While on the path toward enlightenment, many experience the feeling of not fitting into their reality anymore. This suffering can be viewed as an initiation of sorts, where we feel abandoned, without light or hope, and profoundly alone. Usually if something upsets us, it is just a manifestation of fear <anger, grief, loneliness, sadness>, so courageously facing these illusions with perseverance and honesty is part of the process. We will question and doubt everything we thought we knew. We may feel as if we are losing our mind, yet we are still able to function in our current reality. We realize that nothing we have done in the past will get us to where we want to be; all the books and workshops we have attended have only offered glimpses of who we want to become.
The tug of war is between our old reality and that promised land of enlightenment, where one is no longer comfortable and the other seems unreachable. We see others who embody the values of love and generosity and gratitude and forgiveness that we seek to integrate, but it is so hard to shed the old ways of being. Everything seems so easy for them, yet so difficult for us. We are trying … which is part of the problem. There is no effort needed … instead of doing, we just need to be. We persist because we can't conceive of going back to the old way of life and those brief moments of peace keep us going. Once we begin this process, we must keep going or we may let fear prevent us from succeeding. We feel we would do anything to get out of this state, yet it is only our ego which is keeping us in it.
In order for our higher self to emerge, our ego has to be diffused. It has served well; we have survived. Throughout our lives, our ego was in charge; we gained a sense of self worth based on what the ego gathered from responses of other people, but it was a very limited sense of self. The ego believes it chooses what we think, how we feel and what we do. Even now, our ego thinks it is moving us down the path of higher consciousness.
There is nothing to be done but surrender; we have tried everything else. We realize we are different than who we thought we were. After our dark night, we are transformed from ignorance and fear into feeling free and joyful and directly connected to source. We are now a tabula rasa, and ready to create our vision.