Facing The Dark Night Of The Soul And Facing Fear

If the spiritual journey seems lonely or if your life is dark and you are wondering why things are like this I put this together so you will gain an understanding of your surroundings and the new life you have accepted. So if you are experiencing a dark night of the soul this is the way out and back into the light.

Transcript

Welcome,

My name is Douglas Grumman's and I'm glad to be joining you today to share a little bit of insight about our lives and what's going on with This newfound spirituality that you may have discovered or this new Understanding of yourself that you're trying to comprehend when it seems like all the other people that were surrounding you Were at one time we're all supporting you and now they seem to be standing against you or not supporting you either case We're sitting there wondering,

You know,

Why this has to be Why does the ascension to the top of the mountain have to be so lonely?

And I have felt because of what's happened to me the last say 25 26 years of my life that I knew a whole lot about fear and I am humbled when I read some of Osho's work and Realize that Wow,

You know,

No matter how much I knew this guy was a real master this guy Had has taken Understanding of our lives of our situations of our spirituality to such depths that it just amazes me So I thought I'd share a little bit about what I read and put it into my own words so that you can understand and and Live with the depths of life live with the meaning that you are gonna have moments where You're not surrounded by happy people or you're not or you're you feel very alone and you don't Understand this aloneness or you haven't comprehended what it means to have this aloneness and And then on top of that we have to discover that Even though we we are alone there are groups of people There's groups of people that I'm associated with on Facebook and there's groups of people that have meditation sessions or yoga Schools and stuff where you can actually be around like-minded people who are going kind of through the same journey that you're going through So basically I want to address three three types of fears at least at least three types of fears.

Maybe we'll address more but So there's the fear of death And the fear of time is actually the same thing as the fear of death from what I've read and from what I understand But then there's also the fear of letting go And then there's a fear of going crazy a lot of us have this fear that if we let go we might go crazy and that's totally understandable to think that that might happen,

But I'm gonna show and try to share with you how we can face these fears and Dive into Meditation basically to help us overcome these fears First of all the fear of death and the fear of time Are associated with each other And in fact in India they have the same word I think it's called Kala that is the same word for time and death that they use the same word So they have a the Indians have a deep understanding and Respect for death and for time But the reason the main reason why you have this fear of death For one it's unknown and we and the unknown scares us but secondly it is because you you haven't lived a complete life yet You haven't lived your life to its totality yet You're you're living maybe who knows 70% 80% But you're not living to its totality and a life unfulfilled creates this fear of death so the way to Overcome this fear this fear of time and death is to live in a total presence of the of the now moment of the of the present moment and if you can shift all your energy and you might think that you are living in the present moment,

But It's very subtle there.

There are things pulling you Into the past and things pulling you into the future so you have to Focus on your awareness focus on your centering go into meditation and just be there and be in the present moment and Let go of the past let go of fear let go of greed Let go of anything that might pull you off the present moment and and learn to live with life in this Totality and the totality of a moment or the moment or this moment so that's basically the one thing that's hindering you from Escaping this fear of death It's out.

I'll share a little story so that you can understand but many years ago.

I Became sick Something happened to me in my life.

I had something done in my life and it changed How I looked at life I was getting sick and I kept getting more sick and sicker and sicker and I couldn't eat anything right I couldn't sleep at night I couldn't sleep in the daytime or nighttime,

But my health was just going downhill And for a while one of the doctors thought that I might have had cancer or something.

So This kind of hit me hard being I was probably 20 Maybe 20 years old maybe 25 26 when this is happening and I Couldn't figure out why I kept getting so sickly and and Sicker all the time.

I was willing down to nothing I was skin and bones.

I my knees hurt constantly.

I was in chronic pain and Anyway I was You know facing this fact that I might be dying soon at such a young age and it scared me and I Had this fear of death in me and and I remember one day I broke down and and cried I mean I prayed I did everything I could I tried to live a Normal life of basically a God-fearing person and but one thing was certain I said to myself one day I said I'm too young to die I don't want to die yet I mean,

I haven't even been to California yet,

And I'm a surfer and I've you know surfed all over by never surf,

California yet So I can't die yet so anyway,

I soon Got into every type of medicine or every avenue I could approach Any type of healing that would help me I tried but a friend of mine turned me on to meditation and That's kind of when things started turning around for me Because it was through meditation that I started noticing patterns in my health and and days I could sleep in days I couldn't sleep What I was eating I went on an elimination diet and this elimination diet helped me figure out that yes It was something I was eating that was causing sensitivities in my body that stopped me from sleeping so with that in mind the I Would I would basically use meditation as a tool to help me figure out?

What what it was and I noticed that it turned out to be corn especially American corn and And it's in everything in America.

