Have you ever felt your world collapsing around you? Your business, your relationships, your health just crumbling away and you feel powerless to stop it? It feels as if some invisible force is out to destroy you and its winning. Maybe you are in that space right now. Suddenly all those years of personal development work, courses and programs you have done, that promised so much, seem like a pack of lies, as you spiral rapidly downwards.
At this point it may be tempting to try and self-medicate the emotional pain you are feeling with food, alcohol or drugs. Perhaps prescribed medication of anti-depressants to numb the pain seems the only route to take. Deep down you know none of these will help your Soul pain.
You have spent your life doing all the ‘right’ things – getting the education, pursuing your passions, spending mega-bucks on self-improvement courses, listening to the top personal development gurus and studying their books. For a while there you felt you had the answers. But now instead of your life improving, it just seems to be sliding backwards and you get to the point of feeling you’ll vomit if you see yet another smiling face on the internet telling you in their advertising hype how they made a million dollars in a few months. If it’s so easy for everyone else, then why is it so difficult for you? Are you really just one big failure in life? And so the downwards spiral of negativity continues as you berate yourself even more.
There is no way out, or so it seems. You are experiencing ‘The Dark Night of the Soul’, a term coined by Spanish mystic St John of the Cross (1542-1591). Ego structures become meaningless as we search for meaning to this crisis. Caroline Myss wrote in Defy Gravity (2009), “To truly heal we must go past our ego and into the depths of our soul, into our dark passions, examining the source of our actions and choices in life.” Encountering the Dark Night of the Soul forces us to embark on this journey, rather than it being an option.
At these times you despair that anything will ever get better and you feel powerless and defeated in such a profound way that you can easily lose your sense of connection to God or Source.
How do I know? Because I’ve been there, in that dark lonely abyss where no light shines externally and all illusions have come crashing down. All those fail-safe self-healing techniques suddenly seem meaningless and you are just left feeling helpless, powerless and alone. At that point of absolute surrender, when you feel you have lost faith and you have no idea of the way ahead, that is exactly the point where things can start to shift. As you release control, allow yourself to be vulnerable and go inwards to seek that spark of life within, you begin to move through the Dark Night of the Soul. I realize now that pretty much every one of those genuinely ‘successful’, influential people have been through one or more Dark Nights of the Soul, as a part of the transformation into their true soul purpose.
At a conscious level I knew I was enough, but my subconscious mind did not believe it. So what could shift this dissonance? I affirmed multiple times, “I am enough”, putting the emphasis on a different word with each affirmation. The key however was feeling that I was enough. Even if I had never really felt ‘enough’, I imagined how it would feel and instantly felt a sense of energetic expansion, peace and calm. It brought me into a present moment of peace, just feeling that I was enough. Affirm to yourself now slowly, “I am enough” and really feel the positive, uplifting and energizing expansiveness that accompanies it.
Even if you are currently undergoing a Dark Night of the Soul, affirm and feel, “I am enough” and feel your personal power returning. Put one foot in front of the other and ask that each step be divinely guided. Ask for help. Deliberately seek out the beauty around you and find something, anything at all, to be grateful for. Each step you take will be one step closer to walking out of the abyss into your potential.
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Michelle Mayur is a channel for Divine Love and specializes in Spiritual Healing, Isis Healing of Love and Hypnotherapy. She has clients around the world via Skype, phone or in person. Get her FREE Reclaiming Your Inner Power guided meditation at www.angelwings-healing.com