I have flirted with the Dark Night of the Soul for years now. Looking back I cannot remember when I wasn’t fighting depression. And if I wasn’t fighting depression I was fighting addiction, denial, defensiveness and flat out lying to myself. The Dark Night of the Soul simply became who I was and I began to despair that I would never know anything else. And if this was it…what I was going to always have to feel like? Was there really any reason to continue? I read self help books, talked to therapists and still after a few months of starting to feel better I would sink back into that black pit of hopelessness and sorrow. Was there no end to it? Was I capable of being happy? Of knowing first hand what inner peace truly felt like? All these thoughts just managed to pull me deeper down into the abyss of despair.
I didn’t realize that I have been on the fast track of healing a complete way of thinking and of living. It started when I met who is now my husband. He introduced me to metaphysical studies though I had been doing a lot of reading before hand. What he explained to me made much more sense. We traveled to my past lives and could see certain patterns that had been set up many lifetimes ago to what I was living through today. He taught me meditation, and though it took me a few years to actually get the hang of it all the doors began opening for me. Through some intensive work I was able to recall memories of this life I had hidden deep within the recesses of my fragile mind and once those were recalled I became aware of my 12 guides….my beloved Twelve.
When the Twelve began earnestly grabbing at my attention I was in complete denial. I was certain I was losing my mind and there was absolutely no one I ever wanted knowing about them. As my work continued with past lives I realized they had been with me since the beginning of time and I began to look forward (secretly) to their visits. Before long I even could see one of them. When they speak to me they are a collective voice in my subconscious. Two females and ten males. It has never been a language that I could speak but rather an understanding and a meeting of the minds, heart and soul. But one day there he was, Kiernan. A man that I could reach out and touch if I had the courage.
The easiest way to get in touch with them was always through hypnosis until one day I could access them through my dreams and through meditation. I was elated. After a time I began to ask them questions and finally when it came time to make a decision about my ministry school I asked for a sign. That was terrifying to me because what if there was no sign? Would it mean what I had always feared….that it was my vivid imagination and nothing more? My husband was aware I had taken this great risk and so we waited. That very afternoon we went for a hike in the Moab desert. We parked the car and went for a beautiful hike as we talked about my fears. When we got back to the car, there draped elegantly on a rock right outside the passenger car door was a necklace that would only have meant something deeply spiritual to me. It was a black Fleur-de-Lys….exactly like the one I had tattooed on my side. My husband asked me then “Is that a good enough sign for you?” so we called the school and registered when we got home.
A year later and I have survived my first year of school. When I say survived what I mean was it stirred up all the pain that lay heavy on my soul unattended to and locked away never to be seen again. My studies through the school unlocked that safe little place within myself and like Pandora’s Box it all came rushing out. Most days it was too much to bear and I could barely face getting out of bed much less living a peaceful life. As each month passed by I began to inch my way out of my deep and despairing hole and I could see a little more of the daylight but everyday was still such an effort to me.
The end of January I went to a local healing ceremony that got me over a huge painful hurdle…or at least part way over. I was starting to see hope in my future. I went to another one in March and got a little closer to understanding where a big chunk of my pain was coming from. Once a year our school gets all the students and some instructors together for a lovely retreat in the Redwood Forest just south of San Francisco. Because this is an online school my fellow classmates are from as far away as Switzerland. So this gives us a chance to connect with each other. Even though we have heard each others voices over the monthly conference calls it was so hard to see them as anything other than distant voices on the phone. So I got in my car in Utah at 2:30 in the morning early April and drove 14 hours to the top of a mountain in Northern California. I cannot go into the specifics of what we did at that retreat but it was some intense healing work that we all shared in together. The voices became loving individuals and all were suffering in one form or another and all needed this healing to take place. Not only did we have these incredible healing experiences that will stay locked in my memory for as long as I draw breath into this body but we all got to know each other in a loving and supportive environment. Not only was I learning from my teachers and ministers that had graduated years before me but I was learning just as much or more from my fellow classmates. I finally figured out we were all wounded but all healers in our own way. I was…no AM…in awe of all the beautiful people I got to know and now that I am home we stay in constant contact through Facebook and email.
For as long as I can remember I have longed for and hunted for unconditional love. I learned the only place I will ever get that is from my very own spirit who has been with me this entire life. The wise and ancient side of myself that understands how to sit with pain until through acceptance and understanding it passes. The side of myself that truly sees me as a beautiful spirit with unlimited compassion that has a deep and limitless well within herself of infinite love…the love that is her connection to the Divine Creator. Love is the Divine Creator and the trees and the birds and the sky and the earth and my classmates and myself and my family and my animals and the stranger I pass on the street. It is all encompassing. It is infinite and everywhere. It is the air that I breathe and the food that I eat and the water that I drink. It is the connection that binds every living thing and every rock and every particle of the universe together. Once I awakened to that fact and I opened my eyes and became aware I was no longer walking through the Dark Night of the Soul. I could never go back. Once you have walked in the light the darkness no longer exists.
I also have no regrets. My long dark night of the soul was my path to the light. I may never have seen or recognized the light of love without that long, lonely walk and so I have nothing but gratitude for that walk, that lonely journey. It was the path I had to take that took me to my diamond road of peace.
Now do not get me wrong. Things have been pretty dicey for me for a while now and that hasn’t changed. It is how I view these challenges that has changed. What at one time seem inevitable and hopeless is now just a learning path to get me where I need to go. I still get a little scared and frustrated and even a little sad at times but I just sit with it and hold the space until a new level of awareness comes to me and gives me the fortitude to see what is coming around the next corner. Every time I get irritated and ask my guides “why does everything have to be so hard and scary?” the answer is always the same….pay attention to what you need to learn here. And so I have. I am even learning that to force a solution to my problem may be a mistake as well. I have always believed that if you keep trying your hardest to find a solution then at least you are not just laying around waiting for life to be handed to you. I still believe that to some degree but it was how I was going about it that was the problem. I would lay awake scheming and panicky and and plotting out a solution. Now I pray. I meditate. I ask for signs to guide me and I sit with it. I am learning every time my prayers are answered all in good time. The signs are there and peace is maintained within me because I am not scurrying around trying to make the earth rotate just for me.
When I got back home I had another healing ceremony that was what sealed the deal and that is for another post tomorrow. What I have learned once you reach this wonderful place inside yourself you can never go back. The chemistry in my brain has changed. My level of awareness has opened my heart and my spirit is free to be who she is. The masks are off and the walls are down. You cannot unlearn something. Especially this. It has awaken every cell in my body and my awareness of every living thing including myself is too vivid and concrete. My compassion for everything on this planet including the planet herself is infinite but I am able to protect myself from those that continue to try to hurt me with detached compassion. It is like a lovely energy field that lets my love and compassion out but does not let their anger or hate in.
Resurrection. The reversal of what was thought to be absolute. The turning of midnight into dawn, hatred into love, dying into living anew.
If we look more closely into life, we will find that resurrection is more than hope, it is our experience. The return to life from death is something we understand at our innermost depths, something we feel on the surface of tender skin. We have come back to life, not only when we start to shake off a shroud of sorrow that has bound us, but when we begin to believe in all that is still, endlessly possible.
We give thanks for all those times we have arisen from the depths or simply taken a tiny step toward something new. May we be empowered by extraordinary second chances. And as we enter the world anew, let us turn the tides of despair into endless waves of hope.
~Molly Fumia
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