The Dark Night of The Soul
When I was a teenager, the one thing I dreaded (or feared) the most was leaving behind childhood friends in Southern California and starting a new life in, holy @#$%, the real South. Georgia, the Peachtree State, to be specific.
My step-mother offered me a way out — a way to say “Sayonara” to some of the trouble I was getting myself into in San Diego.
First, when hearing my initial resistance, she offered the typical advice most well-meaning mothers do: “Nothing ventured, nothing gained.”
“Yeah, yeah, whipdy-do,” I thought to myself.
Then she ramped it up a bit:
I heard her say that when we’re afraid of something, what we want more than anything else is to make it go away.
We want our life to go back to the way it was before we found out that there was something to be afraid of.
We want to build a high wall and live our old life behind it. But, that’s not our old life at all. That’s nothing more than just our new life with a wall around it.
Yup, nothing ever stays the same!
Our choice is not about going back to the way things were. Our choice is either about a) hiding or b) going right to the heart of the thing that scares us.
Very frequently, the deepest spiritual moments (the ones where we garner a big picture view of how we put shackles around our own progress) happen during moments where we have to confront our deepest fears and inbuilt prejudices, and overcome them in order to step into a new reality.
Mystics talk of “the dark night of the soul” as being these kinds of moments.
And, taking it up one notch (like my step-mother did when I was just a teenager), acclaimed spiritual teacher Debbie Ford says it’s the mysterious shadow self — the hiding place for our most disliked thoughts, emotions, and impulses — that holds the golden key to opening yourself up to unlimited possibilities in your life.
Anxiety, fear, doubt — “Dark” self-sabotaging feelings that are ignored become repressed. They can control us.
And Debbie Ford teaches this better than anyone.
And now, through her visually stunning and cutting-edge documentary, you’ll be inspired to uncover the wisdom in your wounds, the blessings in your misfortunes, and the gifts that are waiting to be claimed where you may least expect them… in the dark.
Watch the Trailer Here:
♦ ♦ ♦
Debbie reveals the method, secrets, and meaning of your shadow — the parts of yourself that you dislike and disown, the past that you regret and repress, and the pain that you attempt to bury — and shows how it persistently rises from its grave only to thwart your happiness and oppose your greatest potential as a human being.
With appearances from some of the most brilliant and evolutionary thinkers of the 21st century, including Deepak Chopra, Marianne Williamson, Mark Victor Hansen, James Van Praagh, and others, this world-class cinematic experience pulls no punches as it traces the stories of people who have met with some of life’s harshest experiences — war, child abuse, racism, a German concentration camp — but learned how to face their terror, heal their wounds, and meet their higher, heroic selves in the process.
We rarely recommend pedigreed, Hay House, stage-walking spiritual teacher stuff (the reasons are lengthy. All for another day, of course).
Yet, this is DIFFERENT and truly part of the grounded full-color, transparent path to growth that we like to participate in and endorse.
So, without further waiting…
Filed under: Personal Responsibility, Self-Freedom / Emotional Mastery, Self-Sabotage, Uncategorized
Yesterday I wrote a piece on my blog called “An Antidote to Uncivil Dialogue.” In it I mentioned your blog and now find that with this post you don’t quite fit the picture I had of you. I have ordered the online screening of the movie and have some questions about Hay House and the philosophy they espouse. So I was interested to see you recommend them.
Looking forward to viewing the movie.
You can read my comments about you at:
http://www.support4change.com/blog/relationships-world/political-social/an-antidote-to-uncivil-discourse.html
Not enough time to read all the blogs I’d like to read, but will check yours out periodically.
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[ Barry’s Comment ] — You’re one entertaining, quirky cat, Arlene. I don’t know whether to be more amazed that you form strong, resolute opinions of people you ‘think’ you shouldn’t be giving the time of day to in the first place (due to them being “too conservative for my taste” — a big mis-read, btw, and an entire topic of head-shaking discussion amongst Heahter and I in itself)… or… more amused at the notion that now (due to our apparent grand thumbs-up for some mainstream, known spiritual teachers) you’re willing to grace your presence on our blog as your time see fits.
Seriously, you should read your own writing. There’s an energy of loftiness (“I have to be really convinced another idea is superior”) and wishful idealism (“It would be nice, of course, if something I wrote in my blog caused him to change his mind.”) around you.
Idea: instead of trying to fit life around your ideals of how you (or others) should be spoken to, addressed, or confronted, regardless of the context of a situation or act, allow expression (in all its forms) to just BE. That way, you won’t attempt to match up the imperfections of everyday human incompetencies and flaws with the perfections of how things should or could be (in your mind).