Cosmic Enemas and Emotional Blenders - A Look at Dark Nights - Stepping Up to your Potential Podcast & Blog

Feb 27, 2023

It would be marvelous if we could always learn things the easy way. Unfortunately, much of humanity seems to be wired differently. When we are comfortable, we don’t want to change things. I mean, we’re comfortable! But once comfortable, it seems that things have get really bad before lessons are learned – at least for myself in my youth, though I did learn.

For example, I figured out early on that when I got depressed, it was a message from my soul that I wasn’t doing what I needed to. Essentially, it was my subconscious self letting me know that things weren’t right, and it was up to me the Ego to figure them out. As an example, when trying to work up the strength to end my first marriage, we went to a therapist and she spoke with us together and then separately. After the first meeting, she told me that I exhibited all the signs of clinical depression. As she’s reaching for her prescription pad, she’s telling me that she can prescribe something to help with that. I told her no, I did not want the pills. She stopped writing and looked at me with no little shock and said “Can I ask why?” I replied “Because if I get rid of the discomfort, I won’t have the strength to make the changes that I know I need to.” She blinked a few times in clear surprise, put the pad away, and finally said “Alright then.” I know my pattern now, so I honor the depression as best I can and make the changes needed as quickly as possible. But what happens if I do not honor that energetic request for change?

The Story

I was in my early 20s when I had a sudden hair brained idea to move to California – what rubbish, but a fun fantasy. That was on the other coast from where I lived, and I didn’t know anyone there. At all! So I ignored that tiny prompting, and life went on. In hindsight, I can see the spiral but at the time it was so incremental that I did not really notice it. The proverbial frog in a pot of boiling water. Of course, I was also young and fairly ignorant of how my intuition worked for me. All I knew at the time is that I slowly spiraled downward until my life completely fell apart and, eventually, I could barely muster the energy to do my own laundry. It took about 6 years for this process to fully play out, but the last 3 years before I finally did move is the episode of my life that I now dub the Cosmic Enema – and I sincerely hope you never have to go through this before you get the message to make the changes that you are being prompted to make!

At the time, I was living my dream! Until it became a nightmare. On a rural 10 acre plot of land, little stream running through it, my animals… But I swear everything I touched died. It was a devastating time, which included one dog being hit by a car and another being poisoned with antifreeze. We won’t go into goats kidding at midnight in January who decided they’d rather be outside in the wind than in the barn! At the same time this was happening, my finances were beyond in the toilet, which I spoke about in the last episode. Depressed doesn’t even BEGIN to cover the mental health issues going on during this period. My world quickly got so toxic that I had a choice – get out, or die.

That ridiculous fantasy from many years earlier of moving across the country? Now it was an all out directive, and I STILL did not want to go. The final straw that pried me out my comfort zone – however painful that zone was! – was actually a dream. So I declared bankruptcy, and packed my car with what little I had left. No savings, no plan, no idea what I needed to do but finally willing to take a leap of faith over the cliff edge because I had to. Even after I moved, the few things I brought with me all got stripped away. My car, my last dog, my clothes, my sewing machine, my bike – ALL of it was stripped away until I literally started over from nothing. It’s been called a “cleansing”, but I think “cosmic enema” is more accurate. While some might call this a Dark Night of the Soul, or Ego as the case may be, that would indicate that there was some level of confusion or awakening that needed to happen. In this case, no, I knew exactly what I needed to do but I REALLY did not want to do it. I had my marching orders from Soul, but decided the Ego knew better. More fool me!

So hear me when I tell you “listen to the whispers”. Your higher self, your soul, God’s plan for you, however you want to think of it, is whispering to you what you need to do. If you don’t want to, well, I totally understand. Really, I do. But if you don’t heed the whispers, be prepared for the screaming. My full mantra is “listen to the whispers, so you don’t have to hear the screaming.” Boy did I learn that lesson. Now when I get a soul prompting, that “knowing” which comes from the core of me, I follow it. Where ever it leads, I’ll follow. Been there, done that! And you can keep the t-shirt.

