Dark Nights of the Soul

I have reading this awesome book by Thomas Moore.  Its called Dark nights of the Soul: A Guide to Finding Your Way Through Life's Ordeals.  I would highly recommend it to anyone who feel they are in a rut.  Here is an excerpt:

"Life constantly ferries us to a new level of maturity.  Each of us is like a boat passing through a long series of locks that lifts us up or take us down to a new plateau.  We go from one phase to another, each change a new challenge.....in our own way we all go through passages that leave a lasting mark...."

He goes on to explain that every major life change shakes our consciousness and causes us to rethink our way of life.  When we do not wake up to that shake....we do not take that necessary transition to that new life we are supposed to be living.  We resist the need for change by not accepting life's changes through growing into a new state of awareness.  For instance, we may get married and our single life may not die to us; become a parent and not allow that childless way of living to die within us.

Reading this book has made me realize that it is okay to experience a dark night more than once in my life.  It is even okay to let the waves of that darkness wash over me.  It is not okay to become the darkness and to let it totally engulf me or even worse to drown.  Life with all of its happy and sad is not about what you experience, its about how you deal with those experiences.  Make it a blessed day!

Blessings!

15 minutes

My therapist told me to find fifteen minutes of quiet time all to myself so that I can journal my thoughts.  Everyday.  That got me to thinking how much time we take for granted during the day.  My initial thought was; I do not have fifteen minutes of spare time.  I do not even have five!  But when I really stopped everything, and I mean EVERYTHING, I realized how much time I spent wasting my energy on things that will never amount to anything.  Then my thought after that was, wow I am such a flake!  I have been wasting time on silly little things when I could actually be living life to the fullest.  Then I realized that this attitude, this feeling of "you are not measuring up to" was this THING that I had been dealing with my whole adult life.  THAT THING, that feeling of inadequate stuff, that feeling that I can never really be great at anything no matter how hard I try is a direct result of low self esteem that stems from abuse.  It does not matter where the abuse comes from, the issue is that it is there and now that it has a name, and we know that it is a thing, how an be make it better?