04/28/2024
I wanted to share what spirit guided me to write and share at the Center for Spiritual Living today. I feel its for so many ppl so I feel compelled to share it here. If it's for you, you will feel compelled to read it as well:
The Gentle, Screaming Void of Becoming Undone
Intro: Brought to you by Face book and Divine Intelligence. I saw a FB memory post from years ago with photos that framed several aspects of a life I was so grateful for. I gasped a bit looking at these photos, knowing that within a week of that post that life completely exploded, leaving me in pieces. I felt compassion for the person I was then, what I was about to go through, and how that time in my life changed nearly everything about me. I know that many beings in those photos that defined my world at that time, I would never see again. I had intended to speak about that post, extemporaneously as usual, but Spirit moved me this am to sit down and write it, because there were things that “needed to be said in a certain way”. So here is what I was guided to write for you all this morning.
There are times in our lives, when we are absolutely devastated by life’s circumstances. Our lives, our entirety, and everything we hold dear, the people, places, titles, definitions of ourselves and how we fit in the universe come unraveled. Leaving us barren, broken, and shuttering on the bathroom floor.
These are the times when we question who we are, we question our faith, or walk away from God entirely. The times when we become so traumatized that we trust no one, and any light of joy in out heart seems to be extinguished, never to be experienced again.
However; in these times, we are hurdled into the void, into nothingness, because all the ways we have defined ourselves and our lives, have been altered or stripped from us. We are nothingness. This feels so foreign and unstable that in our fear we fight and thrash and cry out. However; if we could come to understand that our prayers are being answered, this time is not so terrifying.
So often we pray for a better life, a happier existence, to rise to higher consciousness, and to be more joyful. Yet we hold desperately on to the things, places, people and behaviors that are causing us to stay stuck in a life that is not in alignment or vibration with our authentic self.
In these times we are actually being stripped of all that does not serve us, no matter how much we might cathect these things, people, places, identities, so that we can move into a new space, so we can be recalibrated and redirected to that which we have sought, which we have prayed for, and that which we have come here to be.
The darkest night of the soul is just a transition from who we took on being, based on society and cultural norms, to who we actually are. These times are actually quite gentle, it is only our resistance, and our holding on to old identities that make them seem so violent, so traumatizing. It’s our thrashing against our own chains that bruises us, while Spirit gently holds us still to remove them.
These moments (that can last for weeks, or sometimes years if we are more resistant), is us claiming our right to be who we are. Even the perceived betrayals of others is only Spirit removing people who do not serve us, in the only way we will let them go, and that feels violent at the time.
I know of no one who went through these times, who years later were not thanking the Heavens for the redirect, for the lessons, for the strength they did not know they had, and for the person they become on the other side. A person that they never would have imagined they could be, living a joyous life they could never have fathomed before this transition.
These dark times are merely a bridge through the void, to our new and authentic lives. The void is a place of possibility, in the darkness is where we let go of the illusion, and dream a new dream, and walk out of the other side, anew. This is what it means to be awakened.
You have to go be still and rest in the darkness first, in order to awaken to your own stunning light.
Keli Semelsberger
For Center for Spiritual Living East Hawaii
4/28/24