The Long Dark Night Of The Soul (As Experienced By Yours Truly)

Words cannot describe fully the period of time in my life directly following suffering two strokes that nearly ended my life, but I will try. Fragile, weak, scared are all words I would use to describe my state of being. Fear was my dominant emotion. There was darkness. I felt that fear within my core. Every cough, sneeze or hiccup was going to trigger another stroke, I was convinced. This was a state I knew I could not live and thrive within, I felt it. It was a divergent point in my life. I could either put hard work into recovery or submit to complacent victimhood. The choice was glaringly obvious to me as a natural born fighter, toughen the fuck up buttercup and face this head on if you are going to regain your life. Again there are moments and situations in life that demand all or nothing thinking, and this was one of them to me.

Upon my path I began a regimented daily routine of yoga, meditation, exercise, journaling, drawing and playing music. Through repetition neuroplasticity worked its magic within my brain and found new paths so my speech cleared up, my handwriting and drawing skills improved, a walker became unnecessary for mobility and my body readjusted. This was a difficult but amazing process to take part in. Fear began to dissolve as I began to look inward. The power of meditation is awe inspiring. Looking inward led to the dissolving of ego, or “ego death” . You have to die to self so you can truly live. You have to experience great loss so you can gain everything. You have to lose your way so that you can begin to walk your true path. You must abandon yourself to find yourself. You have to embrace the darkness to find the light.  All of these points resonated with me as my frequency started to elevate. All of my years of questing for an altered state through mind altering substances and here I found what is to me the answer I was always looking for, within myself. Spiritual high is the most pure and one I aspire to attain on a regular basis.

Once the mirror was truly presented to me I saw clearly that my outer world was a reflection of my inner world. Bitter, angry and fearful. It has been fifteen months since those gigantic traumas ripped my life apart. Once I saw the mirror, I set out to change myself. Negative thought (aka the Enemy Mind) was not given space to reside within my brain for I saw these thoughts as the building block that became a foundation which became an angry, negativity fueled skyscraper. It was time to tear that skyscraper down and build a new one. A one built on love, hope and disciplined spiritual practices. Beliefs dictate thoughts which dictate emotions which dictate actions which produce your results, which reaffirm your beliefs. It is a loop. If the foundation of that loop is negative, all the pieces in that chain are experienced through a negativity bias. “Oh this shit always happens to me” “I never catch a break” says the guy who just spent hours complaining about his life, while eating garbage and watching useless programming on television. That is what I learned. Life is about choice. you can choose to live in the darkness or the light. It is moment by moment honest self evaluation that will help guide you towards the light. Not self judgement, self evaluation. I stopped eating garbage, stopped allowing television chuncks of time in my life, stopped questing constant validation from social media on my phone. I put the phone down, looked at the life I lead and offered gratitude. That is the key, living a gratitude filled life while looking truthfully at yourself and your interaction with the world. That is a glimpse at my dark night of the soul transformation. I share to hopefully inspire people who are suffering.