Dark thoughts and Dark Days
We all have them. Life can get hard. Sometimes when you’re on the path to enlightenment (or trying to be) when you’re doing the hard work consistently, when you’re doing affirmations and visualisations and meditations, when you’re manifesting and praying – when you’re giving out good energy and vibes and being the best version of yourself – you can still have dark days. Sometimes I think it’s harder to be on this journey and still experience those moments of overwhelm. You can think you’re past them. The internal voice is loud and clear. What more do I have to do? How much harder is this going to get? What else can you throw at me universe and the answer is – infinite. This is a journey and the path keeps changing. One thing I do know is that everything seems to make sense, eventually.
Being the best version of yourself doesn’t mean the world lines up as it’s best version. There is still a whole lot of crap in this world that we have no control over. The Stoics wisely say – focus on what you can control. Your reaction, your thoughts (easier said than done right) and your actions. None of this is easy and some days you have no energy left for the good fight. Some days the obstacles aren’t opportunities, and you struggle to be grateful and see the bigger picture. Its call being human. It’s also called growth aka life’s journey.
Being grateful, being a good person on this journey of life doesn’t mean we’re never going to have or are not allowed to have dark thoughts and dark days. In fact, an important part of growth and this journey is facing our darkness. Looking our shadows squarely in the eye, dancing with them and then releasing them so they don’t have power over us anymore. We need to enter the darkness, be with it, understand it, to see the light of who we are. It’s difficult, dirty work. It hurts, it humbles, it makes you feel small and incomplete. At times the light is completely obscured by the darkness, and you feel like everything you’ve done is futile and change is never going to happen and it’s at that moment, when you surrender to the universe (not give up, surrender control) that real growth starts to happen.
In growth comes loss, the lose of skin, the lose of masks and armour, the loss of who we were pretending to be. In growth comes the joy of a lifetime, finding and being who you actually are. Emerging as the real, authentic you. It is then the dark days make sense. You will still have dark thoughts – authenticity doesn’t negate humanity, but they will be easier to face because your shadows don’t control you anymore. It is a metaphysical rebirth. A separation of body of soul.
It is still incredibly hard to face the difficulties, even knowing there is a reason, and it is part of the journey. If you open yourself up, if you’re authentic and you own your suffering – there is help. I’ve had some illness come up and I’ve had two beautiful souls descend into myself life with grace and care and pure kindness to help. Kelly Allison, a Kinesiologist and Belinda a breathwork coach and a reiki healer. Both reached out feeling my energy and have been so kind. Help is there. I was never open to it before. I gave it unreservedly – helping heals the part of my inner child that wanted to be helped like that, but I struggle to accept help. Now I know I can’t control this part of the journey, but I can do everything I can to heal and nurture my physical body and I am gratefully accepting Belinda and Kelly’s help.
So on the days that I struggle with the dark days and dark thoughts, when I say why me, why am I sick again after all this work, after everything, I face my shadows and I dance and I use every tool in my book, especially gratitude for all I have and journaling, because writing lights up my soul, and I take one step at a time. I focus on what I can control, and I accept the help the universe sends gratefully. I focus on the light, but I dance with the darkness. Light and dark – the journey continues.
