In this thought-provoking episode, I delve into the mystical concept of the 'dark night of the soul,' a term coined by the Spanish mystic St. John of the Cross, and what it might take to become “un-dark-night-of-the-soulable”. I share my personal journey of self-discovery that began in my late teens, marked by a struggle with self-hatred and a deep yearning for transformation. Over a decade, my journey unfolded as a quest for understanding and tapping into the divine love that lies at the heart of this spiritual concept.
I explore the importance of personal interpretation in navigating the dark night of the soul, suggesting that true safety and freedom emerge from being open to all possibilities without the need for any to be true. This openness fosters a playful and creative approach to interpreting the world and our experiences within it.
You are encouraged to tune into your inner selves and fight for truth, beauty, and full expression, using your experiences as fuel for deeper connection and understanding. I emphasize the challenges of the transformation process, highlighting the tension between the desire for immediate change and the reality of slow, continuous evolution.
Throughout the episode, poetry is celebrated as a powerful medium for expressing deep spiritual experiences, and the struggle to find an 'instruction manual' for transformation is acknowledged. Despite the frustrations and challenges, my message is one of persistence and hope in the journey towards understanding and accessing divine love.
Tune in to this episode for a deep dive into the spiritual journey of the dark night of the soul and the transformative power of embracing all possibilities in the quest for personal growth and connection.
Connect with Flynn:
Submit your written reviews to THIS form to be entered into a giveaway to win a 30 min session with me! We'll pull 1 winner at the end of the month.
In this thought-provoking episode, I delve into the mystical concept of the 'dark night of the soul,' a term coined by the Spanish mystic St. John of the Cross, and what it might take to become “un-dark-night-of-the-soulable”. I share my personal journey of self-discovery that began in my late teens, marked by a struggle with self-hatred and a deep yearning for transformation. Over a decade, my journey unfolded as a quest for understanding and tapping into the divine love that lies at the heart of this spiritual concept.
I explore the importance of personal interpretation in navigating the dark night of the soul, suggesting that true safety and freedom emerge from being open to all possibilities without the need for any to be true. This openness fosters a playful and creative approach to interpreting the world and our experiences within it.
You are encouraged to tune into your inner selves and fight for truth, beauty, and full expression, using your experiences as fuel for deeper connection and understanding. I emphasize the challenges of the transformation process, highlighting the tension between the desire for immediate change and the reality of slow, continuous evolution.
Throughout the episode, poetry is celebrated as a powerful medium for expressing deep spiritual experiences, and the struggle to find an 'instruction manual' for transformation is acknowledged. Despite the frustrations and challenges, my message is one of persistence and hope in the journey towards understanding and accessing divine love.
Tune in to this episode for a deep dive into the spiritual journey of the dark night of the soul and the transformative power of embracing all possibilities in the quest for personal growth and connection.
Connect with Flynn:
Submit your written reviews to THIS form to be entered into a giveaway to win a 30 min session with me! We'll pull 1 winner at the end of the month.
[00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the Flynn Skidmore podcast. My goal is to help you become exactly who you want to be. We are here to help you take your biggest, boldest, most beautiful vision for life And turn that vision into reality. Welcome back to the Flynn Skidmore podcast. Today we are speaking about the dark night of the soul.
[00:00:31] Currently on my Instagram story, 96 percent of you have said that you have or said that you have experienced. Or are experiencing a dark night at the soul. And a lot of people have DM me sharing their experiences of what they're currently experiencing or what they have experienced. And it seems like it's an important thing to speak about.
[00:00:53] So I want to share my experience with it. I want to share a little bit of like information about what a dark night of the [00:01:00] soul is, how I see it, probably share some insight into navigating the best ways of navigating a dark night of the soul and what I see in hindsight, like what I see in retrospect the things that worked for me to navigate it.
[00:01:13] And lastly, Which potentially is the most interesting. I think that it's possible to be on dark night of the soul level. And I'm also really open to the idea that 30 years from now, 30 years from now, I'll look back and be like, Flynn, oh my God, you're an absolute idiot. There's, I don't say a lot of things with conviction.
[00:01:34] I don't operate with a, I know this to be true energy. I'm always operating with like probability and going with what I can know, which is what I've experienced. So I'm making a prediction here that what I have been able to access. My, I am predicting that having access to these certain things internally and externally set me up to be on dark night of the soul of all.
[00:01:58] And if I'm wrong. Like [00:02:00] maybe I have the worst one ever starting next week. Who knows? I'm absolutely open to that, but I am going to put my head on the chopping block here and say that because I want to share it with you. And I want you to be able to access something similar because I think it's it's, I guess the way to describe it, the undark night of the soul able ness, the best way to describe it is that it's the marriage of your soul, your heart, and your reason and rationale.
[00:02:26] And when you marry those three. Three things together, you form like a beautiful triangle. It sets you up to experience the world in this like very powerful and beautiful way. So I'm going to explain what goes into that. Okay. Let's speak about my experience with the dark night of the soul.
[00:02:45] Then we'll speak a little bit about where that concept comes from. A Spanish mysticist named Saint John of the Cross from the 1700s, which is a pretty cool name. And then we'll speak about navigating the dark night of the soul, and then we [00:03:00] will speak about becoming on dark night of the soul level.
