A week has gone by since I wrote about my personal experience with the dark night of the soul. (If you want to read about it, go HERE)
After all the comments and personal messages I received, I decided I could serve many people by sharing more details about this experience to help you on your journey through this time, as sharing also is helping me, so thank you..
So, here it goes...
I would love to tell you that you can pray your way out of these feelings.
I would love to tell you to think positive thoughts..
I would love to tell you to focus on all the things you can be grateful for in your life...
I would love to be that advisor for you. But I can't, and I won't.
Why?
Because the dark night of the soul has a purpose for you and for me.
~Its called shadow work~
(Maybe you know about shadow work, but feel this as you read it).
Think about a shadow for a minute. Its dark in there because there is no or minimal awareness of it. Its a place that is difficult to see because there isn't much light.
Where there is light there is awareness. Where there is darkness, there is oblivion.
Its a place where parts of us hide; you know, the parts that you haven't looked at or choose to forget, or even suppressed from childhood. Its the parts that you were forced to ignore because it didn't fit society's standards, or even your family's.
Its in the shadow where our lost dreams sleep,
where our inner truths remain silenced, our hopes forgotten.
Its also the place where your less than positive personality resides, that one you don't want to believe exists.
The shadow is the part of you that hides behind the mask you put on when your feet touch the floor in the morning. It's the tears behind your smile, its the lump in your throat.
The shadow sits still, patiently waiting for you to notice, and when too much time goes by without attention, that shadow decides your time is up and a visitation is due. Without any warning, darkness takes over, and we experience the dark night of the soul.
The dark night of the soul can be simply labeled "depression". But isn't depression a misalignment between the head and the heart: a crisis of the soul yearning to be witnessed by the keeper of it... witnessed by you?
What parts of you are you declining to bare witness?
The dark night of the soul is like the Tower in Tarot. Shit needs to fall, crumble and be set ablaze; stripped away from your current reality to reveal a new one. And it fucking hurts.
It hurts because we resist it. We desparately try to grip control so tightly that we fail miserably.
We hold on to an old paradox of ourselves because the dark night of the soul is the "in between" state of the soul. We are torn between who we were and who we are becoming because of fear of the unknown. The dark night of the soul is literally the place where the lower and upper merge. Its the cocoon phase between the caterpillar and the butterfly.
Its the explosion of soul bursting out of the mold you have been compressed into.
(As I write those words I can literally feel my heart wanting to explode, can you?)
The dark night of the soul is an invitation to explore your inner truths that have been so suppressed, so buried deep inside your soul, that we have forgotten they even exist at all. This creates feelings of isolation, feeling lost, overwhelmed, physical heaviness in your body, mind, and heart space.
Its an inner earthquake rumbling in the depths of who. you. really. are. in. your. core!
You are a volcano on the brink of eruption and are trying to keep the lid on so tightly that the screams of your inner voice are deafening within your body!
Its as if, energetically, your inner dragon could open her mouth and spew fire all over the land as your head shakes back and forth.
Ughhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!
And now here you are... exposed; naked in front of your own self and you don't even know what to think or feel anymore.
Now, breathe out the biggest sigh you ever have birthed out of your body.
Let this be.
Sit with her. Observe. Listen.
Release and allow her to come forward.
Its time, and she's ready.
She has much to show you on this new path of your existence.
Until next time, much love to all of you,
Tara Renee'