The dark night of the soul

The “void” is like a mini “dark night of the soul.” If you’re feeling lost, this is for you. 

Transcript

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Hello and welcome back to the Beauty and Positivity Podcast. My name is Alyssa Skinner. Today's episode is for anyone going through the void or the dark night of the soul. The two mean the same thing to me. The void is this liminal space where you feel like I don't know who I am, I don't know where I'm going, I don't know what my purpose is, what's the point, nothing feels the same. Like you're just in this lost space. And it's like this in-between feeling. You're in limbo between your old life and your new life, but your new life hasn't arrived yet, and your old life is falling apart. The dark night of the soul is incredibly hard, but it is different for everyone. It can last different lengths of time for everyone, depending on how quickly you surrender to it. And I will explain how to do that because I didn't know until it was halfway through. So I went through the dark night of the soul in 2021. It was about six months before I was leaving San Diego, California. I didn't want to leave, okay? But my soul was like, yes, you will grow. You have only been in your hometown your whole life. Don't you want to see who you are? And my ego was like, no, people don't leave out San Diego. They moved to San Diego and they were just fighting. So we'll go over that. I didn't know anything about the Dark Knight of the Soul until I was halfway through it. I had never heard the term. I didn't know what it was. It was very scary when you don't know what's going on. So I want to share this. So I'm going to go over my journey with you. I'm going to explain what it is, what it feels like, and what it means, and why it's a big deal if you are experiencing this. I've had a lot of DMs lately, um, a lot of people asking, you know, I'm going through this really hard time. How do you stay positive? Do you have any recommendations, you know, on how to deal with this? And I just want to say, I don't want you to stay positive. I want you to experience the full human experience. I don't want you to deny yourself your feelings. That doesn't mean you need to stay there. But it just means we don't have to go to our garden full of weeds and close our eyes and go, there's no weeds, there's no weeds, there's no weeds. Because that's not that's not tapping into the journey your soul's asking you to tap into. Something's going on. We need to dig deep and surrender to it, which we're gonna go over. So don't feel like you have to stay positive in every situation in life. Not everything's positive. We have a laundry list of human emotions we're meant to experience here. Some feel good, some don't. So we'll go, we'll get into it. The dark night of the soul literally feels like that. It feels like your soul is walking through darkness. It's an incredibly profound journey, but it feels so disorienting and meaningless. And it's like a crisis for your soul. Your life is like reflecting back all this confusion to you, and it's like, what do you want me to do with this? And you're like, I don't know. So when I was going through it, I remember I called out of work for a week. I assisted a doctor, so it was a very big deal calling out. I was I had so much anxiety over it. Um, and I thought I was going through depression, which is so far from who I am. And so I was in denial. I'm like, no, I'm not depressed. Like, what why the hell do I feel like I'm depressed? I'm not. Lots of people, especially those who do not consider themselves spiritual, consider the dark night of the soul or the void as depression. They they don't think my spirit's going through something, I'm going through a spiritual awakening. They immediately go to clinical depression and treat it with medicine and say it's a chemical imbalance, which absolutely I'm not a doctor. I'm not saying it is or isn't. I'm just saying we only focus on one side of it. So I had to ask myself, am I depressed or am I soul up-leveling, right? I think we tend to focus on the body only in our society and the symptoms rather than the soul and our energy and our emotional frequency. Like our body responds to our electromagnetic field. And I will have to explain this in another, I don't know, a video or on a whiteboard of some sort, because sometimes I need a visual to show you why our body reacts to whatever emotion we're feeling. And I did an episode on this, so go listen to my last episode. The body follows the mind. I don't think that's what it's called, but it's something like that. I can never remember what I name these, so I'm so sorry. So the journey feels like your soul is grabbing your ego, saying, Let's go. And your ego is like, No, I'm good. I'm comfy. I don't want to do whatever it is that you want to do with me. And your soul grabs the hand of your ego and starts sprinting, and your ego is dragging behind you, and your soul is running so fast, your soul knows exactly what's at the end of this journey, the dark night of the soul or the void. It is running towards that light, and your ego is like, what is happening? I don't want to go, I don't want to do this, I don't want to experience this. This feels horrible. I want to stay exactly where I am. So, this