[00:03:04] I had, I think I've had one and maybe like many ones within that one, but a major one was between about 18, 19 and about really like 29, probably 28, 29, something like that. So almost a decade of deep darkness, deep depression. I, if I were to track it and measure it, I bet over the course of those 10 years, I spent.
[00:03:28] 70 percent of the time thinking that suicide was inevitable for me. Like I just didn't see my way out of it based on how, just based on how deep I was in this experience and how inescapable it felt. And at the time, I was learning so much shit. I, in my twenties, I went insanely hard with learning.
[00:03:49] I would create curricula for myself. Every quarter and read textbooks about metabolism and biology and neurochemistry. And I [00:04:00] would create homework assignments for myself or do the homework assignments. I was doing the same stuff with like spirituality and psychology. I went. So hard.
[00:04:08] And on the one hand, it was it was like a survival instinct. I knew that I needed to separate myself from the pack. I knew that I was operating at a disadvantage because I, for about I don't know, like more than a decade in school from middle school to high school to college, I'd never learned any of the skills of work ethic and how to write.
[00:04:30] And I knew that in my twenties I needed to outwork everyone in terms of what I was learning and in terms of my commitment to my health and my wellbeing. And I knew that if I were hyper committed to those things that I would separate myself from the pack. The other piece of that was I was desperate.
[00:04:47] To learn about what was happening with me. I was desperate to find something that would help me understand what was going on, like how to transform this darkness, how to escape this. And I honestly [00:05:00] think I ended up finding it. I really do. At least I can say I feel very happy and I have felt very happy for a few years now.
[00:05:07] And it, if I'm being as truthful as I can honestly be I'm As I can be, I only see exponential progress over throughout the rest of my life. Not to say that there won't be darkness and sadness and grief and all that, but I just know how to relate to it in a beautiful way now. And that ultimately that's what I'm here to share with you.
[00:05:26] Like that is the thing that I want to offer you is how to experience all of life, the fullness of it, all the pain and the beauty, and have this like meta third experience of it's all beautiful. So starting at about 18, I was smoking a lot of weed and I was doing yoga and I just became obsessed with understanding mind body connection and the relationship between consciousness and matter.
[00:05:50] I was having these experiences in yoga where I was understanding like, oh my God, my insecurities and my thoughts. Fear have become [00:06:00] my body and not just my insecurities and fears, but the masks on top of that, the ways that I'm pretending I'm not insecure have become my body. And the interesting thing about that is if that's.
[00:06:13] In my body. The pretending that I'm not insecure is inherently paired with the fear and the insecurity. So if I'm being this version of myself and it's become calcified in my movement of not insecure and confident, but actually I'm fucking terrified and so insecure. Then the, if I'm being that version of myself and that identity, it's not just like a psychological thing.
[00:06:35] It's. In my body as well. So I started to understand the relationship between fear and insecurity and my body and my identity and how all of these things seem to be interrelated. And I would have these experiences in do it's like super high doing yoga. Where everything would change. I would tap into a different consciousness or a different energy.
[00:06:57] And over the course of an hour, my [00:07:00] body would change completely. Like I, I went from like not that ath looking, athletic looking of a 19-year-old to looking like an NFL athlete. Not with as much muscle, but like the framework and the shapes and the posture within the course of an hour. And what I was understanding was that it was lar, it had largely to do.
[00:07:22] With being able to somehow momentarily get relief from the insecurity. And when the insecurity and the fear, when I had relief from the insecurity and the fear, it's like this confidence and this love would come through. And then my body would ref, my, the shapes of my body were reflecting this this experience of like more resonant, deeper confidence rather than the pretend confidence.
[00:07:46] And then it would go away. And. I was like, I need to be this. I need to figure out how to be this forever. I need to know what this is what this mechanism is, what is happening here. And I need to be able to master [00:08:00] this mechanism. Cause I don't want to be the insecure, fearful version of myself who like feels skinnier than I would like to be.
[00:08:06] And like having a hard time developing muscle. Like I want to be this dude who's Sick athlete operating with the most like relaxed jaw, relaxed hands, confident, curious, all fun energy ever. I needed to figure out what was happening there and how to tap into that and how to like intentionally cultivate that.
[00:08:27] And in, in that experience, I started to understand certain things. Like I now have the words for them, like epigenetics and neuroplasticity. I didn't have the words at the time, but at the time I knew I was like, traits don't just get passed down because of genetics. And it's not like I'm not depressed because there's like neural wiring that sounds like causes depression.
[00:08:50] Yes, you can measure the neural wiring in the state of depression and it will reflect. depression, but it's not the cause. And the [00:09:00] same thing with the genetics yes the genes might be expressing themselves in a particular way and producing certain proteins. That's, I don't think that's the thing.
[00:09:10] There's something else happening here with something with like consciousness or energy, and I don't know what it is. But I know that the way that conventionally people are speaking about what it means to be a person and to pass down traits and to transform and how much transformation is available and possible.
[00:09:26] I know everyone is wrong about this. Not everyone. Cause you know, but it, at the time people weren't really. Thinking at least I wasn't aware of it. People weren't speaking about change at the level that I was thinking about it or understanding it to be possible. And so I, my mind was opening to how much change was possible.
