TURNING POINTS ON THE SPIRITUAL PATH
My personal experiences inspired me to write this short article. I always say that the spiritual path is not just about lotus flowers on Balinese beaches, magic rituals, hugging trees, and dancing by the fire. I often mention that it is not a sweet doughnut either. It is also about hard work, a demanding inner process that requires discipline, determination, willpower, and patience.
When we embark on our spiritual journey, we initially become enamored with the mystical, colorful, and otherworldly realm that reveals unknown „superpowers.” Our first steps are still taken within the world of illusions. Even though we may think we’re awakening because it feels so pleasant – feeling shivers down our spine during a Kundalini yoga session, experiencing our first energetic orgasms, or soaring through space in meditation (which wasn’t even true meditation but a creation of our vivid imagination) – in reality, we haven’t yet entered the valley of spiritual growth.
In that valley, less pleasant experiences await. However, if we dare to walk further along this path, which is not always illuminated, one thing is certain: we will transform our life so that there will be no more lies, illusion, hollow relationships, and hypocrisy. Ahead lies the land of truth, light, unconditional love, harmony, and peace. But before we get there, we must go through valleys of LONELINESS and DARKNESS.
THE ALONENESS
When you change while walking spiritual path, sometimes you stop being attractive companion to the people around you. You lose attractiveness because you no longer drink alcohol, no longer care for “showing off,” and see things others prefer to sweep under the rug. You long for change – the kind of change others might also desire but are too afraid to pursue.
By awakening the soul sleeping within your body, you may lose friends who were necessary at that stage of life, both to you and to them. Sometimes, even family turns away because they are simply not ready for your truth. It is not their fault, and you are not doing anything wrong. It is just the way it is. Everyone has their own time and space for their personal growth.
By letting go, you create space for the new – for relationships you begin to build more consciously, based on the melody of your soul rather than a desire to please or surround yourself with as many people as possible. You start focusing on the quality, not the quantity, of those relationships. You build them not in the shadow of fear of loneliness but in the light of love and desire.
New people will emerge, with whom you will create your new world. But before that happens, you may feel lonely and lost. This is an especially important stage of spiritual awakening. In that loneliness, you finally have time and space to be with yourself. You are your own most important friend.
If you do not love your inner companion, you will not form healthy, deep, or lasting relationships with others. So, you learn about yourself anew, discovering what you like, what you do not, what you truly dream about, what you want, and what you do not want. Without this stage, without knowing yourself in solitude and letting go of what no longer serves you, the new will not come.
Because the New, the Desired, the Wanted, and the Dreamed-Of will not knock on your door and ask to be let in. You must be ready to open the door, and then your energy will naturally attract all of it.
Do not fear this loneliness, for in truth, you are never alone. Within you and above you are the Father of the Universe and the Mother of Life, who care for you twenty four hours a day.
THE DARKNESS
When you reach your shadow, your darkness, it means you have arrived at the source, at the core of your transformation. It is a turning point on the spiritual path.
It is the moment…
when you fall to your knees, but no longer ask for help; you lack the strength to escape and to fight. You surrender. You accept whatever is to come.
It is a time…
when you have nothing, lose everything, and do not even know who you are. Everything you have created until now ceases to hold any meaning. You already know it was just an illusion. Now, Your Ego is standing naked before the Truth.
Stay in this shadow for a while…
for when the eyes see nothing and no one sees us, your soul rests, regenerates, rebuilds, and integrates all the changes you have worked so hard. There is strength hidden in your shadow. There is light that cannot be seen but is there. For brilliance and flashes do not always help us see better. The truth about ourselves lies where nothing blinds us.
Embrace this Darkness…
Like a Loving Mother, lay your head on her chest. She will show you the way. And from then on, you will no longer stray, no longer search, no longer yearn, no longer suffer. A sense of accomplishment will fill your entire being. You will become a Bliss.
Mother of Darkness does not come to bring you down, but to help you stand in your greatness, in your Highest High.
“Faith is in you whenever you look
At a dewdropp or a floating leaf
And know that they are because they have to be.
Even if you close your eyes and dream up things
The world will remain as it has always been
And the leaf will be carried by the waters of the river.
You have faith also when you hurt your foot
Against a sharp rock and you know
That rocks are there to hurt our feet.
See the long shadow that is cast by the tree?
We and trees throw shadows on the earth.
What has no shadow has no strength to live.”
Czeslaw Milosz