There is a moment when you start to feel that the enormity of things is so incredible, you wonder how you have ever walked around, your eyes so tight. How the hell did the light come in? How did you get to where you are? Maybe, being led to heat.
The practice of developing any type of spiritual practice, anything that brings you greater awareness of yourself and your relationship with the world around you, is a process of entering into a fire and allowing flames to eat you whole. It is not gentle. Often times, this even seems inconsiderate.
There is rage, there is fear, there is fury. There are days when you may feel unable to move or sometimes breathe. In these moments, you can’t help but understand how there is something to do apart from letting go. And that’s exactly when it starts.
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It’s a beautiful thing to see spirituality massively invading the media.
Great teachers and spiritual seekers arise in a deep, modernized, and completely authentic way. For many of us, seeing these lighthouses appear is a welcome sign.
We are often led to creating our own spiritual practice, whatever it may sound like, by a period of inner and outer turmoil so unbearable that we think we are tearing apart very slowly.
Part of this is true, we are torn apart, to be fed on fire and part of it is not true, because it isn’t unbearable, because we only get what we need to grow and develop.
The contrast is that in our research, we believe we have found the whole.
As if it was always outside of us. The answer. We think, great, I can meditate and have conscious sex and drink green juice and I will slowly decrease my experience of negativity and pain. I will forget my secret impulse for self-destruction. I will forget my insecurity. I will ignore the truth about my identity.
Forgetting things doesn’t make them go away. Pretending not to feel doesn’t mean you can’t. One day you will, and you will feel everything. It will not stop. It will keep coming, it will only increase in intensity, and it will signal you to the edge of your mental health. And that’s exactly when it starts.
After an initial period of flocking in the light like a moth on a warm summer evening, we tend to realize that no matter how venerated our guru or our favorite practice, much of this path has to be walked alone.
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When we don’t realize this, we are often catapulted into situations that isolate us, exactly for this reason.
Life doesn’t babysit us. It will demand that we show up. The process of being led to the light, of awakening as many of us like to say, doesn’t just become brighter. I would love to see this idea detonate. It is also the process of becoming very intimate with the dark, voracious, and insatiable heaviness inside of you.
Freud’s death drive. The Kali aspect of your Shakti. At the edge of your humanity which wishes to experience its temporality in all ways, happy and devastating. The more we practice, the more we realize that the more light we let in, the more darkness will come, exist, and grow to bring contrast. Denying it causes a lot of mania.
Beneath a facade of purity, there is always a deeper story.
The goal is to experience balance, and we can’t do it by sweeping our old stories under the rug. They must be transmuted, alchemized, used as kindling wood. We have to look at the darkness. When we continually reject it, judge it, or think it does not fit our path, it only grows in power and presence.
A concrete example for me reconciling my sexual energy with my yogic dedication. In retrospect, it was hilarious for me that I never thought I would subdue a part of myself that is not only dark but also entirely yogic. And also, a central part of me. I let go. And that’s exactly when it started.
There is a long history of studying the shadow self.
This topic often receives a lot of criticism, and probably because people want to focus on the positive aspects of growth. I can’t blame them. What happens when we ignore the parts of us that we are afraid to watch is that we become slaves of this master.
We are hiding a secret that we think no one can see. It can. It grows and grows, and becomes fear, guilt, shame, terror, anxiety.
The pangs that you may not wish your worst enemy. I often have this vision when I am faced with something truly terrifying, of being just above the water and consciously, to make the choice to immerse myself. Dark, turbulent, ocean. An adventure in the depths. This guides me in these cases.
I remember how small whatever I face is in contrast to the immensity of my life. I remember my darkness intrigues me because I allow it. I want to know myself fully. I want to love every corner.
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I want to meet people who love every corner.
You can somehow feel it when you meet someone authentic. They are tapped into this. They are not afraid of being a hot mess. of being too much, of having a vulnerability hangover.
They really don’t care, because they recognize that darkness is part of the human being, and they are ready to give their humanity to the world. In a society focused on continuous upward mobility, it is not surprising that so much success is built on artifice and lack of depth.
The more we reject the idea that it is normal to have darkness, and that these parts of us are not less sympathetic, kind, or spiritual, in fact, they make us more, the more we venture on this path, half-human.
The darkness is real, it does not disappear, but once you look at it, it becomes something else: the canvas on which the cosmos was born.
Choosing to be half-human means depriving yourself of the possibility of exploring the confines of the universe. I’m not sure about you, but I came here to be fully human. And that’s exactly where it starts.
