There IS a light at the end of the tunnel!

10th Apr 2008

Hello lovely people

I am sure when I refer to the dark night of the soul many readers will sit up and say ah . . . is that what it is called.  And I thought I was the only one in the entire world that has experienced it.

What is the dark night of the soul?  I will explain that by means of an illustration.   Of course there are as many variations to the story as there are people in this world.  Once you have read the story, you can always re-write it by adding your life’s detail.  And remember, this can happen at any age, and it can happen more than once to any person.

See yourself as an innocent little baby that has just come into this world.  You grow up trusting that everyone loves you and wants to take care of you.  You have a happy childhood with all the skinned knees, first love, sibling love and rivalry and so on.  You are truly an image of God in your innocence.

Then you enter adult life and make choices.  You choose a career, a life partner (or maybe a first partner), you have children, you develop some physical ailment that becomes prominent in your life and so on.

You live life and experience all the highs and lows.  Some experiences you have result in gold stars for you while others result in big plasters.  These choices that you make along the way shape you and turn you into the person that you are now. 

Often our choices are meant for us to explore a side of ourselves that need perfection – after all we are here because we strive towards perfection.  Because of the choices we make, we move away from our true selves, which is the innocent, childlike reflection of God.  We experience our own dark sides, and we think it is OK and normal.

Then one day we wake and ask ourselves: “Is this what life is about?”  Where did I go wrong?  I am lost forever.  My life looks perfect from the outside, but in fact I am a mess.” Or, depending on the choices we made, we say “I cannot continue with my life. Something needs to change.  I need to break away from the person I have become.”

When this moment comes, we feel utterly alone in the world.  We become like a person that was put in a cave with no access to light.  Believe me, a dark cave is pitch black – you literally cannot see anything at all.

We feel isolated and unable to even talk to the people that are closest to us.  We have our backs against the wall and it is not possible to go any further back from what brought us to this point.  It is quite difficult to put this into words, and we feel even more alone in the world.  This is the dark night of the soul.

It is also the best possible place to be, because once you have your back against the wall, the only way to go is forward.

This is the point where we start to look for the Light.  It is not an easy journey, because the blackness is not helpful at all.  We fumble around and ask questions about our purpose on this earth.  The answers are not helpful at all, because people simply do not understand what we are talking about.

We hear things like “pull yourself together” or “be grateful for what you have” or “I do not know you like this.  Cheer up.”

We feel completely powerless and helpless.  We keep fumbling around and searching for the Light, and it eludes us.

Over time, things do get better.  We ask questions and the answers do become more helpful.  We feel like we are making progress, but it is slow.  We start to see the people around us in a different light.  We become more forgiving and we see a glimpse of the beautiful puzzle called life.  But the light eludes us.

Then one day we wake up and realize why we have been unable to find the Light, and that is such a relief.  We look in the mirror, and guess, what, there is the Light looking back at us.  We realize that what we have been searching for is an inner Light that has been our guiding compass all the time.

Suddenly the sun shines on us.  We understand what is meant by inner peace.  We understand that nothing has changed, but everything has changed.  We are still that innocent child that started the journey.  We are still that same reflection of God.  But this is a more mature innocence, and we have an even stronger faith in God.  We now understand the essence of life, because we were able to leave behind the bells and whistles and all the things that distracted us from our path.

We can now hold our heads high and look up and thank God for being the Light.

Read an extract from See my Badge, a short story that illustrates how one person dealt with the dark night of the soul.

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Love and Light
Elsabe

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