I walk through an alley, surrounded by buildings I’ve never seen before. The darkness and silence of the night consume the spaces between the buildings, like water flooding rooms of a home. I begin to wander, hearing only rocks crunching together beneath my shoes. Yards away from me, something moves. My eyes squint as I try to figure out what it is.

A dark figure comes creeping toward me. My eyes grow wider as it emerges, and looms close enough for me to unveil its identity. The tiger peers at me, through ravenous eyes, as my innate survival instinct activates. 

I run for my life. I know that if I begged for him to spare me my life, he wouldn’t be concerned. What am I to him, but a source of sustenance to quench his hunger? I just happened to be the one he set his sights on as his next meal.

I run to each door around me to look for unlocked rooms. I think, “Maybe if I hide well enough, he’ll find a new target.” One room opens—it’s a classroom, also flooded with darkness. I hide under a table. He can smell my fear, and this entices him more. A sense of my imminent doom sinks in. My heart pounds as my hunter enters the room, approaching me.  

Just before my death, I’m catapulted back into the ordinary world. I lay in bed, sweating with the fear of a danger that was only a figment of my dream world. 

Though waking up was a sweet relief, I felt the dream was communicating something to me. I never had one that was so vivid, terrifying, or lifelike. I concluded that it was telling me, “Whatever you run from will find you.”

Growth, expansion, and healing are quite literally a journey where you get pushed to the limit of whatever you think you can handle in your life. 

When I was a 19-year-old pizza maker, if someone told me I would be trying psychedelics in other countries, training with psychics, channelers, and healers, in only five years, I would’ve said to you that you had fallen right off your rocker. 

At that age, I couldn’t fathom the kind of person I would grow into, the people I would meet, or the types of experiences I would have.

Before I explain,  I want to share where I was with this whole “mystical field” before I began exploring it.

I grew up in a family with Christian beliefs that centered, primarily, around fear. After my explorations within the fields of spirituality, I developed a brand new (and personal) appreciation for the teachings of Jesus. No churches or “rules” required. 

At around eight years old, I was told:

One day the rapture and judgment day will be coming. There will be horses with crickets for heads. The Devil will come to take the people who did bad things and send them into a life of fire and misery. All the good people who followed God (and his rules of what makes you a good person) will be lifted into the heavens for a life of eternal paradise. 

I can distinctly remember the image that popped into my young mind—the lucky and holy men and women floating up into the clouds in beams of light. You know, like the kinds of things you see on TV when people are depicting alien abductions. 

This is quite against the laws of nature. In the mind of a child, it doesn’t necessarily click that this is preposterous information.

The only thing remotely “spiritual” or “mystical” I encountered growing up was when I was around 13 years old. I sat in the backseat of the car as my mom and her best friend drove by a small home.

It was brightly colored, in yellow and white. A big sign out in the front yard read, “Psychic Readings.” They looked at each other and apprehensively (but excitedly) decided they would like to get a reading from this psychic. We walked in, they were directed into a small room, and went inside together while I sat in the waiting room.

When they finished, I heard small snippets as I eavesdropped from the backseat of the car. It all seemed so mysterious to me. They were spooked but thrilled as they tried to understand the messages she gave them. 

“I bet she was talking about him when she said that, but how could she know that?” 

I sat there, eyes flitting back and forth between them, trying to figure out what just happened. I never did figure it out, by the way.

It is such a stark contrast when I compare that experience to my understanding of these topics, now that I’ve experienced what I have.

My idea of a psychic was this mysterious, magical (and slightly ominous) woman who had supernatural gifts. She peered into crystal balls, wore a weird headdress, had a cool accent, could see into your future, and could read minds. It was your typical movie psychic. Now I think, sometimes, that I’m the one the “normal” people look at that way. 

I promise you; I do not look into crystal balls—or any kinds of balls, really (wink, wink).

When I was growing up, my parents would have bursts of being inspired to go to church. Usually, these were only times in life when things weren’t going well. It was like we only needed God for help and forgot about “him” when life was going well. When we had periods of reaching out to this higher being, I didn’t get to choose if I wanted to go to church or not. It was an obligation to go. Perhaps this was where my aversion to religious rules and dogmatism began.

