It’s been a particularly challenging year. Difficult news was revealed in all major areas of my life. My relationship. My dog. My finances. My work. My health. And we think there’s only so much that any of us can take. And in times like these, harsh words feel harsher, and struggles like car issues and other life things feel bigger. Being social has been less appealing; I’ve needed to cry and get into the deep, dark places that suddenly need my attention—or they will suffocate me.

I hadn’t had those thoughts since I was in fourth grade, when, feeling overwhelmed with sadness and despair with my broken family and abusive situations, I promised to hang myself with our dog’s choker chain. I hadn’t had those thoughts since fourth grade, when my sweet, young friend went to the school counselor and told her that I was talking about killing myself. My introduction to life-saving therapy. And writing to survive—writing and journaling have always been saving graces for me.

From Eckhart Tolle on “The Dark Night of the Soul”:
The “dark night of the soul” is a term that goes back a long time.  Yes, I have also experienced it.  It is a term used to describe what one could call a collapse of a perceived meaning in life…an eruption into your life of a deep sense of meaninglessness.  The inner state in some cases is very close to what is conventionally called depression.  Nothing makes sense anymore, there’s no purpose to anything.  Sometimes it’s triggered by some external event, some disaster perhaps, on an external level.  The death of someone close to you could trigger it….  Or you had built up your life, and given it meaning – and the meaning that you had given your life, your activities, your achievements, where you are going, what is considered important, and the meaning that you had given your life for some reason collapses.

It can happen if something happens that you can’t explain away anymore, some disaster which seems to invalidate the meaning that your life had before.  Really what has collapsed then is the whole conceptual framework for your life, the meaning that your mind had given it.  So that results in a dark place.  But people have gone into that, and then there is the possibility that you emerge out of that into a transformed state of consciousness.  Life has meaning again, but it’s no longer a conceptual meaning that you can necessarily explain.  Quite often it’s from there that people awaken out of their conceptual sense of reality, which has collapsed.

They awaken into something deeper, which is no longer based on concepts in your mind.  A deeper sense of purpose or connectedness with a greater life that is not dependent on explanations or anything conceptual any longer.  It’s a kind of re-birth. 

~ Eckhart Tolle, Creating a New Earth Together
October 2011 Newsletter Content

It’s an interesting dance when one is having thoughts of leaving the planet, going from feeling such peace in pondering the release of it all, the knowing that things have got to be better just to end it. And complete terror with being frightened with realizing the desperation of feeling there’s only one way, in that moment at least, out of all the pain and suffering. And I understand it even better now, having supported and witnessed the deep depression of loved ones, especially heightened this past year. Last weekend, someone I knew a long time took her own life, as well.

There have been many other times in my life where I’ve witnessed and felt pained over what my loved ones were going through. My own father called me, drunk and depressed and saying the world would be better without him, on my 21st birthday. But this year I was reminded of the darkness because I’ve recently had waves of feeling swallowed by it myself. That deep, unlit place where some of us sometimes have gone, where we’ve entertained and imagined a pain-free state.

But that’s where we need to bring in the light. It’s where we start figuring out again how to take ourselves out of the darkness and how to turn on lights again.

What are your energy-shifters and -boosters?
Who and what in your life lift your energy?
Choose to be there.

That’s where the beacon of hope still needs to shine. We need to remember and recognize the reminders of our worth, sometimes but not always that come through other people—whom we know and even the passing strangers. We may need to remind ourselves. And the light gets a little brighter; gratitude feels a little greater.

We are reminded that even during these dark times, there’s always the light. Lights this time of year remind me of that. One of my favorite things to do is sit in the light, in the glow, of white Christmas lights I have up right now. I love that no matter what path of spirituality any of us is on, light is the common denominator. Diwali, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Christmas, Advent, Winter Solstice.

Without the light, both in a physical way and spiritual and emotional sense, things remain dark. And it feels like there is absolutely no hope, no way to see and no possibility. I keep digging out of this hole I fell into—and I do admit that I fell into one. I keep hoping. And I keep trying to shine my light, like using a flashlight and wanting to find what we lost in the dark. I try to keep believing there’s got to be something better, a life of greater ease that I can create… that maybe I shouldn’t worry so much about finances, that maybe there is a place right here where I can be.

When I stay in the moment, that’s where the power is.
That’s where the hope is.

It’s when I dance in the past and dare to try to see a glimpse of the future that the hope starts dissipating. And I struggle to feel and to believe, and I find myself falling down and off path. When we stay on this path and believe. If we just put one foot in front of the other, that’s where we create, that’s where we stay steady, that where we’re reminded that without the light and without the hope, we definitely lose our footing. I’m learning there’s no shame in that. And….

I find, though, that we don’t lose our footing if we recognize the power of this moment.

Stay with it.

© Erika M. Schreck, 2014. All rights reserved.

Some Starter Resources

+ American Foundation for Suicide Prevention
http://www.afsp.org

+ National Alliance on Mental Illness
http://nami.org

+ National Suicide Prevention Lifeline
www.suicidepreventionlifeline.org
1 (800) 273-8255  24 hours, 7 days per week

+ National Institute of Mental Health: Suicide Prevention
http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/suicide-prevention/index.shtml

+ I recently watched an intriguing documentary: Running from Crazy
Mariel Hemingway’s documentary about the trend of suicide in her family.
Click here for the Facebook page for this film. Available on Netflix streaming.