Overcoming Fear

"I was about twenty-nine, and had gone through years of depression and anxiety. I had even achieved some successes, like graduating with the highest mark at London University. Then an offer came for a Cambridge scholarship to do research. But the whole motivating power behind my academic success was fear and unhappiness.

It all changed one night when I woke up in the middle of the night. The fear, anxiety and heaviness of depression were becoming so intense, it was almost unbearable. And it is hard to describe that "state" where the world is felt to be so alien, just looking at a physical environment like a room. Everything was totally alien and almost hostile. I later saw a book written by Jean-Paul Sartre called Nausea. That was the state that I was in, nausea of the world. [Chuckle] And the thought came into my head, "I can't live with myself any longer." That thought kept repeating itself again and again." (Eckhart Tolle, describing the Dark Night of the Soul moment that led to his Awakening)

I remember the time of existential threat, and can happily report that along a spiritual path this uneasiness dissipates as we open up to the message of our SELF instead. As we travel the WAY we follow the positive energy while most of the negativity increasingly drops away. Year after year, the conflicted energies dissolve, while our mission gets clearer and more meaningful. Along a spiritual path we steadily spiral towards PEACE.

I intuitively get Eckhart Tolle’s Awakening following a Dark, Dark Night of the Soul episode, yet my journey has been more gradual instead. While the existential fear disappears, some fearful heavy lifting remains. Questions such as, ‘Do I perhaps sacrifice myself in the name of spirituality?’, ‘Am I truly going in the right direction?’, ‘What do I do when the SIGNS are absent at a big decision point?’, etc.Yet, all of these concerns are trifles compared to fears of the olden days. GOD is with us every step of the WAY. So what if we miss a beat now and then, SHE will make even this episode spiritually meaningful for us.