My spiritual explorations started in my late teens when my life’s circumstances caused me to inquire about reality (and the meaning of life). 

Now that you’ve gotten a taste of what my “spiritual” upbringing was like, let’s talk about this idea of the “Dark Night of the Soul.” If you’ve been in the spiritual field for a while, you’ve probably already heard this spiel. I will briefly explain for those of you just beginning, sitting there with puzzled looks on your faces like, “Whatchoo talkin’ bout?” 

No, I am not talking about the Batman movie The Dark Night,1 though I wish I were.

The “Dark Night of the Soul,” sometimes also called “the death of the ego,” is a time of darkness that can happen just before someone’s spiritual awakening, or shift in consciousness. 

Adversity seems to be the precursor to massive periods of growth in one’s life. Think of Steve Harvey, who lived in his car for three years while he dreamed of making it as a comedian. 

J.K Rowling experienced depression and suicidal thoughts at her life’s lowest point before becoming the best-selling author of the Harry Potter series.  

It is this state of hardship that gives rise to the desire for change. Moments of pain can become the catalysts that push people to become better than they were before the chaos.

I don’t believe that it’s necessary to suffer intensely, to become more conscious, or to grow. However, in my own life, I experienced immense internal suffering just before my life changed. 

The Break-Down

Have you heard that story of the man drowning at sea? In his desperation, he pleads for God to save him from drowning. Lifeboats come up to this man, who is struggling to keep himself afloat. The people aboard ask him if he needs saving. 

He refuses their help because God is going to save him! He eventually drowns in this sea.

When he goes to Heaven, he asks God, “Why didn’t you save me?” 

God replies, “I sent you two lifeboats.” 

I once felt like that man who was drowning and pleading for someone to save me. 

Between the ages of 14 to 19, I experienced the darkest cycle of my life. Don’t get me wrong; I also experienced many moments of love, joy, and happiness. However, among those joyous moments, behind closed doors, I suffered some of my darkest emotional depths too.

At those ages, I experienced self-harm, depression, suicidal thoughts (and an attempt at it), anxiety, panic attacks, cancer, and prescription drug and alcohol abuse. 

I appeared to be like any other “normal” and happy teen. On the surface, many of my peers and some of my family members knew nothing about what was going on. Beyond my happy mask that the world got to see, was also a face of tremendous sadness and pain. There are a few impactful experiences that sank me into my greatest depths of “darkness.” I will briefly explain.

When I was 16 years old, I found myself lying on a doctor’s table as he prepared his ultrasound machine to investigate my neck.

During that visit, the ultrasound revealed a calcified lump on my thyroid. Upon discovering this, the endocrinologist recommended we remove the thyroid since cancer ran in my family. We scheduled a date, and I would soon be lying on a roll-away bed, getting wheeled into an operating room. After surgery, it seemed like everything went well, until a few days later.

My mom rushed me back to the emergency room when my body went into shock. Every one of my muscles was cramping and twitching. My mouth clenched shut as tears of panic rolled down my face. I can distinctly remember being put into a wheelchair, as I couldn’t walk on my own.

Was I going to live like this for the rest of my life? In the middle of a hurricane like that, it’s hard to imagine it could get better. In those moments of extreme uncertainty, all thoughts of the past and all dreams for the future get tossed into the air. You become forced to face the present moment in all its chaos.

During the operation, my parathyroid was also inadvertently damaged. This tiny gland is responsible for calcium absorption and production—it makes muscles and nerves function properly. My body was no longer able to process or produce the calcium it needed.

I was a 16-year-old facing her mortality in such a real, raw, and tangible way—really, it would have shaken anyone’s world, at any age. I was powerless to that moment and circumstance; we couldn’t go back in time to undo the surgery.

I have learned that grief and loss can cause us to contemplate the meaning of life. This awareness of the fleeting nature of life can arise from experiencing things like:

— -Losing a loved one,

— -Having a sickness or terminal prognosis,

— -Losing homes or belongings that once seemed permanent,

— or seeing a traumatic event (like a car crash).

Existential questions arise in moments like these. How important is it to be rich if I cannot take it with me when I leave this world? What is the true meaning of happiness? What am I leaving behind that could benefit generations to come? How do I want people to remember me? Have I done what I desired to do in this world: did I live fearlessly, did I travel when I felt like traveling, did I love fearlessly?

