Embracing Darkness And Pain On The Spiritual Path

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There is a major misunderstanding in spirituality when it comes to the word ‘darkness.’

A lot of modern spirituality is enmeshed in the message of ‘love and light’ and is overly focused on ‘peace and joy’ while considering darkness ‘negative’ or even ‘evil.’  

In truth, this is why so many seekers on the path gravitate towards spirituality. They are looking for something that will take away their pain and make them feel better. But my path and this blog are about discovering what is true.

And the truth is, without the dark we wouldn’t know the light. In life, there is both yin and yang, light and dark. You cannot have one without the other and trying to do so is resisting life. And when we are in resistance to life, pain and suffering always follow.

Embracing our darkness feels counter-intuitive to so many of us ‘Spiritual People.’ We tend to become overly fixated on Love and Light and anything outside of that just isn’t spiritual enough. We have this habit of chasing the light feelings and experiences and trying to avoid anything uncomfortable.

This sense of discomfort that we are often times trying to avoid is fear. Sometimes we aren’t willing to feel fear, yet we all want to be fearless. The only way to become truly fearless is to open to and embrace fear.

When we try to avoid or suppress our darkness, we will generate an imbalance within. This imbalance can manifest psychologically, emotionally or physically in a myriad of different symptoms, ailments and conditions.

But the underlying, root cause is always an energetic imbalance.

When we spiritual people become imbalanced in the sense that we are always clinging to the lighter feelings and avoiding the darker ones, we can start to feel powerless, overly sensitive, depressed and victims of circumstance and events.

It is important to know that when we avoid our darkness we are avoiding profound aspects of our ‘self’ and when we avoid our ‘self’ we are essentially avoiding life and our own awakening.

Without our darkness, we are without our power and the internal fire that drives us into and through scary but necessary action. Avoidance behaviors are a key indicator that you are avoiding the dark. Are you avoiding life in ANY way? Look at the underlying reasons and you will see for yourself that what you’re avoiding is what you are perceiving to be too dark, scary or uncomfortable to confront, whether it is inside or outside of yourself.

Intuitively, if we are completely honest with ourselves, we always have a sense of what we are trying to avoid.

Here is a question I received recently on Youtube that ties into this subject and my answer:

Question:

It's been almost 6 yrs since I had my kundalini awakening . Thanks for posting vids on tht. I have been watching all yr vids. I cant thank you enough for taking yr time to share yr journey. May I suggest tht you put a 'donate' button on yr website? Can you do a vid on what jobs are best suited for people who are undergoing spiritual/kundalini awakening as during this period I have so much social anxiety, mental fog, hypersensitive to everything, etc..and just wanna curled up in my cocoon and hide away frm the world.

Answer:

I completely resonate with wanting to stay in my cocoon and avoid it all because it is all so much to handle, but such a big part of this process is learning to step into our power and embrace our dark side (dark meaning power not 'negative’). I notice that when I cling to 'feeling good' too much I start feeling more and more powerless during this process, but when I open to and fully allow the uncomfortable feelings to arise without resistance or even wanting them to go away I find this inherent power in my being. And when we touch this power it makes going out into the world so much more manageable and even enjoyable at times. We can't truly harness our light without the power of our darker aspects. If we are feeling powerless, it is an indication that we need to integrate our darkness. The kundalini is here to restore a balance to our being so that we can evolve quickly into our highest potential and avoiding this movement will only cause us an immense amount of pain and suffering. The kundalini will not stand for less than you being your bravest, strongest, most powerful self, so the sooner you start embodying that self the sooner you will begin seeing through your fears. It is all just energy and I've learned to not get too attached to any feeling, thought or symptom. Hope this helps!

The truth about going through a true awakening is this: We can willingly integrate our darkness or we can be forced into surrender through experiencing tremendous amounts of pain and suffering.

Due to the overwhelming intensity of pain, the kundalini teaches you lessons that you will never forget. The fierce grace about this dynamic is that the lesson becomes ingrained into our DNA. What we learn through opening to the unimaginable pain literally becomes a part of us, never to be forgotten.

How many of you have had the experience of reading precisely the right book at precisely the right time? When this happens we can literally feel the contents of the book being absorbed into our beings at a core level.

This is what is taking place on an experiential level when we are opening to our pain, discomfort, fear, anxiety, anger, sadness or any other darker emotion. We are literally absorbing the wisdom of life.

The simplest pointer I can offer for allowing the darkness up and coming to a place of inner balance is to just let the uncomfortable energies and emotions flow freely through your body.

When you open to them in this way you are creating more space around the movements within and you develop the perspective of the witness. You are just observing the movements within without getting pulled or entangled into them. You are just space, not saying yes or no to the discomfort and intense pain within.

Over time you will find yourself rooting into this space and enjoying the immense freedom that comes with fully allowing your darkness to arise within. As you begin dissolving your fear of feeling your darker inner energies and emotions your fears of life also begin to dissolve. This is because all that a fear of life really is, is a fear of feeling our emotions and energies within.

I want to end this post with a call to action:

Literally hug your darkness. Open your arms and give it a full embrace. Love it with all of your being. Give thanks to your darkness for providing you your power, clarity and sense of safety and belonging in this world. Allow it to surface in your being and bring balance into your life. Walk directly towards your fear today and every day after forever.