journey can be triggered by a few different things. A life trauma, it can come just if you're going through a spiritual journey, which is exactly what mine was. Um, it can start when you're tapping into this type of work, when you start meditating and doing your shadow work and listening to podcasts and reading books on personal development, on just spiritual hygiene. This can trigger a spiritual awakening. And I feel like these words are so overused on social media now, so I'm sorry. But it is true, they still have meaning. You still can go through a spiritual awakening. So I was meditating a lot in this point in my life. I was reading a ton of personal development, focusing on my growing in my spiritual hygiene, becoming my highest self. That was my only goal. I want to be my highest self. I want to walk through this world as my highest self. So it can also be triggered by losing a loved one, an illness, divorce, a career shift, any big life change that cracks the reality you have been living in or cracks the identity you have been so comfortable in. So the main core of this experience is going to feel like a loss of meaning in your activities, achievements, any future goals don't matter anymore. And you're just like, I don't even care about any of this. I don't care about the things I used to care about. You know, I don't even know where my direction is right now. And then you go through this feeling of alienation and you become completely detached from yourself, from those around you. You just lose feeling and belonging, and you just feel alone. And then, you know, again, this can look different for everyone, but these are some of the core experiences that you will feel in this journey. The main purpose of this journey is an ego death. And I don't mean the kind that not literally. So quick note: your ego is not your confidence, it's not your cockiness, it's not your arrogance, it's a huge misconception because we do use ego as a slang term of like, oh, his he's got a big ego, like he's so arrogant. In terms of spirituality, your ego is just the human version of you, it's your human, logical, analytical, critical mind, your logic, your survival instincts. That's your ego. And your ego has a purpose. We don't want to kill our ego. Your soul is your intuition, it's your highest knowing, your connection to God, your source that's in you. And your ego is your human logical self. It reminds you to look both ways before you cross the street, it keeps you alive. So the two are at an opposition. Your ego and your soul are fighting about what's next. So when I say the purpose of this journey is an ego death, a lot of people think killing the ego is the way to your highest self. I do not resonate with that, and I personally don't believe that's true. I think your ego is necessary here on earth because you're having a human experience. We should lean into the human experience too. It's not just, you know, swinging the pendulum all the way to the spiritual side and ignoring physical experiences. You absolutely need your ego, but this journey is meant to tame the ego. I think that you have been letting your 3D human ego survival lead for way too long. The ego likes to take over everything, including your manifestations, your desires. It tries to do the work of the ego and the soul. It doesn't let the soul take care of anything if you allow your ego to lead and become prominent. Most of I don't like to say most, but I think a lot of people lead by with their ego because they let fear get in the way and they use logic and they predict the future based on the past. That's all your ego. Your soul is trust, it's faith, it's leap, and the net will appear. So the goal is to allow your soul to get back in the leader seat and get you to your dream life. Now I go so deep into this in my Enlightenment Babe Academy, that's what it's for. I can really, it would take months of me doing podcasts to share everything that I know, which is why I created that course. So this is this episode is just focused on the dark night of the soul, the experience itself. But if you want to know more about your ego and your soul and how to know which one is talking, you know that cartoon, the angel and devil on your shoulder? That's your ego and your soul. I mean, that's the visual we gave it. So you can go find my enlightened babe academy in my social media bio because that is the identity journey where you learn everything. So your soul is like, let's go, grabs the hand of your ego. We're elevating, we are expanding. I am leading the way. You've been leading way too long. You've been leading me for 30 years. I'm done. You need to take a backseat. So Alyssa has never listened to you in the past, she's not gonna listen to you now. That's what my ego is like saying to my soul. The ego is like, psh no. Alyssa's too scared to listen to you. She listens to me because I remind her about what could go wrong. So, okay, I'm sorry, I'm being silly. So that's the key right there. If you don't tap into your intuition, when your soul speaks, your intuition and your soul is just the same thing, in my opinion. If you don't listen to that, it's gonna get quieter. It's just gonna stop talking altogether. And that is when your ego leads. So the more connected you become to your soul and you