[00:09:45] I couldn't unsee it. I couldn't unsee, like, all of this. All of these personality traits of mine and all the ways in which my identity had formed based on fear. Like I couldn't unsee that there were other options. The trouble for me [00:10:00] was that I didn't know how to actually become the other options. Like I didn't know how to sustainably or permanently become a new thing.
[00:10:07] I kept collapsing into the old fearful, shameful, afraid, insecure version of myself. And I hated that. And unfortunately at the time, the only thing that I knew how to do, I, like I, I was reading all the books, like I read everything and I knew that shame, hate, criticism, wasn't going to work to transform anything.
[00:10:31] I knew that the thing to do was going to be able to access love in some way, like somehow love and accept myself for what I was. And, or, but I felt that. I did not want to do that. I hated myself. I hated the insecurity. I hated the weakness. I hated the fear. I hated it so much. I so badly needed to be this other thing that it made me hate the thing that I was.
[00:10:53] And honestly, now when I take a look at that and consider that I'm grateful for it, like I'm grateful that my little like 19 year old [00:11:00] spirit was willing to, feel something so strongly, even if it was self hatred. It was such a, it was such a clear, no, I just didn't know what to do with that.
[00:11:09] No, at the time I wasn't empowered to build a yes from that clear. No. So I can really understand how All of that self hatred was truly my only option. And it was my only option. And if I had access to another option, I'm sure I would have picked it. I just didn't have access, even though intellectually I understood what all of the other options were.
[00:11:29] I didn't yet understand how to be in my heart. And that's one of the things I hope comes through today is like some of the things that go into the experience of being in the heart. That experience of life lasted for a long time for me. It was about 10 years of hating myself, having awareness that certain things were possible, that I could change certain things having glimpses into it, but not not really knowing how to access it in a sustainable way.
[00:11:56] And I was looking for some kind of arrival and I felt like I had never [00:12:00] arrived. What I did do was I kept pushing. I kept obsessively seeking to learn about my body connection. I kept, I knew that I had something. I knew that my perspective was different than what most people's perspectives were. I knew that being like guy who.
[00:12:17] Who likes sports and looks a particular way and is six one. Like I knew that I was a relatively new thing. Cause maybe people have been thinking about like the chakra systems and the energy body and the subtle body and consciousness, but those, but that was like a particular section in society.
[00:12:38] And I knew that I was like a new brand of this thing that hadn't yet become conventional And I knew that I could bridge this understanding with the world in a particular way. I just, I knew all that stuff. I knew it was there, but I just didn't know how to do it. And I wanted it to happen immediately.
[00:12:55] Like I wanted it now. I didn't want to have to put all the work in. [00:13:00] I didn't, I wasn't in love with the idea of slow, contiguous, iterative transformation. I was like obsessed with the idea of, I need this now because I am not okay as I am, and I. Fucking need to be okay, like need to be okay. So about 10 years of that.
[00:13:17] And I will say again as I look back on that, I'm like, damn, dude, even with all that, even with every single shower that you ever took, you're thinking about like how. Maybe the better option is just to die. Even with all that, I was still making my curricula and I was still like exploring things with movement, with my body and still moving in the direction of this thing that I thought could be true and could be possible.
[00:13:45] This experience of life, this level of transformation, this level of being in my heart. This becoming the person that I wanted to be like this representation of oh yeah, consciousness and subtle body, but I'm an athlete and I look different than the people who normally speak about that [00:14:00] and dress different and all that.
[00:14:01] I like, I just kept moving in that direction, even though. Most steps were immensely painful and everything felt like I was walking through quicksand. Um, and in that experience I, as much of it was defined by this experience of not knowing who I was. I felt like I had lost my mojo. I had a particular mojo from the time I was in like preschool until I was 18 years old.
[00:14:29] And then that was entirely gone. I didn't know how to interact with people. I was always feeling like I was performing something. I was judging. Everything, judging everything through the lens of authenticity and inauthenticity and all that, like being so like that. And like me needing everything to be deep, even though like I wasn't going deep with myself I guess I thought I was, I thought I was deeper than everyone and maybe I like wasn't some ways, but I was, it just wasn't in, it's even if I was accessing a certain level of depth, that depth [00:15:00] wasn't producing love and enjoyment of life, it was producing misery.
[00:15:03] So what's the point in being deep, so that's what it was like for me. Let's talk a little bit about where the idea of a dark night of the soul comes from again. St. John of the cross, Spanish mysticist, mystic is actually the right word there. Whose mentor was someone named St. Teresa, which I think is different than mother Teresa.
[00:15:26] So maybe these ideas like came from her, maybe not, who knows? He. St. John of the cross. To be honest with you, like same stuff that like you, this is all the stuff you would think about, like the soul's journey toward God and the relationship between individuation and infinity and being God's love and divine love and all things, while also being a human who's detaching from material items and who's living in service of the world, like that whole thing, it's interesting, actually, as I'm recalling that, like the instructions are here for us, like all of those things.
[00:15:58] Things everyone [00:16:00] says to them. It's not like any of that. It's not like anyone talks about anything different. The question is how do you access that stuff? And that's really where the journey is at is figuring out how to access that. And it does seem to be the case that there can't be an instruction manual for that.
