From zero to one and one to two

Have you ever felt hopeless, unmotivated, disgusted, apathetic, scared, invisible and exhausted, all at the same time?

It’s a scary and complicated emotional cocktail. But it is possible to feel that many feelings at once. It’s disorienting a hell.

The first time it started happening to me was around age thirty. Ambiguity about the future of my career and relationships weighed down on me like a lead blanket. The bizarre and claustrophobic feelings of being trapped and paralyzed made me want to jump out of my skin, almost on a daily basis.

Unfortunately, with limited tools for managing such emotions, my anxiety attacks persisted. Even with the powerful hypnosis program that my therapist created for me, things were still only incrementally improving.

It’s funny, I recently reread an old journal entry from that period of my life. It’s a wonder that I even made it out alive. Good lord.

Have you ever stumbled through that kind of experience before?

Moore writes in his spiritual guidebook about existential crises that these minor key movements, these dark nights of the soul, they’re more than just learning experiences; they’re profound initiations into a realm that nothing in the culture, so preoccupied with its external concerns and material success, can prepares us for.

The problem is, at least in my experience, is that we’re totally blind to the benefits of that crisis in the moment. Our eyes can’t see the upside because they’re too hijacked by the primitive part of our brain.

Which means all we can really do is trust that whatever this bizarre thing is that so weighs us down, it’s going to be worth it. It’s not an accident, it’s the natural course of being a human in this world, trying to find their way. Stumbling but surviving.

For now, we trust the soul to know its own shape, and we look forward to looking back.

That mantra is actually surprisingly helpful. Tell yourself that you look forward to looking back.

Look, if you’re scared and disoriented by more feelings than you know what to do with right now, it’s more normal than you think.

You’re not the first to endure a dark night of the soul, and you’re certainly not the last.

If it’s any consolation, the first one is always the worst.

But once you’ve got some of that sweet suffering under your belt, the difference between going from zero to one and one to two, is massive.

LET ME ASK YA THIS…
How is this experience helping you building skills that contribute to your story as an individual?