“Your imaginative and prescient will turn into clear solely if you look into your coronary heart … Who appears to be like exterior goals; who appears to be like inside awakens.” ~Carl Jung
There may be nothing fairly like an undesirable breakup to tear your coronary heart open and convey you head to head together with your deepest shadows.
Not less than, that’s the way it was for me.
Almost six years in the past, on a sometimes heat and sunny Saturday October afternoon in Los Angeles, I used to be mendacity on the ground of my house, wallowing to my then-boyfriend on the telephone about how all the pieces in my life appeared to simply be hitting partitions: My profession was hitting a ceiling, our relationship felt stagnant, the route of my life itself was hazy and imprecise.
It wasn’t the primary time we’d had a dialog like this, however this time was totally different. On at the present time, for causes I can solely ascribe to the best mysteries of life, the middle bearing the burden of all of it started to unravel on the seams—with a protracted, deep sigh after a minimum of an hour of getting nowhere, he spoke, “I believe we must always break up.”
My thoughts couldn’t have fathomed listening to these phrases. Our relationship, irrespective of how unhealthy it was, didn’t have an finish in my thoughts. We had been linked, we had discovered one thing inside each other—one thing particular and distinctive—and he had rekindled a sense of aliveness in me that I didn’t need to let go of. It was merely unthinkable to me that what I had discovered with him would ever come to an finish.
However—as will ultimately occur to us all at one level in life or one other, whether or not or not it’s a breakup, lack of a liked one, or one thing else—the unthinkable occurred.
I want I might say that a part of me discovered aid within the second; that the a part of me that knew issues weren’t completely proper got here to floor to inform me, sure, it is a good factor.
As an alternative, I entered full denial.
I listened to his phrases, and after grappling my manner via the rest of that dialog, I hung up, went to mattress, and cried myself to sleep.
In my head, as a result of I used to be nonetheless so enraptured by a fantasy of “this will’t presumably ever finish,” this was only a hurdle. It was part of our path that might see us separating for a second, however in the end coming again collectively once more.
My thoughts merely didn’t need to let go.
In truth, it couldn’t, as a result of that’s what occurs when the unthinkable happens. A thoughts connected to a selected final result can’t comprehend some other final result, as something apart from what it has imagined appears like a menace to your survival.
That relationship, irrespective of what number of crimson flags persevered all through our two and a half years collectively—by no means having mentioned “I really like you” to at least one one other, all the time feeling like I used to be simply making an attempt to show myself, persistently being advised “can’t you simply be extra of this or much less of that,” to call only a few—was a matter of survival for me. With out it, my thoughts thought I’d actually die.
On reflection, I can clearly see I used to be a girl connected.
The connection had been a lifeline for me once we first met. Recent on the heels of dropping my dad, that man got here into my life and made me really feel one thing when life had all however misplaced feeling. With out him, I believed I’d lose all of it (the irony being, in fact, {that a} relationship born in attachment will lose all of it anyway).
Our relationship had been constructed on a shaky basis of codependency and fleeting bodily chemistry, and having by no means skilled a very wholesome relationship earlier than, I couldn’t make sense of how a connection that had as soon as felt so alive couldn’t be someway mounted or saved. Breaking apart was merely not a state of affairs that existed in my worldview.
Past the Unthinkable
I want to say that you don’t, the truth is, die when the unthinkable occurs. However the fact is, you type of do.
That’s, a minimum of part of you does.
Maybe extra precisely acknowledged, a model of who you’ve identified your self to be up till that time begins to wither and asks to be let go.
It’s the a part of you that thinks it is advisable keep in a relationship that isn’t empowering you, or the a part of you that thinks it is advisable keep in a dead-end job that’s out of alignment together with your coronary heart’s needs, or it could even be the a part of you that thinks you can’t say no to associates who in the end don’t deliver out your greatest.
No matter state of affairs is most related to your present scenario, the attachment to staying someplace that’s not empowering on your coronary heart and soul is in the end a mirrored image of the way you as soon as discovered issues wanted to be so as so that you can survive.