[00:16:15] And I think, I really think after thousands of years of people like seeking to access divine love and God and deep transformation, and then get touching the essence of their soul, I really think. Think that P I know I'm driven to write an instruction manual for it. I really think that people would write an instruction manual if they could.
[00:16:37] I just don't think it's instruction manuable. I think it has to be something that you say I'm committing to, and I'm going to allow the experiences of my life to teach me how to do this thing. So yes, St. John of the cross can tell us like detach from material things and. Allow the divine love in and touch God and be of service and all [00:17:00] that, but like really accessing the thing.
[00:17:02] I don't think it comes through a step by step process, which is frustrating. Though I am still driven to be able to produce that. So he, and I think he may have written the poem called the dark night of the soul while he was in soul, while he was in prison, he got in prison. Because I guess he was a nonconventional thinker and in prison, he did some, he wrote some of his best poetry.
[00:17:24] Another interesting thing to consider is like the people who seem to be the most in touch and in tune with divine love or God or their soul. It seems like a lot of those people end up writing poetry. Which is an interesting thing to consider. It's it's almost Oh, wow. Maybe the only way to give an instruction manual, maybe what they end up finding out is that the only way to offer an instruction manual is through poetry.
[00:17:53] Like maybe poetry is the only thing that gives them deep access to their soul. And there, [00:18:00] that's the thing that gets them like the. Closest to it. And poetry is the only thing that can capture it, its essence, though, of course, it's distilled and then the poetry and someone reading it is like the closest thing to an elixir of a soul that's like in relation with God, something like that.
[00:18:14] That's what it seems to be. It's funny for me because I hate poetry. Like I so I wonder what that's about. So here's the thing that John of the cross said about the dark night of the soul. So it comes, the dark night of the soul comes after a phase of illumination in which the presence of God is felt, but the presence is not yet stable in your life.
[00:18:41] That's his general concept that he's he's expressing through, I think, three different poems. It's like that theme runs through his work a lot. So it's the, it's like the pursuit of godliness, touching divine love. You have these experiences where you can [00:19:00] sense it. Like your soul is illuminated.
[00:19:02] You sense the presence of God, whatever that might be like the sense, the experience of infinity or oneness, something. Thing that is outside of your normal lens of experiencing the world in in like only seeing separation. I am different from this, which is different from this. You'd transcend that you have an experience of oneness with things.
[00:19:24] And the problem is that. If you have built your whole life based on the lens of separation, and then all of a sudden you see, Oh my God, I was operating with the aside. It wasn't even thinking about it. I was operating with the assumption, the inherent insumption, not even like a conscious assumption that separateness is the truth of reality, that like I am my identity and I am these things.
[00:19:52] Things and I am, you know what I have or whatever. And then I'm immersed in this experience of oneness and illumination. That's Oh [00:20:00] my fucking God, my whole reality, my sense of my identity, my sense of self, my relationship to the things around me is all based on I'm not going to say false information.
[00:20:11] I don't really like making that distinguished distinction, but not the full picture, let's say there's so much more here that I was previously seeing. Now, the thing about that is okay, so then the question becomes, okay I can't rely on these things that were formerly keeping me safe.
[00:20:34] I see now that I've built up all of these like psychological, emotional, social structures around me. And all of these things were built with this unconscious and inherent assumption about like the truth of separateness or fear or whatever it is. But I can't unsee that now. I, so these walls crumble, these things that were protecting me that I was investing in, they crumble and I don't [00:21:00] know how to be safe without these things.
[00:21:02] I can't use them anymore. So now I'm entering this deep period of instability where I have access to a deeper truth, but I don't know how to create safety around that deeper truth. I don't know how to create an identity around it. I don't know who I am. I don't know how to relate to people. I don't know what I like.
[00:21:25] I don't know. And also the other thing that's scary is okay, fuck. Here's the model I have. I unconsciously built a version of myself. I then had this insight where my. My identity was shattered. I'm seeing all my insecurity, all my fear, all my that stuff. I'm seeing the way I try and project security to the world.
[00:21:44] And I see the relationship between that and the insecurity. And I see all this stuff and I see how it's in my body. I see this and I see a deeper truth here. All of that shattered. I don't know who I am. I feel lost, but. Another scary thing about it is okay if I [00:22:00] rebuild from here, aren't, I'm, aren't I just doing the exact same thing?
[00:22:04] Won't I just be building falseness? That's really one of the things I was thinking a lot about. Won't I just be building in authenticity and of course being like angsty 22 like it, All has to be authentic. Like it has to be so authentic and hating the idea of inauthenticity. So then you don't even want to build anything new because you're judging it before you even start to build it.
[00:22:27] It's this really difficult place to be in. There's no where to put your feet on the ground. There's no psychological safety. There's no spiritual safety. You don't know who you are. And you are, you don't even want to build something else because anything that you could build seems like it would be fake and inauthentic.
[00:22:46] Yeah. It's the worst. It's really difficult. It's really difficult. And I imagine that you can relate with a lot of the things that I'm sharing. I imagine that this resonates the sense of lostness. Like I [00:23:00] literally, when I was going through it, like I Couldn't get the image of Austin powers out of my mind, losing his mojo.
