dark night of the soul
How To Embrace Your Shadow Self
Most people tend to shy away from acknowledging their dark or “shadow” side when it comes to spirituality.
In fact, the tendency to avoid the uncomfortable aspects of the self is due in large part to our religious or spiritual background. Throughout history, most traditions have encouraged people to suppress, deny, or transcend their human flaws and shortcomings in favor of higher ideals such as purity, salvation, or enlightenment.
This reluctance to face the shadow within continues to this day, with modern spiritual and metaphysical communities often favoring light, love, and positivity while largely ignoring the messy, difficult, and painful aspects of the human experience.
But by avoiding the shadow within, we deny ourselves the opportunity for a deeper understanding of our soul’s purpose and untapped possibilities for personal and spiritual growth.
According to Carl Jung, the famous Swiss psychiatrist who pioneered the concept of the “shadow” in psychology, “one is not enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.” Enlightenment isn’t about avoiding the shadow. Instead, it’s about facing it and integrating it into our being.
When we face the shadow within, we reclaim parts of ourselves that hold immense power, creativity, and insight. By delving into the deeper truths of our shadow selves, we can unravel the unconscious patterns that dictate our lives, allowing for true healing, transformation, and enlightenment.
The Hidden Wisdom In Our Traumatic Life Experiences
In the thousands of readings I have done over the years for people from all walks of life, I have repeatedly witnessed how the crucible of life’s trials and tribulations offers profound opportunities for spiritual growth and personal transformation.
It never ceases to amaze me how there is always a spark of wisdom or hidden blessing to be found in every life challenge or traumatic experience. Even in the worst-case scenarios, Spirit is always able to reveal the life lesson or karmic opportunity in these situations.
In a psychic reading, spirit in the form of our ancestors, spirit guides, angels and the divine can offer profound insight and guidance into our hardships and challenges.
With the akashic wisdom gathered through many generations, your higher self, ancestors, and members of your soul family can offer perspectives and experiences that shed light on your current life circumstances.
Their presence in a reading can provide a deep-rooted understanding of family patterns, ancestral karmic debts, and inherited gifts, allowing you to navigate life’s challenges with newfound clarity and resilience.
In addition, our spirit guides and angels serve as divine messengers, offering support and illumination on our journey through life. Their presence in a psychic reading brings messages of encouragement, protection and divine intervention.
Spiritual Practices To Improve Your Mental Health
Mental health has become a critical focus for many in recent years. While traditional methods such as counseling, therapy, and medication are essential in addressing mental health issues, the mental health benefits of spirituality are often overlooked.
Everyone’s mental well-being is affected at some point by the challenges of modern life. It is common to feel out of balance when our world seems to be spinning out of control, or when it seems that we are not getting the things we most want in our lives.
Most people don’t realize that spiritual connection is essential to our mental health and facilitates well-being on all levels. Because mental health issues have such a low and heavy vibration, they make it difficult and sometimes impossible to feel the presence of God, Source, Spirit, the Divine in our lives.
But by working daily to establish a strong connection with your spirit guides and higher source, you are taking a powerful step toward freeing yourself from the grip of these inner demons and dark energies.
Spirituality in its various forms is a powerful way to connect with yourself and the world, fostering a deeper sense of inner peace and purpose for a more balanced and fulfilling life. Research clearly shows that various spiritual practices can significantly improve mental health. These practices offer complementary benefits to traditional mental health treatments, promoting emotional resilience, stress reduction, and overall psychological well-being.
Personally, I have found that spiritual practices such as prayer, meditation, and journaling give me greater access to guidance and support from the spirit realm and my guides. Our guides are a wonderful source of healing, guidance, and direction. Getting in touch with our guides can actually help us get out of a funk because they have the ability to set us free and empower us on every level.
Find Your Rainbow In Troubled Times
There are days when it seems like the storm winds and rain in your life will never stop. Those days when your mind is filled with shadows and your heart is heavy. When a grief or a broken heart seems like a never-ending wound.
But trust me. One day soon you will walk out into the sunshine and see another beautiful rainbow! You will look at the colors of a perfect rainbow after a destructive storm of heavy rains and gasping winds, and you will know that all is well.
