There is a pressure implied within the fluffy ‘light and love’ spiritual rhetoric to always have your sh*t together, be smiling, happy and positive. To control your thoughts, be present, be grateful, be positive. To be in ALIGNMENT all the damn time.

To never have a meltdown, a bad day, to lose it, or cry into the raw vegan bowl (that you just blessed) which you’re eating for lunch.

That spirituality is only about light, love and enlightenment. That healing is all sunshine, rainbows and magical plant medicine journeys. Completely failing to acknowledge our darkness, our slip ups, our emotions, our HUMAN-ness.

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. 

Surrender is a term that is thrown around a lot in the spiritual space. It is a term which personally, has the ability to send me into fits of rage simply by being suggested or uttered. “But I was surrendering! I am surrendering! How much more can I surrender, damn it?!”

The act of surrendering (or a hellbent refusal to surrender) has brought upon many painful lessons, many fueled debates with my ego, and many petulant-child-like tantrums where I’ve found myself shaking my fists at the heavens and screaming “fine, you win! I surrender!”

The fact is, as easy as it sounds and as simple as the premise is, surrendering can be anything but easy.

It’s not uncommon as a healer, empath, intuitive, psychic, shaman or someone else who is here to use their spiritual gifts to spend entire days in bed sometimes.

Full disclosure: I’m writing this article from bed as we speak – and I have zero guilt or shame around admitting that once I’m finished writing this article, I’ll probably remain in bed for the rest of the day. #treatyoself

In fact, here is my full permission to allow yourself to do this more often, if you don’t already.

The term “diving for light” is a concept in which an evolved soul will purposefully allow themselves to plunge into deeper and deeper experiences of darkness so that their soul may once again find their way back to the light of divine love. It is this process of ‘diving for light’ in which the soul is able to experience polarity, experience the suffering and darkness that is intricately wrapped up in being human and through the attachments of ego, and guide itself back to once again choose the truth of oneness and higher expressions of light and unconditional love. The acceptance that even those periods of darkness - those feelings of pain, the ugly and uncomfortable aspects of being in this 3D reality - are simply God expressing itself and experiencing polarity, and therefore, are perfect. That even in the darkest of darkness, love and light can always be found if you allow yourself to. In fact, the only way to get through these periods is to surrender and lean into your connection with the divine.