[00:23:10] Cause when I saw that, when I first saw him lose his mojo, when I was like 14 or whatever I couldn't understand it. I was like, dude, just fucking get your mojo. Like just choose to have your mojo. You have your mojo. And then he needed it like injected back into it, which is so funny. I love Austin powers.
[00:23:28] But then, and then I was, then I lost my mojo in my period, my long period of Dark Night of the Soul. And God, if someone had said to me, Oh, just get your mojo back, I would have flipped the fuck out. Obviously I want to do that. It's just not available. So let me share a bit about, I'm going to expand a bit on what I think got me through this long period.
[00:23:53] The, some of the things that I can see now looking back on it and understand with a little bit more clarity [00:24:00] and then I'm going to, and then I'm going to speak more about this thing that I was saying about being on dark night of the soul a bull. Okay. So let's say you have two options in life. One.
[00:24:13] You get yourself into a place in life where you like, okay, let's say you've broken out of a few molds. Like you had some realizations, you woke up, you were like your life was illuminated in a way you see how you maybe built life. As a result of unconscious conditioning and unconscious wounds and all that.
[00:24:30] So you wake up to that, you realize that you do a scary thing a few times. You like leave a relationship, you get yourself into a place that's a little bit better more consciously selected and chosen and you get yourself in that place and maybe you're in a new relationship and a new life and you, and it's it's good, there's more in your soul.
[00:24:48] And yes, you could be happy with this life. But it might be like says 6. 7 out of 10 fulfillment and happiness. You're not living your full truth, but [00:25:00] also accessing your full truth requires like blowing up things around you and. Maybe it requires blowing it up, or at least leaving the things around you and entering something new.
[00:25:09] That's a little bit closer to the truth of your, like your fullest expression, the truth of your soul, all that stuff. But you don't want to do it. You're like, I'm good at 6. 7. I'm good at seven out of 10. I'm going to just cruise here forever. And I can really understand that model. I can really.
[00:25:25] Really understand making that choice. And I think a lot of people do make that choice and end up living beautiful lives. I see that's like the, that's like the model where having grandkids is one of the best things ever. And that's super beautiful. I love that. Unfortunately that doesn't feel very available for me.
[00:25:43] I have to find the thing in my soul. I like have to be in my truth. And it's done something really interesting. I was actually just speaking with a friend about it last night who she was reflecting on what she's seen in my life. Cause she she's known me for a [00:26:00] long time and she's seen a lot of my patterns and my tendencies.
[00:26:03] She don't call me like a method actor of life, like Gonzo style. What I have done is I've created new identities and dipped my toes and into that identity and gone further. Full immersion into that identity to like really soak it up to like method acting, experiencing that identity, experiencing world through the lens of being that kind of person.
[00:26:27] I've been like live on farm in Vermont guy. I've been like San Diego, like free dancing, like soul guy. I've been A bunch of different, I've been like surf guy, been athlete guy, been a bunch of different guys. And each of these identities along the way, like what really, what I'm doing, the under, the underlying motivator is trying to understand what I like and what I want in my life and what resonates [00:27:00] with my soul.
[00:27:01] And. And in each of these steps along the way, like through dark night of the soul period I'm getting better and better and better at it. So early on in dark night of the soul period, when I wake up and I look at everything and almost everything that I am and everything around me and all my relationship dynamics are like, I haven't chosen them.
[00:27:20] There are. All like unconscious fear things. I'm like, Oh my fucking God, I need to escape this. I need something else. So then I desperately scramble away from that and get somewhere else. I'm not even really understanding what I want. I just know I don't want this. And I leave it and I get somewhere that's a little bit better.
[00:27:37] And that's informed by okay, I know there's this thing in my soul. Like I need to understand mind, body connection. I really feel like I could be one of the greatest practitioners of mind, body connection of all time. Like I'm going to move in that direction. I'm going to just. Go with the thing that I know is true, but I'm terrified because one, I have no evidence to let me know that like I can accomplish anything.
[00:27:58] And two, [00:28:00] I don't have any evidence yet that following the calling of my soul is going to be safe. So the first leap is really scary because you don't have the evidence yet. You don't know that there's freedom on the other side, but then I follow my soul. I do the thing. I like the new identity, do the thing.
[00:28:16] Okay. I'm this thing. Now I'm, now I've made things a little bit better. My, in my external environment's a little bit better. It's more informed by the truth of my soul. I've released this pattern or this thing. And in this new environment, like there are all these new things to learn, but in this place too, of course, there are remnants of unconscious wounds, even though it's a little bit better than the last, Environment framework or mold, let's call it.
[00:28:38] Okay. So then, and then in that mold, it becomes safe enough to understand my soul and deeper and truer and more clear ways. And then I'm like, okay, got it. Now I understand, like I, it's time to leave this mold and go into a new mold. And great. Leave that mold. And this time I have a little bit more evidence to know that it's going to be safe and there's freedom and liberation.
[00:28:57] So it's a little less scary, but it's still [00:29:00] terrifying. And that's probably how it'll be forever. Go into the new mold. Same exact thing happens this time. It's a little bit better. Clearer, more clarity on what I want, more in touchness with my soul, more understanding of the rhythm of who I am, but it's still filled with all these unconscious wounds that just less now.