listen to your intuition when it speaks, the louder and louder that voice gets, and the quieter the ego gets. So that's kind of what this journey is about. When the ego takes care of the tasks necessary for keeping you safe, reminding you to look both ways when you cross the street, reminding you to run when you hear crazy animal noises chasing you in the jungle. That's your survival instincts. It's doing its necessary job. It reminds you to lock your door before you go to bed at night. That is our ego is for our protection, it's for our survival. It reminds you to eat food, drink water, procreate. The soul is meant to be the main leader in order to achieve your dream life, in order to give you confidence to chase your dreams and go after it and take chances and have faith everything is always working out for you. The ego does not believe everything's always working out for you. It's constantly what could go wrong? What about this? What about XYZ? And your soul is like, you just made all that up. Like, we're good. We jump and we're good. So I want to share exactly what my dark night of the soul felt like now. And it was, I remember thinking and feeling like when I was going through it, I even discovered what I was experiencing and had a surrender because it was a horrible journey, and I genuinely didn't know what I was going through. So, night one, I remember I was folding laundry. I lived at the beach. I lived in Pacific Beach in San Diego. I lived on the beach, you guys. It was such a beautiful life. I lived there for like almost four years. So I walked to the beach every morning with my coffee. My dog and I would walk on the evenings. I would ride my bike 10 miles twice a week on the bay because it was so easy. I'd walk to the coffee shop, all to say, I was living the life. There was nothing but joy. I was so happy. So I remember I'm folding laundry in my apartment, and it was a beautiful day, and I randomly got this overwhelming feeling that someone I loved just died, and I could not explain it. I was watching The Bachelor, I was just feeling good. I was like watching my favorite show, and I'm like, oh my gosh, I feel so sad right now. I could cry. I felt the need to just start sobbing. I felt this intense sense that someone I care for so much just passed away. And I just started crying, and I was like, oh my gosh, this is intense. Like, I just need to let this out. Like, maybe I just have stored up emotions, but I just felt really, really sad. And this is day one. So I finally I go to sleep. I wake up the next day and my heart is pounding. I woke up with a super fast beating heart. I had really bad anxiety. I used to suffer from anxiety. I have absolutely gotten a tame on it. I rarely experience it. I'm so proud. Um, especially now, I'm like so good. But I would say about two years earlier, this night on the beach, two years before that, I was I was just having panic attacks. I was a big, you know, burden on people that I loved in my life so much. They would have to come pick me up and drive me places, and it felt horrible. It felt so it probably gave me more anxiety than I was burdening people. So at this point in my life, I've almost healed that completely. Haven't had a panic attack in years, which was a great deal. So I wake up with anxiety out of nowhere, and I'm like, dude, no, like this has never, this has not happened in years. What is happening? Like, I was sleeping, I was literally in a slumber. So I wake up, I'm so weak. I can't, I'm like walking to the bathroom hunched over because my legs were like shaky and weak. It was the weirdest feeling. My heart was pounding. So this is like kind of close to the COVID time. And I'm like, dude, do I have COVID? Am I sick? Like, I'm incredibly weak. I'm scared. So I call out of work. I'm thinking I just have anxiety, maybe I'm sick. I went and got, you know, tested for COVID. It was all negative, and so on. I'm like, am I depressed? I had no sickness symptoms. So I'm getting to the point to where my family and friends are like coming over. My best friend is cleaning my house and offering to give me a pedicure. She was so sweet. I'm just like, sh I remember her being like, Do you want me to give you a pedicure? And I just stared off, and I was just like, I can't even talk. I just felt silent. I felt so heavy. I had no energy to speak. I remember processing what she was asking me. It's terrifying, and I know it sounds so weird. I remember just processing, like, what did she just ask me? How do I respond? Literally, like, how? How do I speak? It was it was really scary. So my family and friends are like getting scared too because I'm calling out of work. It's like day four, day five, and I'm like, am I depressed? You know, that's the only conclusion here. I ended up staying at my mom's house and sleeping there for a whole week. Slept on our couch for days, and I literally just didn't speak. I didn't eat. I was so scared. I had no energy, I couldn't sleep, and I was purging every single day. And if you're familiar with the spiritual realm, like purging is just going to the bathroom a lot, it's vomiting, it's literally your body's releasing a lot of energy. And I couldn't sleep every single night. 