It’s no coincidence or shock, then, that when the factor you might be connected to is ripped away, what’s left is a gaping gap into the depth of your shadow. When you’ve by no means confronted your shadow earlier than, it may well really feel terrifying to take action. That’s the reason, as was my expertise, we frequently discover ourselves in a state of denial about what has occurred.
Denial permits us to hold on to what was as an alternative of dealing with what is. And what is, is that this—a doorway into your very personal path of soul initiation; a second wherein you might be given a option to both keep the way you’ve been or face what has been swept into darkness as a way to start to be free.
The Threshold of a Soul Encounter
For me, that doorway got here one week later after I awoke the next Saturday morning and located myself dealing with a tough fact I had not but seen or identified: By myself for the primary time, I really had no thought what to do with myself or easy methods to spend my time.
It hit me like a ton of bricks. There, standing within the rest room that morning and watching myself within the mirror, I reached the brink of all nice soul encounters: I spotted I merely couldn’t maintain dwelling this fashion any longer.
I might not bear the burden; the middle had formally damaged.
Not understanding what else to do, I grabbed my journal, sat on my sofa, and commenced to put in writing in regards to the expertise of the breakup and all of the ideas and emotions I had encountered over the previous week.
And that’s when it occurred.
It got here like a flash of lightning. As I used to be recounting a scene from a number of days prior after I’d run into my newly ex-boyfriend and felt my temper drop from feeling considerably okay to feeling excruciating ache and despair, I seen that my response to seeing him was to retreat inward. I spotted in that second one thing that I had by no means been in a position to see earlier than: Whenever you retreat, you possibly can’t really feel the ache anymore.
The feeling of retreating to in the end being withdrawn was one thing I’d felt many occasions in my life earlier than, however it wasn’t till that second that I spotted the withdrawal was a type of self-protection: With the intention to cease feeling any ache that part of me thought I wouldn’t be capable to survive, I merely eliminated myself from it.
As I continued to journal, I started to see how for a lot of my grownup life, I had made selections to keep away from feeling ache. Like staying in a relationship that wasn’t good for my coronary heart for much too lengthy, I usually opted for the perceived security of what was acquainted as an alternative of being true to myself by making selections that honored my coronary heart.
Once I actually received to the underside of it, I spotted that the ache I had skilled that I had so diligently been avoiding over time stemmed from believing that there was one thing exterior of myself that might deem me worthy of affection and acceptance.
I had lengthy been dwelling as a girl afraid of being rejected and unloved to the purpose the place I’d actually die, and it confirmed.
Finally, it was in these pages that I started connecting the dots of my life and the way I’d come to be somebody who stayed in a relationship out of concern reasonably than actual love.
Maybe extra instantly put, I used to be assembly my shadow.
The Encounter is Simply the Starting
The insights I gained that day didn’t, sadly, make all the pieces in my life instantly fall into place and really feel higher once more. What they did do, nevertheless, was soar begin my journey into actual therapeutic and internal progress on a degree I had by no means been in a position to entry earlier than. That day, on my front room couch, standing in entrance of life’s metaphorical huge open plain, I used to be given the reward of assembly my soul.
The trail hasn’t been simple, however dealing with your shadows and getting acquainted together with your soul isn’t meant to be. It’s meant to shake you to your core, to make you face the components of your self you’ve been too afraid to take a look at and be taught to befriend them as a way to uncover the power, knowledge, and coronary heart you didn’t even know you had.
Following the decision of my soul to honor my coronary heart took time, endurance, gentleness, help, curiosity, and a complete lot of observe and religion to see myself via the darkness, however the rewards have been candy: Now not mechanically shutting down on the first signal of ache, I now know that the love I had been so afraid of not getting was inside me the entire time, simply ready to be identified.
It’s been simply over six years because the breakup, and I can say with the utmost confidence, it’s been value each phrase journaled, each tear shed, and each painful second encountered on the way in which down and again.
In the long run, chances are you’ll not willingly select the exhausting issues that occur in your life (I actually wouldn’t have chosen to be damaged up with on the time), however if you discover the material of your actuality beginning to rip on the seams, and you might be standing on the precipice of the very depths of your soul, you might be being given one in every of life’s biggest presents: to satisfy your self as you might be and, in the end, to know your self as you got here right here to be.
