Years ago I was doing a shamanic training. It was an intensely deep, personal and arduous experience. Suffice it to say that when I began this inner exploration there was a lot I ran into about myself that I had been keeping from myself; both the light and the dark. A shaman is said to be one who sees in the dark; one who goes into those places most of us do not want to go because we are afraid of what we might find. Rightly so. At one point, utterly and completely overwhelmed by it all, I was wisely told, “This is your power coming towards you.” Nothing about my experience felt empowering. It felt dark, scary and beyond me.

When looked at from a certain angle, we are living in very, very dark times. And we are most definitely at the end of something. The evidence is everywhere. Every form of life is crying out in one way or another. We are drowning in violence. We are saturated in suspicion and hate for those we do not understand. Our bodies are screaming in pain and with great alarm. Nature rebels.

We have a choice to make, each and every one of us. How will we choose to be in this time of great upheaval? Will we put our heads in the sand, refusing to see? Or will we turn towards the pain and violence we see all around us and do the bravest thing of all; find it within ourselves. I have built a life on choosing to see. Deciding to know, no matter what. I will tell you that this one decision alone has brought me the greatest comfort, joy and inner confidence that I have ever known. Equally it has brought me the greatest fear I have ever known. It is terrifying to look at those things we have shoved beneath the surface. But like anything pushed down long enough, it will makes its way back to the surface at some point, with or without our consent.

Whatever is breaking down in you, let it. Whatever is dying, say good-bye and thank you. Whatever is struggling, hold it tenderly and then allow it to release. Do not try and get past this. As I was once told, “When all that can falls away, what remains is true.”  We need to let what needs to, fall away. We need to become the ones who can see in the dark. The ones willing to become familiar with those banished places within ourselves. For only in knowing the dark places within will we be in a place to understand the totality of who we are. And in knowing this, we will understand and shift what is happening all around us.  As the saying goes, “As within, so without.”