2 a.m. I was up, 3 a.m., 4 a.m. I'm exhausted, but like my heart is just constantly pounding. So I start researching spiritual experiences because at this point, it's like day four, day five. I've had a lot of time to think about it. And I didn't, I don't even remember what I Googled, but I was like, am I going through something spiritual? And essentially this video on YouTube came up, and it was like, Yes, you're going through the dark night of the soul. All these symptoms, exactly what that is. This is an incredible compliment from the spiritual realm. Not everyone is chosen for this journey. So I'm like, whoa, I have never heard this term. So I, you know, start looking at more videos, watching people talk about their dark night of the soul journey. And you can go find that on YouTube if you just type in Dark Knight of the Soul, and you can really get to see everyone's journey and story and see if you resonate. So I remember feeling this incredible amount of relief because I'm like, hell yeah, I'm going through a spiritual awakening. Suddenly I was like excited. I still felt terrible, but I was like, okay, I'm going through this discomfort because Source is like up-leveling me. I'm into it. Let's see what happens. So the only people that knew I was going through this journey were my mom and my best friend. I really isolated myself. So that's a big common symptom, I guess, is just hiding it from people. So these people are describing their journey online point for point what I was experiencing. And I remember feeling relief. I was excited that all of a sudden I'm about to elevate. And my spirit, you know, my life, my dream life is on the way. Like I'm starting to feel all this positive energy. And they said, you must surrender or it will not end. And I was like, well shit, how do I surrender? I don't know how to surrender. Everyone says surrender and I don't know what to do. And this is like eight, seven years ago, six years ago now. So I absolutely have learned how to surrender. But most people who experience this understand at some point you have to get this figured out. You have to surrender because this journey can go on for years. And that terrified me. I'm like, uh-uh, I'm not going through this another week. So I'm like, how do I surrender? And like researching, watching people's videos, how do I surrender to this spiritual journey? And I still didn't really know how to do it based on what they were telling me. And it's just like that's what the Inline Babe course is for. It teaches you everything I had to learn over the years because it is hard. So I remember just closing my eyes on the couch and I laid there and I and I was just like, you know, I surrender. I'm serious, that's how I started. I surrender. I'm going to feel every single feeling of this journey. I'm not gonna fight it anymore. I just I accept this discomfort. I accept it. I open myself up to it and I connect to God. And that was it. It was just kind of like an affirmation. I remember laying on my back to like really open up my energy and accept this. And I remember that's just all I could do. That's all I could say was just open myself up, accept it, and just feel uncomfortable. And just accept I'm uncomfortable. I hate this, and I'm gonna feel it all. I'm gonna feel all of it. And I just remember feeling like the next day I felt so much better. I was I was literally walking again. I know this sounds so crazy, but I finally went to the store with my mom. I she finally got me out of the house, and I went to the grocery store with her. We go inside, and I remember walking around, and that anxiety started kicking in again. I was like, oh, I'm around too many people. I can feel everyone's energy. I do not like this. So I went and sat in the car, but that was a step forward for me, and I just kept I had to keep surrendering. I was like, I feel all the discomfort. Here I am. So fast forward, you know, at this point, I understand what I'm going through. I accepted it. I'm surrendering to the best of my ability. And I finally wake up without a pounding heart. Oh my goodness. Day seven, not a coincidence, if you ask me. Seven, you know, exactly seven days. So it ended, it just ended. It just ended. I woke up and I was like, wow, it's done. I was a little weak because I hadn't been eating, but you know. So now where I am in my life, being in Tennessee, as soon as I moved here, I went through another void. But I did not know what was happening. These symptoms were so different, significantly calmer, just a deep sense of emptiness, heaviness, kind of sadness, and just lost, a big feeling of loss, big feeling of heaviness. And that's why I call it the void, because sometimes it's not this long, drawn out spiritual journey. Sometimes it's just the void, like you're halfway through kind of feeling. So I've gotten this at least four times. The very first one was very scary because I didn't know what was happening. That's why it lasted so long. But I've had a couple since the first the dark night of the soul. I've gone through the void a couple times now, and they're incredibly quick now because I I get excited. This is gonna sound crazy. I get excited. I it takes like two days now, max of three days, max. So I think my last one was 24 hours, and it keeps getting shorter and shorter. I have learned how to navigate this journey. I fully accept it. When I feel the feeling of the