Courage is not the absence of fear,
but the willingness to do it ANYWAY.
I am not especially brave, truth is I am anxious and scared sh**less 99% of the time.
I do it anyway.
I still remember the most challenging period in my life.
When I had to face traumas and darkness inside I never knew I even had let alone wanted to know about.
I could feel myself slipping into darkness, (I had no idea it would take years to get out), but I was lying on my bed, listening to Pema Chodron and her book "Feel the fear and do it anyway".
I spent the next few years in extreme anxiety, depression, madness and just insanity.
What got me through was martial arts, prayer, meditation, community and a knowigness what I am an eternal being, even if I did not fully belive it.
I was stubborn enough, that every time I wanted to end my life, because It was too much, I just reminded myself : If you end it, you solve nothing, you will just come back and have to do it all over again.
And it would be an insult and a disrispect to your Teachers, who gave so much to keep you alive, to give so easily,
It may sound like guilt-tripping right now, but it worked,
I survived, I thrived I came out and I will always remember the lessons,
as some said :, rock bottom will teach more, than success ever could.
I was not at rock bottom, I was 10 feet deep in a hole.
But as John of Cross says poetically :
O night, that guided me!
O night, sweeter than sunrise!
O night, that joined lover with Beloved!
Lover transformed in Beloved!
Upon my blossoming breast,
Which I cultivated just for him,
He drifted into sleep,
And while I caressed him,
A cedar breeze touched the air.
Wind blew down from the tower,
Parting the locks of his hair.
With his gentle hand
He wounded my neck
And all my senses were suspended.
I lost myself. Forgot myself.
I lay my face against the Beloved's face.
Everything fell away and I left myself behind,
Abandoning my cares
Among the lilies, forgotten.”
― Saint John of the Cross, Dark Night of the Soul
I still go through dark nights, I just accept them as part of Life and resist less.
Most of my suffering was a result of resiting the LIGHT and not letting go.
I have learned to do that less.
I pray that God guides me closer to Him, in a much more gentler fashion, than I would like to drag myself to Him.
This is not a cry for attention, nor an attempt to show how spiritual or tough I am, I am not .
This is just a re-minder to myself and to those who are open to it, or going through such a thing..
not only there is a iIght at the end of the tunnel, you ARE that LIGHT you just might now know it
YET.