[00:29:16] And then it, when it, and then, but in that mold, there's a particular version of safety there, which allows me to go deeper in with my soul. So I go deeper in with my soul. And then at some point it becomes time to, to leave that mold and step into a new one. That's what I see throughout my life. Over and over.
[00:29:33] And in the experience of the dark night of the soul, like every time I took a leap and broke out of something and was like I don't know the right thing here. I don't have any guarantees that anything is going to work out. I just know. I need to understand this thing that happened when I was 18, where I had this experience of feeling in my body, like feeling what love really felt like in my body and then seeing aesthetically what that looked like [00:30:00] and wanting to be that thing full time.
[00:30:02] I knew I needed to understand that and wanted to understand that. I knew that if I could understand that it and be able to. Process it and integrate it and help other people understand it too. I knew that would separate me from the pack of the world because I knew that my perspective on change, like what I was convicted was possible.
[00:30:22] Maybe convinced is a better word, but I was convinced the ways in which I was convinced about the possibility of change I knew was different than everyone else. And so then I was like, okay, I'm going to let my life be the proof of this thing. Perspective or this hypothesis that I have, and I, like I was saying with the seven out of 10 or the 10 thing, like I'd rather try and go for it.
[00:30:44] I'd rather die than not fully go for it. And so I'm going to just see what happens. So it's been that sentiment through the whole dark night of the soul that, and like the willingness to break out of molds and step into new ones and create new versions of safety. And I've made [00:31:00] so many mistakes along the way.
[00:31:02] So many mistakes. I've hurt myself in so many ways. I've. For a long time, like one of my most shameful things was my relationship with money. I'd make a shit ton of money and then somehow all of it would be gone. And I didn't know how to like actually build wealth which is still something I like learn about.
[00:31:16] But a year ago, I wouldn't have even wanted to speak about that or let anyone know that or so ashamed of it. So I still hurt myself and sometimes even hurt other people in the process, but I. I just feel like I'm getting better and better and better and better, like closer to the truth of who I am and what I want closer to it, more able to be honest about it clearer every step of the way.
[00:31:38] And yeah, what I'm, I think I really, I do think. I have emerged out of a dark night of the soul. And I think that the thing was the, so the thing was the willingness to take bold action externally that reflected the deeper access to truth that I was getting in like the pain [00:32:00] And at each, at any, every time there was a new mold and I'd get deeper access to the truth of my soul, I was willing to take action because I'm willing to go for it for 10 out of 10 soulful life.
[00:32:13] And again, in that process, like each time I take the leap and break out of a mold, I learned that it's, I'm less afraid of it. But the interesting thing is and then you build molds around you that are true about what your soul loves. And there you've made decisions about like how you want to operate and how you want to relate to people and what relationships you want to have.
[00:32:34] And you like the things in your life, but sometimes you know that it's not the full truth of my soul. So then there's this like particularly hurtful thing of like it's easy to say no to a toxic relationship. It's it has its own set of challenges to say no to something that's beautiful because you have a sense that it's not the full representation of your soul.
[00:32:54] So you and I will probably go both go through that for the rest of our lives and never not be [00:33:00] afraid of that. And that probably will never not be hard, but it is also beautiful. One of the things that I want to emphasize is that people will always Tell you to enjoy the process or fall in love with the process for the majority of my adult life.
[00:33:17] I have Hated the process and I've hated that there's had to be a process and I've hated that I couldn't just immediately be who I wanted to be and have what I wanted and have the experience of life that I wanted I hated that it was gonna take time but I, I guess maybe one of the ways to describe it is I fought aggressively, I kept trying, kept going for it kept hearing this music in my soul of what I wanted to learn and what I wanted to become and what I wanted to create.
[00:33:50] And I kept doing my best to move in the direction of creating that thing again, making so many mistakes, more like thousands of [00:34:00] times, more mistakes than successes. But kept going. And for a lot of it did not enjoy the process, but I will say this. That tenacity over the course of a decade or more has created the external conditions where I can now be like, Oh, I understand.
[00:34:18] Love the process. I understand. Enjoy the process. Now I can see how when you create a certain level of external safety for yourself with money and like a wait list for clients and now I have a podcast and a newsletter that's 65 additions in like now that these external things are in place and there's all this momentum with these things that create certain levels of social safety, financial safety psychological safety.
[00:34:46] I can feel like, Oh, I really do love the idea of savoring the process. Now I'm, I have much more access to the idea of being like, Oh, I want to build something that lasts 60 years. And I can't wait for these 60 years to [00:35:00] be in love with it and to just tweak it, constantly tweaking it, making it better and better and better.
[00:35:05] But just in these like little tiny little crispy, fresh grape ways. And I'm even starting to think generationally now, whereas for most of my life, I was only thinking day to day, like, how do I be successful today? Today is all that exists. And that was every single day of my life for a long time. So I want to share that to say I don't necessarily think enjoy the process is the best advice.
