“Your imaginative and prescient will develop into clear solely while you look into your coronary heart … Who seems outdoors goals; who seems inside awakens.” ~Carl Jung

There’s nothing fairly like an undesirable breakup to tear your coronary heart open and produce you nose to nose together with your deepest shadows.

A minimum of, that’s the way it was for me.

Almost six years in the past, on a usually heat and sunny Saturday October afternoon in Los Angeles, I used to be mendacity on the ground of my condo, wallowing to my then-boyfriend on the cellphone about how every part in my life appeared to simply be hitting partitions: My profession was hitting a ceiling, our relationship felt stagnant, the path of my life itself was hazy and obscure.

It wasn’t the primary time we’d had a dialog like this, however this time was totally different. On this present day, for causes I can solely ascribe to the best mysteries of life, the middle bearing the load of all of it started to unravel on the seams—with an extended, deep sigh after a minimum of an hour of getting nowhere, he spoke, “I feel 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 wish 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 it’s a breakup, lack of a beloved 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 by means of 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 could’t probably ever finish,” this was only a hurdle. It was part of our path that will see us separating for a second, however finally coming again collectively once more.

My thoughts merely didn’t wish to let go.

In reality, it couldn’t, as a result of that’s what occurs when the unthinkable happens. A thoughts connected to a selected final result can not comprehend another final result, as something apart from what it has imagined seems like a menace to your survival.

That relationship, irrespective of what number of purple flags endured 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 attempting 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.

Looking back, I can clearly see I used to be a girl connected.

The connection had been a lifeline for me after we first met. Contemporary on the heels of shedding 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 assumed I’d lose all of it (the irony being, after all, {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 in some way fastened or saved. Breaking apart was merely not a situation that existed in my worldview.

Past the Unthinkable

I want to say that you don’t, in truth, die when the unthinkable occurs. However the reality is, you sort of do.

That’s, a minimum of part of you does.

Maybe extra precisely acknowledged, a model of who you’ve recognized 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 you might want to keep in a relationship that isn’t empowering you, or the a part of you that thinks you might want to keep in a dead-end job that’s out of alignment together with your coronary heart’s wishes, or it might even be the a part of you that thinks you can not say no to buddies who finally don’t carry out your finest.

No matter situation is most related to your present scenario, the attachment to staying someplace that isn’t empowering in your coronary heart and soul is finally 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. In case you’ve by no means confronted your shadow earlier than, it might probably really feel terrifying to take action. That’s the reason, as was my expertise, we regularly discover ourselves in a state of denial about what has occurred.

Denial permits us to hold on to what was as a substitute of going through what is. And what is, is that this—a doorway into your very personal path of soul initiation; a second during which you might be given a option to both keep the way you’ve been or face what has been swept into darkness in an effort to start to be free.

The Threshold of a Soul Encounter

For me, that doorway got here one week later once I awoke the next Saturday morning and located myself going through a tough reality I had not but seen or recognized: Alone for the primary time, I truly had no thought what to do with myself or the best way to spend my time.

It hit me like a ton of bricks. There, standing within the toilet that morning and looking at myself within the mirror, I reached the edge of all nice soul encounters: I spotted I merely couldn’t preserve residing this manner any longer.

I might now not bear the load; the middle had formally damaged.

Not understanding what else to do, I grabbed my journal, sat on my sofa, and commenced to jot down 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 just a few days prior once 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 capable of see earlier than: Whenever you retreat, you’ll be able to’t really feel the ache anymore.

The feeling of retreating to finally being withdrawn was one thing I’d felt many instances 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 a lot too lengthy, I typically opted for the perceived security of what was acquainted as a substitute of being true to myself by making selections that honored my coronary heart.

After I actually bought to the underside of it, I spotted that the ache I had skilled that I had so diligently been avoiding through the years stemmed from believing that there was one thing outdoors of myself that might deem me worthy of affection and acceptance.

I had lengthy been residing as a girl afraid of being rejected and unloved to the purpose the place I’d actually die, and it confirmed.

In the end, 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 worry moderately 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 every part in my life instantly fall into place and really feel higher once more. What they did do, nevertheless, was leap begin my journey into actual therapeutic and interior progress on a degree I had by no means been capable of entry earlier than. That day, on my lounge 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 going through 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 study to befriend them in an effort 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 an entire lot of apply and religion to see myself by means of the darkness, however the rewards have been candy: 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 recognized.

It’s been simply over six years because the breakup, and I can say with the utmost confidence, it’s been price 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 onerous issues that occur in your life (I definitely wouldn’t have chosen to be damaged up with on the time), however while 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 certainly one of life’s biggest items: to satisfy your self as you might be and, finally, to know your self as you got here right here to be.