We learn to be afraid of the dark from an early age. I had the most intensely vivid nightmares about the creatures who lived under my bed, age 7 onwards.
And yet. Have you ever kept your eyes open in the dark and gradually you actually get to see the outline, shapes of things around you?
What if, by entering the darkness, we actually get to experience the light?
I experienced my first dark night of the soul when I was in my early thirties. All I could see was darkness, or rather a dark hole I thought would swallow me up – the stuff of nightmares – if I let myself get close to the edge.
Even though I knew to the depths of my being that I would have to let go and yet my mind kept me in fear, more than that, terror of moving forward. Or even less, allowing myself to fall.
If I could draw, it would be me starting by looking then slipping and falling and even then marks from my fingers scraping along the wall.
It was when I had no strength left in me to fight, no choice but to let go, that I realised that actually it wasn’t a hole at all.
Rather it was a tunnel. And the dark night wasn’t of my soul, but rather my “ego self” because my soul can never die.
I realised that by surrendering to what I thought was the darkness, I was actually allowing myself to re-connect with my soul who had been waiting patiently to catch me.
The closest thing I can relate this experience to is my recent experience
of wild swimming.
I have been swimming since I was a young girl. I was always a “swimming pool or summer swimmer in the ocean on holiday” kind of girl.
And yet the ocean has been calling me throughout the year.
I tried wetsuits for a while but they felt cumbersome and took the joy and feeling of freedom out of swimming in the ocean for me.
This year in October one day I woke and decided I was going to take the plunge.
That first 2 seconds of being in the water, my mind screamed “I am going to die, maybe if I get out now I won’t”.
During those first few second of being in the water, my mind screamed “You are going to die, save your self and get out now.”
But there was no going back.
Then out of nowhere came the bliss, euphoria kicked in.
The feel of being in the ocean and the freedom that comes with it is better than any feeling I could ever describe. Literal heaven on earth.
It is in surrendering that we awaken to the bliss.
And yet what stops us from taking the plunge? Fear. Self preservation. Self-sabotage.
When we take the plunge it is that realisation that the self that is keeping is safe is actually holding us back and keeping us in the illusion of fear.
When we take the plunge into the unknown darkness and open our eyes we see that we are the light in the darkness.
And we are the darkness.
We are all of it and we are none of it.
Most of all we are perfect just as we are.
So whatever the block is that is holding you back, do you dare take the plunge into the darkness to find the light of you?
And if you’d like some help to re-connect with your soul-light you know where I am.
With love
Andrea