(Another) Dark night of the soul

Last night I fully experienced the depths of my own darkness and what felt like the darkness of my entire ancestry. The emotional decay that had been backed up and stored and festering for centuries overwhelmed me and took me beyond my limits. Even with my years of experience in shadow integration work – there were moments where I thought the torture would never stop and that I would never see the light again. It was as if all the joy had been sucked from the world and would never return. I was sure I would be stuck in the Underworld for all eternity and in the peak of it – I felt like I deserved nothing less than that. So much rage and hatred and resentment was exploding out of me like a volcano of fire and destruction. And I really did want to destroy everything and everyone in my path. It was wild, uncontrollable and all consuming.

I was silently fuming, seething and snarling like a beast inside. I felt like my aura was spiky and black like a giant evil sea urchin. Even Chalupa was reflecting this back to me in a dramatic way and she wanted nothing to do with me. She was hiding under a table crouched down in defense. She would bare her adorable little teeth and growl at me every time I tried to come near her. When I would try to pick her up she would snap and bark at me like I was a stranger. It made me feel really sad at first but then just made me feel more angry. At one point I forced her and picked her up anyway she straight bit me on my face when I kissed her little head. (Not hard of course – but she made it clear that she wanted to be far away from the hot lava from Hell that I was exuding from every pore.) This threw me into a dramatic wave of despair and resentment and the real purge began.

Living in the city with close neighbors and unable to scream with no tears to be found inside – there was nothing I could do but start to write in my journal. I felt truly desperate to give an outlet to the anguish inside of me. I felt all the hatred in the world since the beginning of time being funneled through my small frame and I truly wanted to die. My fingers were holding the pen so tight that it’s ridges were digging into my skin making it red and raw. The tip of the pen scraping through the paper making small rips as I assaulted my notebook. Unbridled fire surged through me as I felt and expressed my undying hatred for every single person and every single thing in this life. It was not reasonable or logical. It was insanity. It was wild abhorrent disgust and malice. It was a purge of all the disowned madness and mindless hate of mankind and I was being forced to feel every drop of it and claim it as my own. It was the disowned darkness of every person in my lineage all the way back as far as I could see. The ancestral shadow that was my inheritance and that was mine alone to heal and transform.

My personal story started to come into play. Rage and hatred towards every person who I felt had ever hurt me, used me, undervalued me or taken me for granted in some way was demanding my undivided attention. Unbearable and inescapable resentment towards myself for giving my power away and allowing any and all abuses of my life. The abuses of all my lifetimes. Why am I always giving so much and receiving so little in return? Why am I not fully valued and seen and supported when I am constantly in service to others? Why are folks so comfortable taking the best of me and giving me scraps in return for helping them transform their lives – sometimes in a matter of minutes? Why can I listen to my friends for hours on end and when it’s my turn to receive support they can only project onto me and give me advice instead of just holding the same space of silence in return? Why am I so uncomfortable asking for what I deserve when those with a tenth of my experience or skill feel so comfortable? I felt so bitter and full of confusion. Trapped in a dungeon of rage and resentment. I felt so disconnected from everyone in my life and it all went dark. I felt like Hell was swallowing me up and demanding that I make myself at home there. A force within me was holding me down and compelling me to fully experience it in every cell of my body. It was begging me to listen to it instead of try to make it stop.

So I claimed it. I felt it all. I expressed it without fearing it, shaming it, guilting it, resisting it or making it wrong. I apologized to myself and every person in my ancestry who had never healed. I apologized for all of the ways I had allowed myself to be hurt and undervalued and gave myself permission to be this bitter, rageful creature. I validated every dark feeling and expressed my deep respect for this destructive part of myself. Honoring it for how powerful it was. As I bowed down to the pain and surrendered to its seemingly endless wrath – I began to feel a softening. Something was shifting and I knew I was starting to break through.

I thanked this darkness and asked it to destroy all that needed to be destroyed within me and in my life. With this permission, the red hot flames turned their attention from torture to transmutation. This holy fire started to burn away all of my fear. All of my doubt in myself started to dissolve. All that was keeping me from creating the life I desire and deserve was losing its hold on me and I no longer felt afraid. Of anything. The ancient chains that had been binding me and keeping me separate from my true power started to break and fall away. I saw how much I was still motivated by trying to please others at the expense of myself in certain areas of my life. I saw clearly how I have been creating situations that cause me pain and scarcity. The tears finally started to flow and Chalupa came to be by my side.

I fell asleep with my pen in my hand and the lights were still on.. All night I had vivid almost lucid dreams that I was flying and teaching everyone else around me that they could fly too. It was the most amazing sensation of freedom. I found my “dream home” in the dreamscape which I have been searching for for years and usually never find. I was surrounded by sisters with flowers in their hair and sexy tattooed men (I have been celibate and withdrawn sexually for almost 9 months now so it felt like a re-awakening of my erotic self) I was in paradise.

I normally wake up around 7 and today I effortlessly slept in until past 10. I woke up feeling so calm. So soft and empty. A profound silence in my mind and stillness in my heart. Light and clear and truly un-afraid of things that I was drowning in just the night before. Things that felt so far away and out of reach now feel like they are already inside of me – mine for the claiming and enjoying. I am so relieved and grateful. I feel reborn from the ashes once again. Chalupa is more in love with me than ever today and she seems to be feeling much more peaceful than she has been since she arrived with her own travel trauma to heal and integrate. Colors are brighter and hummingbirds surround me as I write this on my porch.

In order to alchemize something, we have to embody it. We have to fully experience it. Observing and acknowledging is not enough. I had to embrace it, welcome it and deeply approve of it in order to transform it. No more disowning and bypassing as just “processing for the collective” .. I am the collective and I have all the dark and light, all the joys and terrors of this world inside of me. This inherited shadow was was a reflection of my own microcosm. My own capacity for hatred, malice and cruelty. In my personal life – seeing how putting the needs of others before my own had created that monster inside. Not asking for what I truly want and need and ignoring the resentment had made it grow into something impossible to ignore. That sacred rage was there to help me. I had to take responsibility. To thank the resentment towards myself and others as a messenger of new boundaries needing to be drawn. To listen to it and apologize to myself for allowing these trespasses and for teaching the world how to treat me in a way that is less than what I give.

If others have not valued me it’s because I have not valued me. If others give me crumbs when I give them the world it’s because I have accepted crumbs. I show everyone in my life how to treat me based on how I treat myself and by what I allow. If I am not receiving on the level that I would like – it’s because on some level I am not actually receptive. How freeing and empowering this is! My experience of lack is not mysterious. It’s not some random thing that “keeps happening to me”- it’s something I am creating with the choices I make every day.

We have a really good reason for everything that we feel and everything that we do. As we learn to truly listen to ourselves in each moment – we stop creating reserves of unexpressed emotion that need to be emptied out in violent ways. When we listen to “negative” feelings and undesirable emotions we see that they are full of wisdom and are within themselves intuitive guidance. Welcome your darker feelings and shine the light of deep approval onto them. They will then reveal their sacred messages and transform into clarity and love.

I feel so ready to listen now. So ready to choose myself. So ready to ask for what I deserve and to say a graceful and joyful “no thank you” to anything that is not in alignment with that. Thank you for reading and I look forward to hearing how this resonates with you as we integrate this collective shadow together.