[00:35:29] You might get it intellectually. But then the understanding of it intellectually might set you up to force yourself to enjoy it or think that you're supposed to enjoy it. And if you're not enjoying it, then it means that you're doing something wrong or it's bad. I will say that when you create the conditions for yourself where it's easier to enjoy the process, then enjoying the process, like the bet that I'm making and what this makes sense to me that enjoying the process and detaching from outcomes does set you up for exponentially greater success and creative [00:36:00] capacity.
[00:36:00] But it might require fight to get there. It really might. Okay. Let's speak about becoming undark knight of the soul of all. All right. And again, this is this model. So for the first thing to understand is I'm not going to be able to explain how to do it in this podcast.
[00:36:20] If you were to listen to every single podcast that I've ever done and read every single newsletter, you'd probably make a lot of progress into accessing the thing that I'm talking about. But I just want to convey that like every single thing that I say, every piece of content that I put out is me attempting to explain how to access this version of life.
[00:36:40] And it might be one of those things like maybe poetry is the best way to do it. And by the way, I want to make it clear when I said that I hate poetry earlier, I. Only mean that because I'm bad at it. And I'm bad at understanding it. I, it's it's frustrating for me because I always feel like there's a deeper thing that I want to be getting from it that I like, don't know how to [00:37:00] get.
[00:37:00] So when I say I hate it, it's more like loving and laughing at myself for being frustrated with it, with the understanding that I probably will fall in love with it at some point. Um, okay. Again, I'm not going to be able to explain like everything, how to do it. I really think that is your journey.
[00:37:17] And I don't know if there is a step by step prescription to be able to do it, though. I do promise you, I am compelled to figure out that step by step and I will continue to work on it, but it's this model that the trifecta that we were talking about of body or heart. Rationale reason, intellect the reason that dark nights are the souls happen, like we've been explaining is when you create all of these constructs, these psychological constructs about what, about ways of interpreting the world that That you're in, in, in to uphold these constructs, it requires operating with these inherent and unconscious assumptions.
[00:37:59] [00:38:00] And then you have an experience where you realize that your assumptions are not true or not accurate. And then those walls crumble. Ray LaMontagne has this line. I think his song is called empty. And he says, um, just know they're only crumble when they fall something like, Oh, this is what it is.
[00:38:16] Don't put your trust in walls because walls will only crush you when they fall. I think he's speaking about the dark night of the soul mechanism here and lending a little bit of perspective into how to become On dark night of the soul of all. So the thing is I hear a lot of people talk about I know everything happens for a reason.
[00:38:34] I know love is the truth of the universe. I know this. And I say how do you know that? And then the answer is, I just know it in my body. I just know, I feel it in my root chakra up to the. Cosmos in the heavens. I know that's true. That love is the thing. I know that this is happening for a reason. I know that my soul chose this life.
[00:38:54] You don't know that if we apply reason, rationale and intellect, [00:39:00] you cannot know that thing with certainty. You cannot know that you that your soul chose this life and that this is your like, first step. 40th life. And you're here for this specific lesson. You cannot know that there is an entity who's watching out for you and that everything happens for a reason.
[00:39:16] You cannot know that love is the objective and ultimate truth of the universe. And we are all here to experience love. You can't know that the only thing that you can, or what you can know. is what happens in your body when you interpret the world that way. So what happens in your body when you think that everything happens for a reason, or this thing is happening for a reason, what happens in your body?
[00:39:43] When you think that love is the ultimate truth of the universe. And now let's say when you think that. You're like, Oh that gives me access to love. Beautiful. Okay. So the function of that worldview is to produce an experience of love internally. But here's [00:40:00] where it breaks down. What if I were to come and say to you, nah, love is not the truth of the universe.
[00:40:05] What would you do? Let's say you were to argue with me because you really need love to be the truth of the universe. So then you get angry at me and then you yell at me because I'm incorrect. And I like love is the truth of the universe. And I'm just not enlightened enough to know that. Okay. So what's happening now in your body?
[00:40:22] Oh, you're angry. Okay. So your relationship with needing love to be the truth of the universe sets you up to not experience love because you're getting angry when you're presented with information that doesn't fit in with the wall that you've constructed and what you need to be true in order for you to have access to safety.
[00:40:45] So the, your need for something to be true in order for you to access the safety you're looking for. Okay. Makes you unsafe. I hope I'm getting that point across clearly. What I think is the undark night of the soulable thing to [00:41:00] do is to recognize that there is not a single thing that we can know with certainty to be true.
[00:41:06] I don't know that I'm a good person. I don't know that love is good. I don't know. I don't know that even if I'm helping people access more love, I don't know that's a good thing. I don't know that life is good. I don't know that happiness is good. I don't know any of those things. All I know is that I like love and I like helping people and I like the idea of something really painful.
[00:41:31] And difficult happening. And rather than thinking that there's some like puppeteer at play who comes up with the reasons for everything, I get to create the reason that there are just options available for me. And I love operating in the space of being open to every being open to everything being true while needing nothing to be true.
[00:41:55] I am not certain of anything [00:42:00] other than what I am experiencing in this moment right here, right now. And when I have a particular interpretation of the world, like everything happens for the reason and love is the truth. Like my soul came here. What I'm looking to do is not get Caught up into the drama of that needing that needing to be something that's absolutely true that speaks to the objective truth of reality.