It's in your toothpaste.

It's in your bubblegums.

It's in your candies.

It's in your soda drinks.

It's It's injected into food.

It's just it's it's a conspiracy But anyway,

So yeah once I got a grasp on to these things and I found that meditation But helped me figure out what was going wrong with me.

I started to get on an avenue of Coming out of the tunnel coming out of the darkness and being put back into the light so I did make that trip to California and When I was in California,

I Surfed the whole coast from from LA all the way up to San Francisco because I was going I went there for dual purpose of an Aikido seminar and a surfing trip,

But anyway,

I Rode for a whole week all the way up the coast from LA and I went to the seminar and Then something was called to me to go to Santa Cruz right in the middle of seminars Like I had to drop everything I was doing and tell the sensei.

Sorry I I can't keep coming to the seminar right now.

I for some reason I've got to go to Santa Cruz So I booked it over to Santa Cruz and and found out why the waves were firing I mean it was going off maybe 10 to 12 feet on some of the other outside brakes and 5 to 6 feet on the inner brakes,

But it was going off at every break that the Santa Cruz had to offer and I just struck gold somehow.

I lucked out into the more the best swells that that had been in Santa Cruz for like 20 something years and And it was wonderful and I surfed my ass off And I kind of got into some ways that were a little bit too big for for my experience level at the time and I had a near drowning I basically got held down so long that I Didn't think I was gonna live through it But a calmness came over me when I was under the water being tumbled and tumbled and tossed and turned a Calmness came over me and said it's gonna be okay I Basically accepted my fate and said this is gonna be the day I'm gonna die and I faced the fear and everything turned golden everything turned beautiful and calm and still with inside me even though I was being washed around like a Rag and a washing machine on the full spin cycle Anyway,

So yeah,

I lived through the experience.

I was amazed it was kind of a mystical experience We'll get into that more.

I Another talk and in fact,

I have left a couple talks here on insight timer Describing that that experience in more detail But the thing is is I overcame death and the fear of death because I became total totally present in the moment I gave I had no more fear in my life I mean there comes a point a point in your life that you can face these fears and You realize that they were just illusions.

They they were not real.

There was nothing really to be afraid of Then there's the fear of going crazy And it's kind of funny that I think people that live in California they face these bigger waves they face these Instances in life where they're maybe just a little on the edge of being crazy and little on the edge of being insane And I went back to Houston after this incident of me near drowning and my my girlfriend thought I'd gone a little bit crazy But it wasn't so much That I went crazy.

I think I went beyond the limits of what were Normally told is okay or not And this is where I read this part on Elsha's book.

That's really interesting.

But listen to these words here Ocho says it's kind of like if you were raised in a palace you never went out the out of the palace Your whole basically your whole life and everything was given to you all the luxuries Your food your your clothing everything was beautiful and everything was taken care of for you And then kind of one day you found out that the palace wasn't yours That none of these things belong to you that basically you had nothing and With this feeling when that feeling comes over you then You're left alone.

You're left in darkness and Some people call this darkness this this feeling of left aloneness The dark night of the soul And I think that's what it's all about.

It's all about the darkness This feeling of left aloneness the dark night of the soul.

I think it's there's a religious term for it to the saying the dark night of soul might mean something else but as far as spirituality is concerned as far as Meditation and you growing spiritually is concerned this this Sense of the palace that I'm talking about is basically society and Society is giving you this a false reality that you're beautiful that you have everything that you that you're Taking care of that.

Basically.

There's a heaven.

There's a God.

There's all these things that Were you basically lied to about Lie to because these people don't never had these things either but they were lied to too So it's it falls downhill onto you And then the first time you realize that all these things were not yours They were things of somebody else.

They were Gifts from other people that weren't really gifts then you then you're stuck alone again Then you're in the dark by yourself and you feel like you have no support All those that people that were supporting you were lying to you.

So you feel like you can't trust them but they're in the same boat as you were and you can't blame them and This is when is the most important thing you can do in your life when you come to this point when you realize that You're alone and you have no props to hold you up That you have to learn to stand on your own feet that you have to learn to be centered and The centering can only come to you through meditation And I'm not talking about guided meditations or or any kind of weird meditations that there are so many I say weird meditations,

But there's so many Different forms of meditation that are supposed to get you to a point where you can really meditate There's like branches of a tree.