The storm may sometimes seem never-ending, but we always find a rainbow of promise on the other side. Then you will see the majesty of the spectrum of colors and the great arc that delights the sky. And if you follow that wondrous curve carefully, you may even find the pot of gold at its end!
In that perfect moment, you will forget the sadness and despair you felt before. The heaviness in your heart will be gone and you will be reminded that nothing is lost forever. The rainbows of life will always bring new moments, a new day, a new beginning. This is Spirit’s promise to us.
Since the dawn of time, rainbows have captured the imagination and beliefs of people in different cultures as a divine symbol of hope, healing, protection and rebirth.
My Healing Journey From Trauma To Spiritual Calling
Many years ago, a seemingly random accident changed the course of my life forever. As I traveled the country speaking to various corporate audiences in different cities, one fateful event brought about a profound change.
On that pivotal night, a woman arrived late for my presentation. While everyone was watching an introductory video, I asked her if she had filled out a raffle ballot. When I learned that she hadn’t, I offered to get it for her from the entrance to the hall.
Reaching the hallway doors meant walking between an audio speaker and the first table of guests. As I walked toward the exit doors, signaling to some in the audience that I would return shortly, I had no idea of the terrible events that were about to unfold.
Commercial audio speakers usually have a three-legged base, similar to a camera tripod, to keep the legs out of sight. But at this venue, the speakers had a different, wider type of base, with chrome spokes extending horizontally just above the floor, which the well-meaning organizers had hidden under black fabric. On my way to the doors, I tripped over one of those hidden metal bars!
The impact was severe – I dislocated my shoulder, breaking the bone into four pieces, shattered my knee, and my foot, caught in the fabric, twisted upside down over the bar. The resulting whiplash jammed my head to the left and slightly upward, immobilizing my entire left side.
The Exit Points In Our Soul Plan
I believe that we have access to several ‘exit points’ throughout our lives. These are moments when our spirit or soul can separate from its physical form to return to the non-physical. It is said that we are given a few such exit points in our lifetime.
Planet Earth is not our primary home. I like to think of our physical existence in this world as a challenging ‘schoolroom’. This physical life journey can be very difficult at times, and I find that it makes things a little easier if we can look at it from this perspective.
I have yet to meet a person who has had a complete fairytale existence in their life. We have all had some magical moments, but not necessarily as magical as some far-fetched novels or films might portray. Sometimes we feel like we’re banging our heads against the wall just to survive on a daily basis, physically, financially or emotionally, but deep down we all have a built-in survival instinct to stay and complete what we incarnated to do.
Exit points are moments when we have the free will choice to stay in this physical world or return to the non-physical. These moments of choice can be a major health emergency, a near fatal accident, a traumatic event in which we are exposed to extreme danger, and so on. It is usually one of those profound life experiences that make us feel very lucky to still be alive!
Keep Seeking The Light Beyond The Darkness
I do a trivia quiz almost every day to keep my mind stimulated and strong. This morning the question was: What is achluophobia? Well, it is the fear of the dark, which is a somewhat reasonable phobia since we instinctively want to be able to see what is going on around us in order to survive. However, as I thought about it more, I realized that we also have the same need to ‘see the light’ on a spiritual level.
The darkness of evil, hatred and despair is always out there, lurking in the background, trying to sneak into our hearts and minds and take over. There is a spiritual war going on in our hearts and minds every day.
As we are increasingly drawn into the darkness, we are also increasingly hit with setbacks, hurdles, heartaches, and hardships. Then, in our entitlement and arrogance, we wonder why God, Source, Spirit, the Divine, is not doing anything to help us? Why have we been abandoned? Is there even a higher, divine power that can come to our aid?
It is amazing how many people at one time or another indulge in the thought, the notion that the very God, Source, Spirit, Divine, Universe that guides, protects and provides for us, actually takes the time to also hate, punish or destroy us.
All we have to do is observe the miracle of nature to know that this is not true. Every little miracle of nature, every tree and plant, every stone, every living being has a reason and a purpose to exist in the wonderful mechanics of our planet.