The Dark Night of the Soul

Most of us have heard the phrase; it has been written about and referred to for hundreds of years. Depending on the belief system of who is describing it, the meaning and stages of the experience have been described in great detail. Regardless of the context through which it has been explained, it appears there are commonalities in this experience of moving through darkness to light; it’s hard, we question our lives and how we live it, and when come to the light, we are stronger, wiser and all the better for having gone through it.

While there are these basic commonalities, I am of the opinion that that how the crisis manifests for me might be different than it is for you, simply because we are all unique.

So what are some tangible ways this “dark night of the soul” experience might manifest itself?  Believe it or not, it may not be as obvious as the daunting title makes it sound like it would be. We can start with descriptive words like burnout, depression, malaise, or malcontent. It is something you may feel coming, but if you’re like me, you may not clue in until the wheels are falling off the wagon…

I thought I was doing everything “right.” I meditate daily, have a rich spiritual life, exercise, eat right, take my supplements, get 7-8 hours of sleep each night, have a career filled with meaningful purpose, and an amazing network of friends and family that make up my support system. Yet I, quite suddenly, found myself dog-paddling in the depths of depression. So what went wrong?

I have had to accept that sometimes, even when we do everything “right,” it seems like life gets the best of us. When it is happening- when you can’t get out of bed, or find yourself lashing out at those around you, or sit at your desk and can’t get anything done- whatever it may look like for you- it can feel like the walls are crashing in.

When one goes through a “crash,” it is important to remember that body and spirit cannot be separated; they are intrinsically intertwined as we walk on this earth plane and both aspects need to be considered. While we may need to make a visit to the doctor or put our friends on alert, finding the broader vision to observe what is being manifested in our lives opens up an opportunity- to question, to grow, to change, to further expand our consciousness and to live richer lives.

Darkness to light: the dark night of the soul. As hard as those times are, they can be a gift. 

Blessings,

Sheryl

Manifesting Our Lives

                 “A core belief is invisible only when you accept it as a fact of life.”
    “Seth,” Nature of Personal Reality

The notion that that we create our own realities and the laws of attraction are ideas that many of us embrace, at least conceptually. Our thoughts create our realities. It seems pretty simple, doesn’t it? But time and time again, we find there are certain elements in each of our own lives that stay the same, or replay themselves over and over again like a worn out recording.

Could it be that there is a little more to it than the simple notion that our thoughts create our realities? 

The answer, I would say, is yes.

Last month we began to discuss that, until we better understand the “lenses” through which we view our reality, we won’t be able to fully understand the realities we are personally creating. In order to do that, step one is to acknowledge that perhaps we are wearing “glasses” that color our perceptions. If at this moment you are thinking that your perception is true reality and that you don’t wear glasses, think again; we all have them.

So where do these “lenses” that impact not only our perceptions, but also the realities we are creating,  originate?

Conscious thoughts: This topic is well covered so no need to expound. Rather, let’s give thanks for the many teachers that carry this message into the world!

Beliefs: There are some beliefs you know you hold, and others you don’t know you hold. In a sense, they are invisible. As stated in the quote at the top of the page, there are some beliefs we don’t realize are just ideas about reality because we think they are reality.

The mystical: By definition, this means “beyond human understanding.” If you believe in other lifetimes that impact one another, it goes without saying that the very lives we are living in the present are touched by lifetimes we are completely unaware of.

It is by becoming aware of these three levels of manifesting our lives that we can begin to not only change factors which may not be to our liking, but also begin to gain  broader understanding of  the totality of Self. “Believe” it or not it is possible, if we are willing to do the work.

Blessings,
Sheryl

Look for Sheryl's workbook "You Hold the Key to You: Understanding Self and Your Incarnational Past" in 2013.

Lenses of Our Own Creation

"Hot and cold, pain and pleasure. Come and go, come and go. Oh my dear one, manage to endure them." 

