I have often held back from talking about the darker and more difficult areas of life’s rich path, but I’m beginning to see that we need to include the darkness more and more in our relationships with each other and in our conversations. 

It’s not that I’m an unhappy guy. In fact the opposite. I’m pretty easy. I mean, I’m kind of intense but there is no area of life I won’t go to. I include the whole thing. I have had to. I tried to exclude my deepest emotions, my pain and my wounding, traumas carried from formative years, but it didn’t lead to happiness or peace. It just led to misery, addiction and dysfunctional relationships.

So I wised up and, through grace, slowly turned around and faced my demons.

I got sick. I have been real sick in my life with a chronic disease. Housebound for two years with a prognosis from the doctors that I would be on meds for life, probably have to have my colon removed and be sick for ever. None of that happened, and thats partly because I turned around and faced everything that was not whole and healed in my life.

It took me years. I have railed against God, against the world, against my father. I have bawled my eyes out hundreds of times about where it’s all gone wrong, and how life has cheated me. I have hated life itself.

And I have been to the pit of despair.

And all of this has served to cleanse the dust from my eyes, and purify me on the deepest level. It has been a detoxification on the emotional, mental and spiritual levels of my being. It has made me wise and awake.

We ingest and assimilate what we are taught, told and given, when we are young and vulnerable. We have no choice, our very survival depends on those who nurture us. We absorb their values, their beliefs, their opinions, and make them our own. 

But they are not necessarily good for us or right for us. And they are not values, beliefs or opinions independently arrived at. They are handed down through generations unchecked and un-investigated. It is so clear when you see it. Truth, beliefs, values, opinions, when they are not fully known as true through self inquiry and self mastery, are just handed down second hand ideas.

To become rich in heart and mind and spirit, you have to be prepared to become a warrior, one that turns his blade upon himself (or herself). That blade is used to scythe through falseness and cut away what no longer serves love or truth.

And that means being prepared to go to the darkness, for there are the jewels.Being scared of one’s darkness gives one’s darkness more power. It feeds the negativity and perpetuates division and lack.

Is any of this easy?

No. But from what I see, the journey of denial, the journey of trying to keep the mask on is almost agony, and gets harder and harder as we get older. I see it in so many people I meet, trying so hard to pretend that everything is ok when its clearly not. So frightened of falling apart that they are falling apart.

Thus, much as I would like for everything to be sweet and fairytale-like, I’m sorry to say it ain’t like that, and the only real way is be become ‘real’ through diving inside, turning around and beckoning these demons towards you. It’s time, and it’s probably the only thing that will create real and lasting change.

I have said enough. I expected to get up and write a love poem. But it’s 4th July here in USA and apparently it’s Independence Day. And it made me realize just how ridiculously superficial most of life is.