects of living within power structures that threaten us in a variety of ways, depending on who we are. We talk about how it was impossible to keep up being an efficient cog in that wheel during our dark nights, and how it’s natural to no longer want to participate in “this deadening culture.” We discuss the “con job” that often masquerades as spirituality; h...
Jul 14, 2025•1 hr 4 min•Ep. 9
Li’s first dark night began when a relationship suddenly ended, and they found themself beset by heartbreak, their survival strategies stripped. Some time later, an abusive intimate relationship took Li even deeper in, splitting them open in what they describe as “a total unravelling of the wounded me.” They started to feel all the fear – and other emotions – that they’d been masking, denying, avoiding, and hiding. Slowly, Li began to feel the excruciating pain of aloneness and separation – whic...
Jul 14, 2025•50 min•Ep. 8
Mike recently completely his PhD on the empirical evidence for interventions in spiritual crisis. Always interested in myth, magic, and mysticism, he has extensively studied religious and spiritual phenomena through the lens of transpersonal psychology. His research brings much-needed academic attention to an experience so often overlooked by both the spiritual and therapeutic worlds, and is deeply informed by his work supporting people going through spiritual crisis. In this episode, we talk ab...
Jul 14, 2025•1 hr•Ep. 7
Hany’s dark night began in earnest in his forties, although he’d been aware of feeling different since he was eight. As a child, he’d tried to express to the adults around him what he was experiencing, but it wasn’t until a therapist suggested many years later that he was in a dark night that he began to understand what might have been happening throughout his life. After going through countless rock bottoms and navigating blindly in the dark, he started to follow his own river and found himself...
Jul 14, 2025•50 min•Ep. 6
Following on from our first conversation, Jessica and I delve into the moment she first heard the term ‘spiritual bypassing’ and realised that’s what she’d been doing, and we explore the rejection or exclusion of the body which is central to spiritual bypassing. Based on our childhood experiences, we touch into cPTSD (complex post-traumatic stress disorder) and the extent to which many of the teachings of self-negating non-duality mirror the messages of narcissistic abuse, shaming the self and i...
Jul 13, 2025•57 min•Ep. 5
Jessica’s dark night began a few years after she became immersed in the teachings of self-negating nonduality as a way to silence her ruminating mind and disappear her intense emotional suffering. Initially, she experienced the dissolution of her sense of self described by the Neo Advaita gurus, and felt that she’d found the magic wand that would erase her, leaving only boundlessness. Gradually, however, she became increasingly and disturbingly dissociated and unable to relate. Terrified that sh...
Jul 13, 2025•53 min•Ep. 4
After many years of inner healing and therapy work, an inner knowing came clearly to Helen; “I have to keep my heart open, no matter what.” Recognising that she had been living in her head, disconnected from her heart, she took the risk of speaking what was in her heart. Doing so triggered a profound energetic and emotional reaction. It was as if she was looking over the edge of a cliff with no option but to step off. Amongst other things, we talk about having to feel all the material we were ne...
Jul 13, 2025•46 min•Ep. 3
Following on from our first conversation, Julianne describes how things began to change when she came to a kind of acceptance of the limitations of her physical health. We discuss the difference between the idea of surrendering, and the energetics of being brought to an actual surrender. Our conversation also covers how she sought order in the outer world as a way to control the chaos of her inner world; the layers of shame and judgement around being a victim, and how shaming spiritual teachings...
Jul 13, 2025•45 min•Ep. 2
*Please note that in the first few moments of this episode Julianne mentions the sudden death of a child. If you'd prefer not to listen to this section, skip to 01.15. Julianne’s dark night began with a tragedy, and spiralled when a mystery illness took hold. She lost her job and her home, and had brain fog so bad there were times she couldn’t work out how to feed herself. Previously focused on a successful banking career, she found herself with no choice but to turn inward. She began to explore...
Jul 13, 2025•51 min•Ep. 1
Welcome to the first season of The Dark Night of the Soul Unwrapped, a podcast for anyone who is going through or curious about spiritual emergency, existential crisis, or the dark night of the soul. My guests and I share our experiences of being in - and emerging out of - this lonely and sometimes terrifying terrain, without glossing over the realities. We discuss - amongst many other things - how it relates to trauma, illness, embodiment, spiritual teachings and ideas about awakening, and the ...
Jul 02, 2025•1 min
