Bill imbued me with the idea that living to core values is often inconvenient, sometimes costly, and always demanding. It is indeed the hard stuff. I remain imperfect in living to all of my core values all the time. But I behave much more consistently with my values because of Bill’s teaching and example. He taught me that you must continually self-correct, like a ship at sea being guided by a constellation of stars—sometimes you get a bit off, but you resight on your values and tack back on course. And you do this forever, across the entirety of any life well lived.

Your dark night is forcing you to consider alternatives. It is taking you out of the active life of submission to alien goals and purposes. It is offering you your own approach to life. You can sit with it and consider who you are and who you want to be. You can be fortified by it to stand strong in your very existence. You can be born again, not into an ideology that needs your surrender, but into yourself, your uniqueness, your God-given reality, the life destined for you.

It might help to concentrate on developing a vision and strong sense of values rather than on the usual psychological issues of emotion and relationship.

The jealous person doesn’t have to find it in himself to love without possessing. The spiritual person has found a way to be good and virtuous. The inferior one doesn’t have to be somebody and enter the fray of life with strength.

You can trust them [emotions and fantasies], not to arrange life the way you want it, but to arrange the elements of your soul in a way that will offer rich life in the future.