Are You Experiencing Spiritual Winter? How to Cope with the Void of Transformation

There comes a time in your spiritual journey where it feels like not a lot is happening – in fact, it can feel like you are moving backwards in many ways. Things seem to be falling apart, structures in which you thought were solid are crumbling in front of your eyes, relationships are ending abruptly and doors are closing. 

Yet, you look around and there does not seem to be any hint of the new to replace that which has fallen away. It’s almost a case of three steps forward, two steps back.

You are wondering why you are being made to sacrifice so much, why this crumbling is taking place. You may begin to give up hope entirely and feel like you have back-slid to the state you were in before you started on this journey. It echoes the feelings of despair and hopelessness that the original Dark Night of the Soul stirred within you. 

Related post: Bec Mylonas Faces The Dark Night of The Soul To Step Powerfully Into Her Role As a New Earth Leader

Don’t be alarmed – this is simply natural order

The things that used to bring you optimism, security and hope no longer comfort you – you are having to find that strength from within. 

Do not be alarmed by this phase. 

Do not be alarmed by external appearances or what appears to be happening on the surface for you.

This phenomena is simply natural order, it is the universe re-structuring and recreating itself and expressing this creativity through you. 

It is a necessary seasonal change brought about for profound transformation and the new to burst forth.

When a butterfly is due for a transformation, it enters the cocoon. We can also compare this to the seasonal change between Autumn and Winter. 

The Autumn is the ‘crumbling’, where the caterpillar devours everything around it – a form of destruction which the Universe echoes and mirrors in order to make way for the new before it reaches its point of hibernation and stillness where the metamorphosis takes place. 

If we weren’t aware that the caterpillar emerges from this stillness as a beautiful butterfly, we would have cause for concern. However, knowing that on the other side of this stillness is positive transformation and a brilliant new way of being, we trust this natural cycle.

We know that the caterpillar would emerge with a new way of being, and so we do not worry.

The real magic is happening within – don’t lose faith

Humans are much the same, as we are a reflection of the universe experiencing itself through these natural cycles of destruction and creation. 

There are times where it will feel as though everything is being stripped away and there does not seem to be a shred of hope or light – or that nothing profound is taking place at all.

The signs, synchronicities and symbols (the little nods from the Universe that all is well, that you are on the right path) have abruptly stopped, as have the miracles.

You may begin to lose faith and hope entirely, because you no longer have the dopamine pings, the external validation of minor manifestations or magic happening in your 3D reality that used to occur so frequently earlier on in your journey.

However, this is because the real magic is actually happening within. 

You are shifting on a cellular level and growing your personal power so you do not have to rely on the external to reflect your faith back to you.

You are strengthening your trust, your intuition and your bond internally – which is something that can never be taken away from you.

You are forced to deepen your connection and faith in the divine, because although things seem to be moving backwards in many ways, you have a sense of knowing or trust that on the other side of this season of integration and stillness, there is the Spring.

That the things that have seemed to fall away have only made place for new, beautiful experiences and ways of being.

And then, suddenly, out of nowhere, you may start to feel something rouse from deep within you. A single tiny seedling of inspiration beginning to sprout in an otherwise desolate field. Slowly, one by one, more of these seedlings are sprouting out and beginning to bloom into beautiful flowers. Soon the field is filled and utterly transformed. 

Or you could choose to imagine the Butterfly – softly and gently beginning to awaken from its slumber, experiencing the light streaming in through the cocoon which now disintegrates around it. 

New life, hope, renewal – you are completely transformed. 

Life is made up of seasons, and stillness is necessary

There is a tendency to fear our internal Winter, or panic when it seems like not a lot is happening on the surface. There is a tendency to ask ‘where is God?’ when you are forced to rely on your internal compass and instincts that are guiding you to the truth, rather than the clear and obvious signs that you used to get outside of you – when things appear to be blocked, stagnant and not progressing. When you feel like you have lost hope.

But knowing that life is made up of seasons – that this stillness is necessary for the new to blossom – gives you reassurance that Spring is coming, and that all is well.