My journey through spirituality- why love and light doesn't work.

Over the last 5 years I abandoned everything I knew about the world, and what society was teaching me and went on a quest to find my version of truth. I was desperate for anything that would make my pain go away- anything to make sense of the chaos and disaster. To piece together my mind and soul that was fragmented from trauma and mental illness. Anything to make sense of the level of my pain, and how I felt so connected to everyone and everything- yet so alone. I never felt like I belonged and I couldn’t view the world how I was told.

I didn’t see the world in black and white- I saw it in technicolor.

Well, it was a wild ride to put it simply. Now is not the time to revisit all the adventures that led me to this point. There was healing and magic, seances and therapy. Eastern philosophies and western principles. I read about God, Buddha and Allah. I went on ghost hunts and investigated hauntings. I searched for meaning in myth and story. I learnt that there are stories within stories and we ourselves are the characters that play out the journey our soul has written. I got to know my brain and inner workings, I learnt the power in belief. I travelled America to talk to dead people and go on vision quests in the desert with shamans. I witnessed a rainbow over a Thai ocean, and saw the polarity in the darkness of the countries underbelly. I learnt counselling, and natural medicine, sacred geometry and ancestral magic . I searched every piece to the puzzle of my past, and analysed every thought. I knew to heal it I had to see it all of it. All of myself. I had to make friends with my demons and understand my power. I had to know what was there so that what was buried in my subconscious could ever hurt me. I had to find a way to explain my existence. Find the keys to heal all the pain, something I had searched my whole life for- surely it had to be out there somewhere.

I did all of this, and at the end of it- I thought I had healed enough. Maybe now I could show the world all that I had inside. Maybe now I could let someone close to me without triggering old wounds. Maybe now I could trust that life will not hurt you at any moment. Maybe now that I was aware of my pain, I could heal it. Maybe now I could know love.

The thing was, even after all this searching and growing- it still hurt… being aware wasn’t enough. Knowing myself back to front was not enough- I knew my pain, I had rationalised it but it was still there deep in my belly. The voice of trauma whispering in my ear whenever a fleeting innocent moment would stir it up.

New age philosophy teaches us that love and light will conquer anything. I heard this over and over, repeated by everyone from the worlds best mediums and healers to to the psychics I met in a side alley in New York City. I always struggled with this, because they taught me that if we only focus on the good life will get better. That every thought should be light and love. This is possibly the biggest misconception in spiritual practices. So many healers walk around wanting to ignore the pain and darkness, fearful that having that darkness as part of your soul somehow means you are less “evolved”

Just because we focus on light doesn’t mean the dark doesn’t exist. Focusing only on light, means the dark is ignored. It is never healed or transformed. In this thinking we forget that light is meant to shine through our darkest parts and magnify it in our hearts- so we see the lessons and truth, accept that it’s there and learn to best live with it. Love exists to be a light to our pain, not to drown it out, but to see it in its entirety. Our soul calls us to situations that push us to understand humans, understand ourselves. Understand suffering and joy, in all of its forms and experiences. Every trauma we experience, every moment of doubt, every let down is our souls own unique learning path. It is all there for a reason, and the struggles we walk through take us to our greatest versions of ourselves. They only do that if we see them for what they are, they only transform into a positive when we look at the negative and find the lesson. Light can only pierce through pain, when we have learnt from it.

Love and light can only exist when we have felt the depth of our pain and darkness.

I realised something they didn’t teach me, none of these guides along the way had stopped to share. Being aware was not enough. Acting in “light and love” was not enough. We can not embrace one part of ourselves in hope of ignoring another.

We have to be both light and dark to embrace our soul fully.

We can go to psychologist after psychologist, take a pill, analyse our pain, write it out, we can be in a desert in Sedona doing a tribal dance with a native American praying for healing- but until we move from self aware to self love, true healing will never come.

Self love is the key to our greatest healing and potential.

Not love for all of mankind, not love for your neighbour- all of that can wait- it needs to be love for yourself first. Instead of identifying all that you need to heal, you need to love all that you are. In every moment. Without exception, without hesitation. When you can see yourself clearly, when you can love your mistakes and trauma- you can heal the pain that holds you back. You can love others without taking from yourself.

You need to learn to love the trauma, not for what happened for you, but for who you became after you walked through the pain. You need to be aware of the pain, and then love yourself until you walk into your forgiveness.

Love is the foundation for forgiveness, and it is only with forgiveness we can heal.

We must love ourselves enough to put light to the pain inside of ourselves, to draw up our shadow, see it, all of it. It is one thing to be aware of our pain, to know our wounds and our stories- it takes another strength entirely to turn that pain into something beautiful. It takes a warrior to not only love ourselves and treat ourselves with respect, but love those who have hurt us. Every single person, no matter how badly they have harmed us we must fight to find the lesson, the light we can pull from the dark. When we have that lesson, we have to forgive it- not for them but for ourselves.

We need to forgive so we find our value. When we find that value, we move from self aware to self love- and then everything is possible.

So today, I challenge you to step out of the bounds of self awareness, and into the world of self love. It is the only place we can truly heal, it is the only space we can be true to ourself and it is the only space that we can release the darkest parts of our self. We can only release with forgiveness, and we can only forgive through love. It isn’t love for someone else- it is love for you. Love doesn’t automatically drown out the darkness- it brings in the light to see it, so that we can heal it and let it go.

Healing isn’t just about love and light. It's not just about being aware. It’s dark, and its messy and it’s rarely ever logical. It can’t have time frames or expectations. There is no how to, you may need to travel the world to find your answers in a foreign town, or you may need a therapy room to piece together the pieces. The ingredients are different for everyone, but the one consistent ingredient, the only constant in any souls journey- is our greatest growth and healing, comes from not our awareness, but our relationship to our awareness, our relationship to our self.

Healing is only possible when we fiercely love ourselves, in every moment in every way.