Dark Nights...

Some nights, as I sleep, or attempt to sleep, I experience sublimity. I suffer and/or am blessed with a condition known as hypnogogic and hypnopompic hallucinations. I basically hear voices and see things as I'm falling asleep or waking up. This can make falling asleep very difficult. Through meditation and regulation of what imagery and music I expose myself to, I have been able to get to the point where I get 6 hours or more of sleep most nights. Much of what I see and hear, and much of what I dream, is truly amazing. It is like the heavenly host sing me to sleep.

That is the thrust of most nights. But sometimes, and this can become a pattern that lasts a week or more at times, I am not lulled to sleep by angels, but kept from sleep by demons. I experience images and sounds too horrible to describe. It makes sleeping very difficult indeed. Through meditation and prayer, I find I can fend off some of the more disturbing voices, and turn around most dreams. But it doesn't always work. And even when it does, the entire night becomes something of a battle. It is like being lost in Hell with Michael the Archangel's sword, trying desperately to claw your way back to the light.

This is a phenomenon of sleep, like sleep paralysis which often accompanies it and which I am also afflicted with. But since in these states the mind is laid bare, and one actually experiences one's soul directly and phenomenally, all that is both dark and light within one comes to the surface. All of one's sins become manifest. Every night is usually a heaven, sometimes a hell, and often both. This is the substance of my ow dark nights of the soul.