So says the Bhagavad Gita, and such is the reality of life on this earth; the ups and downs, the highs and lows, the good days and bad days. In this world of duality, we gain understanding of one end of the spectrum by experiencing the other.

For those that have already read Timeless Waters, you know it is a story about the realization and discovery of three different lifetimes; an experience I believe to be on offer to us all. As relevant and life expanding as that experience was, years later I realize that one of the greatest things I gained was a deeper understanding of the degree to which my perception shapes my experience.

That sounds like old information for most of us, yet so often we contribute to our own emotional dramas because of our perception of events and the meaning we place on them. Figuratively speaking, we see the world through specific lenses of our own creation.

Unfortunately, not only are many of us not aware of the specific lenses through we perceive the world, we may not even believe we have lenses at all! Until we can acknowledge that we do, we may find ourselves in a perpetual loop of "mis" perceptions. We will talk more about where the "glasses" we each wear originate, from our thoughts to the mystical, next month. But until then, begin to observe your experience and the emotions that come up for you most often for they are the key.

The hot and cold, the pleasure and pain will come and go as certain as the sun will rise and the wind will blow. But with the desire and commitment to examine the glasses through which we are viewing the world, the difficult times will likely be fewer and perhaps even a little easier to endure.

Blessings,
Sheryl

Look for Sheryl's workbook "You Hold the Key to You: Understanding Self and Your Incarnational Past" in 2013.

Do Something

I’m personally a believer that the important thing in life is to just be doing something; anything, really. I like shaking it up; my exercise routine, health and nutrition, form of meditation. You name it. A dear friend of mine once said in response to my most recent report of something I was trying was “you’re always into some crazy thing!” My answer back was “all that matters is that I’m doing something.”

The same philosophy applies for personal growth and spirituality. There are many paths to self awareness and living a more balanced life. Do I believe there is a holy grail of how to do that? No, I don’t. Life happens. Our life lessons are just that—life lessons. We will be faced with them throughout our lives. Self awareness is like an onion peeled back one layer at a time, and you often find the same issues in the first layer are going to reveal themselves to you in a different form in the next layer, all the way to the core.

Over the course of our lives, we may be exposed to multiple spiritual modalities and disciplines. Should we find one and hold that particular viewpoint for the rest of our lives? Well, that depends on if your personal viewpoint stays the same for the rest of our lives. Expanding experience has a way of expanding the way we look at the world, which includes the way we interpret our spirituality.

For some, this ever changing world view may present a problem; we as humans do have a tendency to want the “right” and “true” answers. But I find it exciting, and I imagine many of you do as well. It may look to others like we are frogs jumping from one lily pad to another, desperately in search of the “right” path. But we know better, don’t we? We change, our lives change. Our understanding of universal truths reaches new depths, and we gain new awareness of our place in the universe. What matters is that we are doing something.

Blessings,

Sheryl

Transcendence

     “a state of being or existence above and beyond the limits of material experience”

Just as we are all dichotomies, so we all have characteristics that can be viewed as both our blessing and our curse. One of those characteristics for me is my ability to feel deeply. My ex-husband would watch on with both frustration and awe as I covered the spectrum of human emotion in a matter of minutes, and then with ease, could carry on with the rest of my day. He once said the sky I saw was much bluer than the one he saw, but that the pain I felt was deeper too.

            Living life that way is a rich experience, and one that can enable a person to not fear what lay within him or herself. But sometimes when a person is handed too much over a span of time, he or she shuts down emotionally; a coping mechanism.

At the time I didn’t realize it, but it happened to me. I handled the experiences being handed to me with an “evenness” previously unknown to me. And so it was for several years, and it occurred to me that maybe I had learned transcendence; the ability to rise above and beyond the limits of material experience.