[00:42:20] I'm looking to understand the function of it. What experience in my body does that give me? How does that make my heart feel to see the world this way? Oh, I really like that. I like that feeling. Oh, that feels really good. Okay. So I understand that this interpretation of the world. Is a helpful tool to get me to access that experience in my body.
[00:42:42] But if I get into the place where I need that interpretation to speak to some kind of truth, then I get less access to the thing in my body that I want to experience. So what I think is the greatest level of safety, I'll say it again, Operating in the space where you're open to [00:43:00] everything being true while needing nothing to be true.
[00:43:03] And you're playing with interpretations. Like you use your rationale and your logic to understand things in certain ways to do pattern predictions and yeah, all that. And you're playing with it. You understand that the. The function of seeing the world in a particular way is to produce an experience here and now in your body.
[00:43:24] And when you understand that, Oh my God, it's the most freeing thing ever. It's the most freeing thing ever. You don't have to convince anything of anyone of anything. You don't have to. To need to be understood, what experience you want to have internally, and you're able to play with your ideas and interpretations of the world, the you're able to play with the walls that you build around you.
[00:43:48] In a way that's like fun and creative, but you don't need the walls to be there. You don't need the to put your trust in the walls that are going to crumble when they fall, because you. That's not where your safety [00:44:00] exists. It doesn't exist in needing things to be true. It exists in the creative, playful experience of understanding what you want to experience internally, and then choosing to interpret the world in ways in which that align with, in our matches for what you want to experience internally.
[00:44:17] It's just, I, again, like the freedom that you access when you operate that way is remarkable. And I will say this, here's a really cool piece about this. So this is something that all the existentialists spoke about in the like early 1900s. And I think that's the greatest philosophical school that's ever existed by far, hands down, bar none, like it, they were so next level.
[00:44:38] Okay, here's the most beautiful part about it, or one of the most beautiful parts. I love this part. Okay, open to everything being true, needing nothing to being true, but choose the truths that create the experience that you want and operate as if that were objectively true while also being open to [00:45:00] it not being true.
[00:45:01] That's where things get crazy. Cause okay. When you operate with everything happens for a reason and you're experiencing some like massive suffering or loss, right? And you say everything happens for the reason. And then you ask yourself, okay if if I believe that what reason would I like for this to be like what would I like?
[00:45:16] Oh, the loss of this person. Person means that I'm going to be able to take this pain and write about it and use it in order to like really help people get in touch with their hearts and navigate grief. Okay. So the reason for this is for me to be of service to people so that I can help people navigate, navigate grief in a more beautiful way.
[00:45:34] And if I can help people navigate grief in a more beautiful way, what does that do for me? Oh, that helps me feel like really grounded. Filled and confident and inspired and creative. Okay. So what I want is groundedness, confidence, inspiration, creativity. I'm interpreting this painful situation in a way that the reason is so that I can help people access like more, whatever, groundedness and peace when they're navigating grief, [00:46:00] that's what I want.
[00:46:00] I don't know that's right. I don't know that's correct. I'm just choosing that. And I'm going to operate as if this interpretation of reality, that the reason is so that I can write books about this as if that were true, because that's going to be the thing that's going to get me to write the book.
[00:46:18] But I also am operating with the wisdom and the awareness to know that I'm playing a game with myself and just choosing for something to be true and operate as if it's true with. Without knowing if it's actually true and maybe it is, maybe it actually is true. I just don't think we can know that.
[00:46:35] So that if you're operating with that in, in that way in the world, you won't need walls anymore. You won't need. Like scaffolding in order to create psychological safety. And it gives you an opportunity to meet the parts of yourself who do need for need the parts of you who do need certain things to be true, who [00:47:00] are desperate and desperately hoping for certain things to be true, because if they're true, then that means that you get to be safe in a particular way.
[00:47:07] But the desperate need for the truth means that you never really get the safety that you're looking for. The safety that you're looking for exists. It's in the unknown in not needing to know anything, not needing for anything to be true, but playing with interpretations and truths and creating the life that you want with those interpretations and truths, because you understand the experience that they create for you.
[00:47:29] And we'll see what happens. I'm making a bet. Again, I could be wrong. I next week I could find out that I was totally incorrect about that. I enter the worst dark night of the soul in the history of civilization. Hasn't been a, hasn't been a worse one since St. John of the cross. And yeah, who knows, but.
[00:47:48] I'm using rationale here to make a prediction because I've seen that works really well for me. And I'm going with that as the mechanism that I'm predicting is going to continue to work in the future. And [00:48:00] I'm open to finding something even better. I just haven't found it yet. Thank you all so much for listening.
[00:48:05] I appreciate you. If you are going through a dark night of the soul, I'm so glad to be here with you in this process. I'm sorry if it hurts and it's, and you're experiencing suffering. I really understand how it is. I really encourage you to listen to the music of your soul and to fight your ass off, to move in the direction of truth.
[00:48:24] And beauty and full expression. I feel really confident that you will get there and that you will be able to use this experience as an immense fuel source, a very beautiful fuel source to be able to connect more deeply with other people, to understand yourself. Thank you for your willingness to experience pain and for your desire to move in the direction of love and being in service of other people, not because they're objectively good or true, but I just like them and I want to live in a world where that exists.
[00:48:54] So thank [00:49:00] you.