There are thousands of branches to the tree,

But there's only one trunk and Real meditation is that trunk and you have to dive into being that trunk so that your roots can start going into the ground When you develop roots into the ground and like I said this this comes through a little bit of time Meditating and you can't expect it to happen overnight It just takes time You had a seed a seed needs needs time in the ground in the darkness before it can break open and become a plant and You need time in the in the ground into in silence and aloneness so that you can learn to face the real things in life the reality that Of what God is of what if there's a heaven or not or if there's a hell or not all these things You have to learn to face on your own and Throughout your awareness throughout your meditation and your practicing of awareness you can realize the truth of what's going on and And if you're lucky and if you meditate deeply and dive into this and learn to live without the props of life,

Then a new reality will unfold upon you and A new existence will unfold upon you and you'll find out I don't want to be a prop either for you to listen to but you can find out the truth and I think the truth is more beautiful than anything that Any prop that anybody could have given you but that's just my opinion.

I don't want you to be listen even to my props I want you to experience your own reality and grow and mature and Turn into a beautiful loving tree,

I guess you could say or a plan or a flower or anything that has roots that And the roots can be the deeper your roots go into the earth the more you meditate the more you center yourself then the Higher your branches will reach into the sky the more Spiritual you'll be the more godly Godliness or God how you say that the more godly you will be so to help you understand this little in-depth a A lot of people feel like they're going through a dark night of the soul They feel alone on this search for spirituality and and on their path they feel very lonely and It can overcome you Mostly be because you've dropped all your props there are those of us that have dove into spirituality maybe younger years in life or There are those of us let's just say that net we're never really accepted by society May not been the beautiful person may not have been the most charismatic person in the world may have been an outcast or whatever but those people Never had the props in the first place So for them to face their spirituality is very easily very easy It's easier for them to dive into this grounding into this meditation and into growing Naturally because they never had the props.

They never had the palace they never had the luxury or the friends there or that and family that told them all these beautiful things that were so and Now you've come to find out that things are a little bit different And I'm not saying they're bad and by by all by all or any means what I'm saying is is I don't want to give you a prop to take The place of the other props and have you just believe in what I'm saying you have to go into these things yourselves And like I said some people have a dark night of the soul and some people don't the more the more you used to rely on the props and The more you lived in that false ego center Existence then the harder it is for you to face this aloneness this darkness But it's just temporary It it won't last forever You will grow but it's going to take time in aloneness time in solitude to Rediscover who you are and what the truth of everything is like I said the more you practice awareness the more you Center yourself the more you allow yourself to grow It's very important to practice awareness Because you'll catch yourself leaning on those props again.

You'll catch yourself Thinking that You're you're something special or something beautiful and that's another trap that can fall into the spiritual world is that When you start becoming spiritual you start feeling divine presence coming over you you start to feel that you're special And that's just the ego trying to come in the back door and trying to infiltrate Your life and your well-being that you've discovered But you you soon realize those you don't need that ego anymore You don't need that salt that that false sense of security You can stand on your own feet you Can face these fears fear of death fear of time fear of going crazy that leads us to the last one the fear of letting go When I was in California and being tumbled by the water and nearly drowning I Realized that that the fear of letting go was was just basically an illusion and I was able to relax in that moment and the next day after the dream and the next day after the drowning happened I went into meditation and I said to myself,

You know what I mean,

I Don't need any future more than what I've been given.

I mean,

This is just so beautiful.

This is just These great waves this trip to California my life has been fulfilled and I don't need any future and I don't care about any past and I went into meditation with those with that feeling and with that sense of Being in the moment being being totally content in the present moment That it changed my life forever What happened in that meditation just changed me forever and it's made me to into the person now who can share these moments of Beauty of fear of life of death of Rebirth of growing and maturing and Being surrounded by different people people who kind of get me And I I make that choice and you can make that choice too you decide What kind of life you want to live?

Do you want to live with all these props then that's fine that that's That may be your path.

I don't know.

I'm only here to show you how to face your fears face your insecurities and Learn to grow from them But I guess we should end it there Thank you very much for joining me.

And I hope this has been a insightful talk that helps you to To move on and move forward and stay steady the course stay on the path keep meditating believe it or not there will come a time when you don't need to meditate anymore.

I Know that sounds sacrilegious to somebody who's just getting into this but Eventually the goal if there is a goal in life is to basically be meditative to Have so much awareness about you to have so much compassion and centered centered centeredness about you that you are meditative you don't need to dive into a meditation and and Have that Darkness about you anymore You basically you have it but it's part of your soul It's part of what you are and part of who you are Just like every tree has roots that doesn't need to be they don't need to be put up into the light Every tree has its branches in the sky and With those branches they feel the love of the universe so we just got to get you and others to the point where they can Be just meditative Be just alive and aware and conscious and always like a sharpened blade Ready to cut down the negative and the the unreal in your life Alright guys and girls Namaste to all you beautiful people out there Aloha to my surfing friends and blue skies to all you skydivers out there and much love and Carry on my friends.

Bye-bye