So if you follow the soul’s prompting, everything works out great and beautiful, right?

I wish. A few years after finally moving and getting largely settled and learning the valuable lessons about my relationship with money, it was time for the next major test. A person came into my life and I “knew” her, and also “knew” she needed to come live with us. Soul’s marching instructions received and obeyed. What followed was 8 years of what I now dub the Emotional Blender. But this emotional blender period took me into my darkest places in a very different way than the cosmic enema period did. See that first episode was all external, an unmaking of the self within the external world. This second period was truly a crucible which stripped away the false ideas I had about who I am, an internal unmaking of the self. It threw me face first into the Hall of Mirrors and forced me to learn to find my real truth and understand my real strength – the “Dr Manhattan” period I spoke of before.

The Point

Where ever you are in your life, however hard it might be, I urge you to face things with as much courage and integrity as you can muster. I know, trust me I KNOW, just how hard these things can be. They can last years, and will last as long as you need them to. Take the steps which are needed to start moving through, and you’ll find help comes from strange and unexpected places. But if you prefer to continue to make excuses and refuse to move forward out of fear of the changes being asked for? It’s just going to keep getting harder and harder.

What I’ve done to make processing these particularly dark and grueling times a little bit easier is to give them funny names. Cosmic Enema – eeew. But I find it amusing, and it allows me to process the experience in a positive way. Same thing with the Emotional Blender. Tough as all heck, but a gold mine which did more for my personal growth than anything else I’ve ever faced.

And you know what? Each dark episode that I can find my way through, makes it easier to find my way back the next time. In the movie The Watchmen, the bad guy attempts to kill Dr Manhattan by hitting him with an energy weapon that blew apart the molecules of his being. He recovered quickly and said “Putting myself back together was the first thing I learned.” So true! For every Dark Night of the Ego that you face and work your way through, you learn more and more about yourself, your true self. Every Dark Night is an unmaking of some aspect of your Self that does not serve YOU. And every Dark Night recovery is a remaking of your Self in it’s truer form, teaching you how to put yourself back together. Showing you who you really are, and what’s really important to you.

I wish I could say that Dark Nights get easier, but they have not for me. But then I’m hard headed and don’t like to change things when I’m comfortable so I tend to need some pretty hard boots to the butt to get me moving, I’m sad to say. Hopefully you are wiser. What I have figured out that each Dark Night is an opportunity to level up, like in a video game when you face the final challenge of a level before being allowed to progress. As I described above, it’s a form of unmaking so that the remaking is more honest and better reflection of who you are truly are. At this time in our collective growth, I’m thinking it’s all hands of deck. We’re all here now because we are needed – every one of us. No one is insignificant, even if you think others are “terrible people” or 100% wrong about everything. We are ALL needed. And doing the work, as uncomfortable and sometimes painful as it can get, is a major step up towards being able express and hold the true power, the true light, that we are all capable of. I’m here doing this podcast not because I expect anyone to listen to me, but because even if no one ever hears this at all I’ll have put forth these vibrations into our collective with love, with the intention of serving the All, the One, the Many, my soul siblings, my fellow humans. It’s my way of reminding myself where I’ve been, and what I still have to do, because I want to. Because I love humanity and our potential and I desperately want to see us begin truly expressing it.

TL:DR

A Dark Night of the Ego is beyond an invitation; it’s a demand for growth. They are not easy, and you might have multiples in a lifetime. Work through them with courage and integrity, and then let them go — because there’s more to do on the other side.

About the Image

Taken at the Portada de Rumiqolqa in Peru. I’m not sure of the original purpose – offering bowl, drinking vessel for pack animals, something else entirely – but it was full of rainwater when we were there at the site in March of 2022. One of our party took the coca leaves our shaman guide had given us earlier and made them as an offering. I chose this picture for this topic because the scene reminded me of a scrying session, in which water is used as a portal to show the beyond. Dark nights, if honored, can be a massive portal into personal growth.

Audio

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