DUALITY: THE DARK SIDE OF SPIRITUAL AWAKENINGS

August 3, 2020 by Mikaila Mack

DUALITY: THE DARK SIDE OF SPIRITUAL AWAKENINGS

COVID-19: YOU HAVE TO EXPERIENCE THE DARKNESS IN ORDER TO APPRECIATE THE LIGHT.

In the time of the COVID-19 pandemic, people are Awakening at a rapid pace. Because people are more inclined to stay at home and focus on themselves, the distractions of the outside world are bring removed and people are realizing what’s most important to them. Even though this is a very dark and unpredictable period, people have been more willing to shed their Egoic inclinations to raise their consciousness to better align with their Higher Self. People have noticed that their energy is swiftly changing, and the only things they have to reference in this rapid Spiritual Awakening is the mainstream info readily available on the internet.

If you were to search the term, “Spiritual Awakening” on Google, you’d see articles and videos of various aspiring Spiritual Gurus selling you the idea that you too can become Enlightened — all you need to do is meditate to Abraham Hicks, take a yoga class, manifest using the Law of Attraction, read 48 Laws of Power, learn astrology, read tarot, buy crystals, burn sage, take shrooms, eat vegan food, and drink kombucha. In one sense, these things can be helpful, but in another, it is grossly misleading.

If you were to scour the internet, you’d also see many sources of inspiring content that shows the benefits of Awakening — aligned chakras, a clearer mind, a heightened intuition and awareness, but what you rarely see is the price you have to pay in order to receive all of these “gifts.” What a lot of modern-day Spiritual Gurus don’t address is the idea of “Duality” — which says that two things can be true at once. You have to experience the darkness in order to appreciate the light.

So while, yes, you can feel lighter and more aligned through your Spiritual Awakening, the Enlightenment you seek won’t come without experiencing sacrifice and darkness first. This article isn’t to deter you from seeking Enlightenment, because there is already a conscious shift happening throughout the world, whether or not you’re willing to notice it. The purpose of this article is to strengthen and prepare you for the hard work you’ll have to do as you begin to Awaken. To understand further, let’s discuss what a Spiritual Awakening actually is.

SPIRITUAL AWAKENING

A Spiritual Awakening, simply put, is a series of events that occur in order to align you with your highest purpose in this lifetime. The idea of the Spiritual Awakening doesn’t belong to any one religion, but certain practices do. Regardless of religious alignment, you can experience an Awakening — however, through the process, you’ll naturally start to identify less with the rules and strict practices of structured religion and instead, turn to yourself and begin practices that align with your truest nature. This isn’t something you should be afraid of, however. Through the process of aligning with your truest self — your Higher Self, your Spirit — you will start to realize that certain Ego-centered practices and beliefs no longer suit you. You’ll change mindsets and lose friends. You’ll start to shed the essence of who you thought you were before. If this sounds depressing, this isn’t even the most of what you’ll experience.

THE EGO

When talking about Awakenings, the “shedding” of the Ego is often discussed. But what exactly is the Ego? The Ego is everything you, as a human, think is important. It is everything you use to establish your self-worth — money, possessions, relationships, beliefs, religion, awards/accolades, careers, ambitions, thoughts, degrees, opinions, friends, etc. The Ego consists of things that can be taken away. The things is, the you that exists in your truest essence can never be taken away from yourself, so anything that is not your truest self is your Ego.

This doesn’t mean your Ego is bad, it’s just an aspect of you that needs to be dissolved and re-aligned in order to see yourself for who you truly are. The Ego exists as a way to protect the Spirit from outside energies that wish to corrupt it. However through its very existence, the Ego itself becomes corrupted with your own life experiences. The Ego gives humans purpose and direction, but it also gives in to greed and fear because of the situations life presents to us — disagreements, abuse, success, love, etc.

The Ego is the part of you that takes offense when others don’t relate to you or have the same opinions as you — it’s the part of you that needs to feel as if it belongs and is accepted. It’s the part of you that strives to be who you wish you could be instead of who you are, instead of who your Spirit is. The Spirit starts to suffer when the Ego becomes attached or avoidant of life circumstances. When people avoid harshness or punishments, the Spirit suffers, and when people try to chase validation and happiness, the Spirit also suffers. The more the Spirit suffers, the more the Ego grows in order to protect itself.

Then after a while, with an expanded and inflated Ego, we become Ego-driven humans who only look out for our own benefit, or we become helpless people who give our own power away for the sake of others and call it “love.” We live with a distorted view of the world and other people, and the only truth we seek is that of our own perspective, our own experience, our own belief. So through shedding the Ego in a Spiritual Awakening, we are allowing ourselves to take responsibility for our own lives. Our lives then become less about what other people do to us and more about how we choose to heal from it, and what we do to improve our lives afterward. This is what is currently happening. In order to shed the Ego, we go through a Dark Night of the Soul.

