The Dark Side Of Spirituality Nobody Talks About.

There is a really dark side to spiritual growth nobody talks about.

Awakening, awareness, and spirituality get quite grim if you’re fortunate enough to make it through. The spiritual journey can be dark and painful. What people think and see on the surface of spirituality is love, light, incense, zen, and yoga. The harsh reality is in order to be spiritually reborn, we have to go through the awakening process, and it is not pretty, not pretty at all.

When you awaken you get to attend your own wake, the death of your old self. You are forced to take a good long look at yourself, all the darkness within that has been suppressed has to be examined, shed, and purified.

Next, there is a grieving process of your old existence to work through, furthermore, if you have ever been through grief then you know it’s really tough. Not only that but the world and existence you once thought was normal, you now recognize is far far from it.

Off you go down the rabbit hole (just out of curiosity) and to your horror you see how dark and grotesque it actually gets and those still attached to the world cheer on and support it. You see there really is a monster under the bed and that same monster rules the world and the minds of good, innocent people. Next, you want to wake people up, and scream from the rooftops, but look what happens? They can’t hear you and neither do most want to acknowledge that the monster even exists. La, La, La.. not listening.

We know birth isn’t easy, it hurts like hell and at times you really do wonder if you will make it through, such is the agony of bringing in new life. The same goes for the spiritual birthing process, experiencing the death of the old self, in order to birth the new. It was horrible at the time but just like the birth of a newborn child, all worth it in the end, if you make it through that is. For many, it is so mentally challenging, real thoughts of no longer wanting to be on the earth crop up. You recognize you are in the world but no longer of the world and it takes a lot of adjustment, a lot of shedding of old wounds.

You feel alone and isolated and question yourself, is it just me?
Who can you talk to that will understand this new level of consciousness and awareness? The answer is not many and so begins the dissolving of many relationships and old friendships because you no longer align. You recognize in a non-egoistical way that most haven’t reached your level of awareness and there is no walking back for you. So lamp in hand, trusting the process you walk the path alone. Then one day you emerge and discover you never needed anyone or anything, you release attachments to everything and fly solo, only flying with others that have also reached your level of awareness and understanding, or supporting other fledglings that want to rise up too. You recognize solo is better for you, there is no space for other's petty dramas, small thinking, and fears, that attempt to drag you down.

So the spiritual life isn’t all love and light. In order to become light we have to shed that which is heavy, look at and acknowledge our own demons then fearlessly face them head-on. Everybody has them, but most will never look because it takes effort, it takes a lot of self-responsibility, and it takes strength, and courage to drag the crap out of yourself and work your way through it.

There’s treasure in there, a lot of it and all I can say is it is worth it when you find that gold within.