Then one night as I sat gazing at the stars, I realized my sense of awe was diminished. As I thought about many of the events I had faced over the previous few years, I also recalled that I had never shed any tears. The words to the Eagle’s Desperado played in my head-- “You’re losing all your highs and lows, aint’ it funny how the feeling goes away--” and I got it; I was numb. While the absence of the lows was nice, life without the highs is a flat life indeed. With that recognition, the tough exterior that shielded me for several years began to soften, and I got hurt. I sat on a friend’s couch sobbing, recalling how awful it was to feel something so deeply. Later that night, a favorite phrase from Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet, came into my mind:

        “The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.”

            Gibran’s poetic wisdom both gave me pause to reconsider the concept of transcendence and reminded me of the richness that exists in this physical experience we have chosen. Human emotion is a critical part of that experience. With that awareness, maybe healthy transcendence is not so much about responding to what life throws our way by immediately rising above it. Perhaps it is ultimately about how we respond when we find ourselves in that deep well of human emotion.

Blessings,

Sheryl

This Above All

                                                                                         

I took a chance. The cards I was holding so closely to my chest no longer felt like they should remain there. My heart had opened, and in order to be fair it was time to be honest, authentic and real.

It was not for a few days that I began to question my judgment. Awareness of my exposure slowly crept over me and as it did, it became larger than I was. In a tailspin of vulnerability, I took my honest words back; made it clear I had made a big mistake.

All of this was done out of fear, of course: Fear of playing the fool; fear of getting hurt. Sound familiar?

That day, as I went about my daily life, I came across Shakespeare’s quote “This above all: to thine self be true,” three separate times. I might mention that I don’t recall ever coming across this quote outside of an English Lit class, yet it came to me from three different sources in a twenty-four hour period. Even stranger was that its original source is Hamlet; a personal favorite of the person who I had courageously handed my “cards” in the first place.

I’m not a believer in coincidence. With a deep breath of acceptance, I closed my eyes and thanked Spirit for leading me to the information I needed to transcend the vortex of emotion I was experiencing.

How often do we miss the messages we are given; the communication from Spirit that shows up in forms we fail to recognize?

It is not yet clear what the outcome to my personal story mentioned above will be, but of one thing I am certain; “to thine self be true.”

Blessings,

Sheryl  

Becoming

“I must be willing to give up what I am in order to become what I will be.”                                                    Albert Einstein

Such was the quote that I posted on the Timeless Water’s Facebook page. Based on the number of “likes,” it was evident that I was not alone in recognizing the degree to which I get in my own way when it comes to personal transformation.

In response, I posted a reference to the hidden beliefs that shape our lives and realities being like bars on a window. We look through the bars not even seeing them or realizing they are of our own making. I had hoped people would respond with the same shared recognition. No, not so much….

After writing Timeless Waters, rather than seeking to promote it, I spent the next few years considering what, after having this remarkable experience, I was really going to do with it. As I began to delve further into the reality I am creating in this lifetime and the parallels it holds with other lifetimes I can recall, it dawned on me that this lifetime is where the rubber meets the road. In fact, it’s really the only one I have to work with! So why not start there?

So why is it so hard to give up who we are in order to become what we will be?

The usual things come to mind: fear of change, not seeing an outer edge to our comfort zone, and old habits die hard. All so very true for me! But there’s more. To a degree, the person I hold myself to me is just a set of ideas rather than a fixed way of being, or change would be impossible.  That recognition then leads one to ask: what are these ideas that shape us and as well as our lives? They are beliefs; beliefs we often don’t even know we have.

The notion that we create our own realities is not a new one, but we most often operate in the realm of conscious thought when applying that idea to our own lives. Yet there is so much more behind our conscious awareness that is shaping who we are. Giving up what we are in order to become what we can be, in essence, requires letting go of the idea we have created about ourselves. That can be some tough work, and it begins with understanding beliefs.

Ram Dass wrote “there is a grief that occurs when who you thought you were begins to disappear.” But on the other side is the person we will be, and that is well worth it, is it not?

Blessings,

Sheryl

Look for Sheryl’s workbook, You Hold the Key to You: Beliefs, Reality and Your Incarnational Past, in early 2013.