"Only in darkness can you see the stars." -Martin Luther King Jr.

Dark Night

"I will boldly shine my light, share my journey, and create a spark to ignite and inspire others to be brave too!"

-unknown

Today I am feeling sadness and experiencing some dark night of the soul emotions. So I thought while I am feeling these difficult emotions, it would be good for me to share some of my experience.

About seven months after my spiritual awakening, I entered my dark night of the soul. It has been intense. I had no idea it was possible to feel what I have been feeling at such extreme levels. For several months I could even feel the emotional pain throughout my body. This has gotten easier, and the intensity has lessened. I have spent many, many months crying on my bathroom floor. This too has gotten easier and less intense. I have felt like I have been hiding in a way but maybe a better word is I have been needing to protect myself. I have needed to feel safe while I process these heavy emotions. And the safest place for me is in my home with my husband and my dog. And I do have a small spiritual team that I confide in and I think that is extremely important.

I have been feeling a lot of grief, shame, self hate, guilt, depression, and unworthiness. I also carried a lot of shame and fear around my experience for a long time and that still comes up every once in a while. I am happy to say though, all of these feelings are less intense and my daily life has gotten easier. But I do still have my days that it is hard to get out of bed and I do need to cry when I feel it coming on. I have also experienced feeling like I am broken, a failure, not normal, and like I am going crazy. At the beginning of my spiritual awakening, I did not feel here. I felt like I was in a movie. There were times I didn't know what was real. I did not feel connected to the people around me, even my dog Oscar seemed far away. This was hard. I was not sleeping at all for several days at a time. I was having anxiety attacks and panic attacks. I even went into a state of spiritual psychosis, very scary. But I made it through because I had the right support and learned to trust myself and most importantly my higher self. I am here now to share my story. I feel like I hit some pitfalls that could have been avoided, mostly because I was not trusting myself. We do have the answers inside of us.

I also have experienced a lot of physical and emotional pain. I still am experiencing pain, but it has gotten a lot better. And resisting the experience will make it more difficult. I was resisting for a long time. There is no way to stop a kundalini awakening. You have to learn to go with it and accept it. It is who you are now. The best thing you can do is embrace it and love it. And I know how hard that can be, it took me a long time to fully accept my kundalini awakening experience. And I have had to grieve the life I had before. My life will just continue to change. Now I look at this as a good thing. I have excitement about it now! I can see how far I have come and feel like I am emerging into this new beautiful life. It took me a while to get here. And this entire process has taught me how to love myself, to love the ickiness, and to love the darkness. It is showing up to be loved. Our job is to be the light in the darkness!

"It is during our darkest moments that we must focus to see the light."

-Aristotle

The Power of Light Affirmations

• I see in the world what I carry in my heart, and I choose to focus on the beauty, the love, and the positive.

• I have hope and so I can see there is light despite all of the darkness.

• I am brave enough to explore the darkness, that I might re-discover the power of my own light.

• Even in the middle of darkness, in fear's strongest efforts to sway me, I can see the light shining still. Love will cast out all fear, and so my faith remains tethered to love.

All of these feelings that are so difficult for us to feel, are wanting our love. The shame, the fear, the unworthiness, the grief, the anger, the self hate, it is all asking for love. What I have found helpful is when I am feeling these emotions I always put my left hand over my heart. I start giving myself love like I would to a child. This is giving love to your inner child. You can say "I love you, I am right here with you. You are safe, you are held, you are loved. I am always here with you. Everything is going to be okay, I am here now." And keep going, tell yourself everything you need to hear, tell yourself everything you needed to hear as a child. And give yourself a hug.

You are the light!

"What you are feeling you are healing."

-Matt Kahn