Emerging From a Dark Night of Suffering
Dear diary... personal contemplations on pain, suffering, rebirth...
Things are shifting for me.
I feel it.
I’m emerging from this valley, this dark night…
The “light at the end of the tunnel” grows brighter day by day…
I feel things starting to ‘click’ again…
There is a subtle sense of many puzzle pieces falling into place in the background, all over the world…
There are still upsurges of intense suffering, fear, anger, and anxiety…
But day by day, there is a growing clarity and flow…
A growing sense of momentum…
An expanding sense of possibility…
I’ve been reluctant to believe it…
I’ve been scared to let myself really feel that things are changing…
I’ve been afraid that I would allow myself to believe this, only to have Life pull the rug out from under me once again.
But at a certain point, I have to allow myself to believe it…
Have to start to feel it…
Have to start to know it…
Have to allow myself to be in the energy of it…
Because this is a key aspect of what allows things to shift:
What we are believing, feeling, knowing, being…
Becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, attracting to us a reality that mirrors the landscape of our ‘inner’ world.
(On the absolute level, there is no ‘inner’ or ‘outer’—it’s all one fluid, seamless, multi-dimensional dance made of changeless peace.)
I had to reach a point of deep, deep surrender.
A willingness to totally let go and die into God.
“Take me, God
Fuck me,
rape me,
smear me across the pavement,
do what you would with me,
I am yours for the taking”
This is a way I can poetically-symbolically point at the depth of surrender that has been asked of me.
Old identities, constructs, and attachments needed to burn away. This process is ongoing.
I realized I had constructed and attached myself to an identity as “the radically free dude who escaped the matrix.”
I was the guy who quit his last day job in 2015, who created the song ‘Fuck a Day Job’ and the course, ‘Escaping the Rat Race.’
I had to burn down that identity-construct.
I had to reach a point of feeling willing to take a job, if that’s what it took to do my part in supporting my family.
And maybe at some point I will take a job…
But interestingly, once I surrendered into the humble willingness to take a job, Life began to suggest to me that it won’t be necessary to do so right now—all that was necessary was the surrender.
Even though my financial situation has not yet fundamentally changed…
Even though the crypto markets are still bloody and mangled…
Even though my 5-figure credit card debt is still there, sometimes still feeling like a jagged thorn in my side…
A new confidence is somehow flowering.
A new strength is making itself known.
A lotus is blossoming from the mud.
I am not the same man I was before this dark night.
I have been re-forged in the fire.
I feel humbler, more grounded, more open-hearted, more human.
In the past, I might have shot out of this valley like a cannon ball…
Trampolining into the next high-flying episode of peak states, charismatic hype, psychedelic prophecy, and frenetic creative activity…
And perhaps I’d be a fool to assume that there won’t be any of that in the times to come…
(Because I am just kind of an incurably wild and spontaneous and free-flowing artist after all, and I love myself for that.)
This time feels different, though.
I feel more weathered, more seasoned. I feel like I’ve been slow-roasted.
This time, I’m pretty sure I’m not going to fall for the same old trap of assuming I’ve now ‘broken through’ to some perpetual enlightened bliss-flow wherein I’ll just be floating on a cloud for the rest of my days…
Pretty sure I’m not going to fall into the same old delusion of assuming I’ve now ‘seen the light’ and the dark, dank, swampy underworld is never going to swallow me up again…
I now feel more like an angel-demon in hell-heaven.
A man who now knows that, for as long as I’m journeying with this human body…
There will be peaks and valleys, dark and light, hellish and heavenly aspects…
This is simply the nature of our dualistic earth-plane, especially in these times of great transition and amplified polarity.
I also feel like I now know more than ever that it’s all Divine.
It’s all God.
It’s all the exact medicine we need, at the exact moment we need it.
(Though when we’re drowning in the muck, it sure as hell doesn’t feel that way.)
The Supreme Archer draws back the bowstring of our being-ness—creak, creak, creak, contraction, pain, suffering, creak, creak, creak—…
Only to then release the string and elegantly ‘flip’ the bubbling, stewing energy of inertia and stagnation…
Into the precise newfound power that we need, as we are then catapulted single-pointedly into our next echelon of flowering.
We avoid the pain at all costs, yet within that pain lies salvation.
Through that slow-roasting, that BBQ-ing in the suffering…
The pulled pork of our being-ness is tenderized, juiced, infused with delicious flavor.
Through that boiling and bubbling in the pits of anguish…
The curry stew of our humanity is spiced, seasoned, transformed into the most flavorful, nourishing medicine.
The Great Culinary Artist is preparing us.
Humbling us, deepening us, cracking our hearts open…
Expanding our strength, our resilience, our compassion…
Inviting us into new depths of faith, acceptance, and the true freedom of surrender…
Transfiguring us into the exact medicine we are meant to bring forth in this realm.
Initiating us.
Molding us into the warriors of Love we came here to be.
Life is the master teacher.
I bow before its mysterious loving intelligence.
——
I don’t know exactly what comes next for me.
Slowly, the vision is crystallizing, but many aspects remain foggy…
Yet day by day, I feel more supported…
Having had many impurities burned away in the fires of suffering these past months…
I feel more ready than ever to serve the whole.
My residual resistance to “service” and “responsibility” continues to (slowly) dissolve…
My ‘Peter Pan complex’ is gradually being worn away by the sandpaper of raw experience…
I am a father now.
And soon I’ll be a husband.
As these realities continue to sink in and clean me out like strong ayahuasca…
A quiet knowing is emerging.
A knowing of who I want to be.
Who I came here to be.
Who I am.
A knowing of the version of me that I want my daughter to experience.
(Tears are flowing now…)
This man is playful yet strong.
He is fun-loving yet reliable.
He is gentle yet powerful.
He is open-hearted.
He is nakedly honest.
He is courageous.
On his best days, he allows all beings to be exactly as they are, himself included.
In his clearest moments, he sees the beauty and perfection of every one of God’s children.
He helps people and animals to feel God’s grace.
He wants them to know the warm peace of relaxing into the wholeness that they already are.
He wants them to feel the joy of blossoming along their most natural course.
He is here to help create something new on this planet…
A future-ancient way of living together, rooted in the oneness of Love.
He is just an ordinary man…
Who remembered how to dream.
——
Sincerely,
Jordan
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