void coming on, I'm like, oh shit, I'm about to up level. Like, I feel like I'm celebrating, okay? Like it feels like this dark heaviness and sadness where I'm like, I don't care about anything, and it's so rare. It's I mean once a year, truly. But I literally am like, hell yeah. I feel so sad right now. Something's coming. I know it sounds crazy, but oops, I lost my place. So I really just get lit up when I feel that. I'm like, you know, I'm about to become a millionaire or something. Like, I get really excited for this death and rebirth feeling. So I'm telling you this because I feel that the journey is so short-lived because I go in with confidence and strength and I meet it head on. That's what makes the journey short. That's what brings up the upleveling in a snap of a finger. And each time I went through the void, right before I moved, right when I got to the new place, right before I started my business, right before I hit my first 10k month, right before you up-level that spiritual awakening is you're embodying the spiritual awakening, but shit might fall apart while you're there. Things fall apart so differently in everyone's lives. So I am not here to tell you how to respond to that, but to simply have faith, to know that you're cleaning out the garage to bring in the new car. That's like my favorite. What is that? A metaphor? Analogy? Analogy. So of course, loss comes at all different levels. All different levels. There's not one size fits all for someone's life. We all have our own experience, our own hardship. So what I'm here to say is things started working out for me when I saw this as a positive thing, when I immediately went in with faith and I wasn't scared and I wasn't wanting to end the discomfort. I immediately just accepted it and was like, this is bringing good. I am about to receive an abundance of good. That's what's happened every single time. And I trust that's what's happening now. If I denied that this was bringing good, and I just sat and wallowed in it, my life's falling apart. Why do why does this always happen to me? Oh my gosh, I would probably feel that for years. I would probably go into the void for years. So for me to change my perspective, I have to surrender and trust. It's all about faith. It's all about allowing your soul to lead. And when you allow your ego to lead, you're gonna feel fear, you're gonna deny experiences happening around you, you're gonna try to control everything. You have to let your soul take over and trust. So, to the the girls that have been DMing me, how do you go through a hard time, stay positive because you just don't know what this is bringing. You're not put through hardship to punish you, you're not put through hardships to ruin your life because you're not loved. You are you're going through everything because on the other side of it is something bigger. And that's all you have to do is accept that and just do your best every single day. Again, everyone's journey is different. Some's hard, somewhere's harder than others. So take care of you, do your mental hygiene, read your books, listen to your podcast. That is the only positivity that will keep you going. And not even positivity, but just just truth. Taking in the reminders that you need, that you're powerful, that you're loved, that you are source. You are made of God. And God loves you. The universe loves you. It's gonna carry you through every single moment in life. It's like you're floating down a river when you surrender. Don't try to swim upstream, don't try to swim out and get out of the river. Just allow yourself to be guided. Go through each moment and watch it get easier. Watch the hardship end even. So keep up on your personal development. It's the only thing that's gonna get you through. Otherwise, you're just gonna feel like life is throwing sucker punches and you can't get a break because that means you're fighting it a lot of times. A lot of times it just means you're swimming upstream. Allow your brain to slow down, accept that this is information. This is information about your future, and it's always positive. I meditate in the morning, even if it's short, I really try to focus at the bare minimum exactly what my day is gonna look like and what I want to feel. What I want to feel is the big one. I don't have to picture every single moment that I'm gonna go through today. I just have to picture myself feeling joy, feeling love, feeling gratitude. That's it. And be careful what you take in on social media, be careful who you follow, be careful what your algorithm starts bringing you. Really like the videos that you want to see more of that make you feel good and that raise your vibration and that inspire you. You should see my algorithm. It's like a couple funny things here. I love humor. Humor is so good for you. I in fact, I did a podcast episode on how your body responds to laughing and how it literally heals sickness. Go listen to that. And so most of it is, yeah, it's funny, but a lot of it is this type of information reminding me of my power. So I it doesn't just make you feel good, it truly is shaping your life and your reality. If you feel good, you are attracting good. I'm sorry this was so long. I love you so much. Thank you so much for listening. I'm sending you lots of love and success. Bye.