THE DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL

In a Spiritual Awakening, the Dark Night of the Soul is a period of time that immediately precedes the actual Awakening process. It is the cosmic clearing of energies, structures, and beliefs that do not align with your highest good. Your “highest good” is what’s considered to be in your best interest Spirit-wise, not Ego-wise. So during this transformation you’ll find your Egoic nature is triggered and threatened constantly. During this Dark Night of the Soul experience, you face your Shadow Self — the part of the Ego that is hidden away.

As an example, the Shadow Self is like this: Say you’re a successful business woman. To the public, you’re charismatic and ambitious and you have the accomplishment of owning a multimillion dollar company at age of 26. The Ego you show the world is the good stuff that everyone would be proud to share, the Shadow Self would be the things you’ve done or gone through to get to that point. So if at any point, you sold your soul or screwed people over to get to that position, that would represent the Shadow part of your Ego — the Shadow Self. In a Spiritual Awakening, the Shadow Self must be embraced, acknowledged, and healed. This is what the Dark Night of the Soul seeks to do. In order to do so, everything that does not align with you will be taken away. It can happen over a course of weeks or months, but by the end of it, it will feel as if everything in your life suddenly shifted. This is, essentially what COVID-19 is doing.

The Dark Night of the Soul experience is usually triggered by a significant event — a break up, a move, an argument, etc. Usually, it’s something that makes you realize you deserve more out of life. In my own experience, I wrote an article about abuses I experienced throughout my childhood and adult years, and because I didn’t reveal it on such a large scale before that article, it triggered my Dark Night of the Soul transformation. After publishing the article, I felt freer and like I was finally being heard. My mental state improved and I was able to attract opportunities into my life very quickly and easily. But soon after, I became acutely aware of something—I felt good in an Ego sense, but on a subconscious level, I truly hated myself. So being that the Dark Night of the Soul strips away everything that doesn’t align, I lost everything I owned — everything. In a matter of months, I went from living in a house, to living in my car.

Absolutely everything I thought made me important — everything I tied my worth to was snatched away — my car, my housing, my money, my job, my dignity, everything. Me typing that article and revealing the abuse to my parents signaled to the universe that I was ready to truly heal, that I was ready to start my Awakening process. On some level, I thought that writing that article would save me, and in a way…it did. It saved me by triggering me to release control over my life and the things my Ego thought I needed — the things it tried so hard to attach itself to.

After all of my possessions were gone, I realized that even the sense of relief I had was false. In all truth, I hated myself, and my Spirit was trying to tell me it was tired. I sank into a deep depression at that point. Fear surrounded me. I didn’t know where my next meal was coming from or how to pick myself back up. I was lost. I was truly lost. For a while, it felt like I was at the bottom of a well, with the top covered. It was dark, murky, cold. I knew the way out was up, but I couldn’t see where up was. That’s when I met the truest essence of my soul at that point in my journey — and it was afraid.

Few people will ever truly know what it’s like to realize the essence of your soul is afraid. For my entire life up until that point, I forced myself to be happy and I found myself picking up hobbies and jobs that didn’t matter to me. For a couple of years, I was working three jobs at once because I wanted to stay busy. I needed to distract myself from the fact that I was so entirely depressed. I got involved in toxic relationships and worked at jobs where I was racially targeted, but I stayed because the treatment I endured reminded me of how little I was worth. It was the treatment I accepted because that was how I truly felt about myself. I had friendships where even though I knew I had my own talent, I would put others above me because after the abuses, I hated being noticed, I hated being seen, I heated being heard. So after writing that article, when I allowed myself to be heard — when all of the Ego was swiftly stripped away from me and I got the chance to see the result of all that pain and suffering, it scarred me. I was intensely traumatized, depressed, and I didn’t know who to trust. I didn’t even trust myself because I realized that I was the reason all of it happened.

It truly hurt going through that experience. I have never felt a fear so thick and deeply permeating in my entire life. Thankfully, the period of homelessness was very short compared to most people’s — and I had friends and family who took me in while I got myself together financially. This isn’t to say that everyone experiencing this Dark Night of the Soul transformation will become homeless. That’s not the truth at all.

What is the truth is that everyone experiencing an Awakening will have to face the darkest aspects of themselves because no amount of light will ever be enough for you until you face your Shadow Self through the Dark Night of the Soul. Everyone on Earth has to face the darkest parts of humanity in order to appreciate the good in their own individual lives. When you shy away from these experiences or try to control the outcome of it — by holding onto the old or trying to avoid certain things — it’ll make the experience entirely worse. As long as you identify self-worth through things that don’t align with your Spirit, it will be taken away quickly and painfully. We can see this happening throughout the world.

THE BRIGHTER SIDE

After the shedding of everything you thought you were through your Ego, comes a time where you begin to feel lifted. The Chakras that everyone is always raving about? You start to notice that they’re real — not some mumbo jumbo that Spiritual Gurus want you to believe. You realize a Higher state of being is real, not an agenda pushed by people who are crazy. You realize that meditation actually helps — it’s not just a time to sit still, you can actually use it to access different parts of yourself — past and present. You start to see the you that you thought you wanted to be and compare it to the you that you are now and you realize you should’ve Awakened a long time ago. It’ll be scary — the new you. But the more you step into it, the more you feel how powerful you always have been. You just had to recognize it.