These are all questions we must face when the impermanence of life shows us its not-so-pretty face. 

A personal experience with loss can also bring us into the contemplation of our spiritual nature; what lies beyond the physical body? Is there an afterlife? Will I live on once I leave this earth? Is there such a thing as Hell, and if so, was I a good enough person to end up in Heaven? 

Now, back to my experience. Following my surgery, I had many follow-up visits with doctors and spent some time in home-schooling. While facing so many life transitions at such a young age, my mental health also suffered. 

I started to experience periods of immense sadness, anxiety, and depression. Doctors began prescribing me anti-depressants, sleeping pills, and anti-anxiety medications. 

When I’d tell them there were no improvements, the type of medication switched, or the dosage heightened. I felt like a guinea pig, like there was no hope to heal my emotional pain. I was learning to depend on an external pill to cure what I could only heal from the inside.

Emotional pain happens internally and spiritually. Without tools to understand how to heal this kind of pain, numbing, running from, or dissociating from the source of pain in many instances, becomes our only option. These methods of coping can begin, especially in childhood. These are the years when we can be brought into a world that subjects us to trauma and pain that we are powerless to. Mental or emotional escape is simply what many of us learn to do to survive.

At that stage of my life, I found it comforting to know that there was a quick fix. I liked knowing that something could take the pain away without me facing it on my own. That was how it became a coping mechanism I adopted for survival in a world that was frightening.

Shortly after confronting the possibility of losing my physical body, I lost a relationship with my first serious boyfriend. We began dating at the end of middle school when I was about 14 years old. 

We parted ways when I was 17 years old. I still didn’t have access to healthy coping mechanisms. I dealt with a major bodily organ loss and the “loss” of who I was before the surgery occurred. The break-up was the piece that tore down an already shaky foundation, the “straw that broke the camel’s back,” if you will.

The only way I knew how to escape from my grief and pain from this loss, was to commit suicide. In my agony, over the crumbling of the world around me, I impulsively took a multitude of pills.

I sat there, having taken an amount that I thought could end my life. I knew I had made a choice that I couldn’t take back. What I wanted was not an end to my life—I wanted an end to my suffering.

What would happen if I were not in the world? Would the world really be better off not having me in it? What about my family? What happens after I die? Where do I go? These realizations sunk in after I took them.

Because of these second thoughts I was having, I admitted to my mom what I did. In her panic, she tried to get me to make myself throw up. I lost consciousness shortly after.

I woke up inside an ambulance, lying on a stretcher hooked up to beeping monitors. While looking at the ceiling of this moving van, instead of feeling panicked, I felt incredibly comforted, serene, and calm—like everything would be okay. I slipped back into unconsciousness after that small return to my body. 

The next moment, I woke up inside a strange room in a hospital. I was covered in blankets, lying on a bed, with charcoal on my face. When someone overdoses, doctors can give activated charcoal to the patient to help absorb any drugs or toxins in the body.

Though I physically made it out alive through the overdose, I wasn’t yet out of the “night” emotionally or spiritually. This break-up, especially, was like my first steps into a black abyss. I would soon be falling into a downward spiral—and an immense disconnectedness from my authentic self. 

I continued to run from pain by abusing prescription medications. It grew increasingly easy to ask doctors for higher, stronger, or different prescriptions. Rarely (if ever) was I told by these doctors, “No, you don’t need that—what you need is new resources for healing and emotional help.”

Prescription pills like anti-depressants and anti-anxiety medications can be beneficial for others. In my own experience, I found that working through my unprocessed trauma and harnessing the power of my mind led to a massive shift in my state of mind. It was a pivotal shift that no pill ever gave to me. It was also a lasting change that hasn’t wavered since the moment I began my self-healing journey.

The moment I decided to be the one in the driver’s seat of my emotional healing, was the moment in which true healing began.

Imagine a child who has a security blanket. Every time she must leave it behind in the morning, on her way to school, she experiences agony. She cries and screams as she exits her parents’ car, wishing she could keep it with her. Without it, she feels unsafe; she feels like she can’t be in the world unless this blanket is next to her. 

She goes through her school day, and all she can think about is the next time she’ll be able to hold her blanket. It affects her ability to interact with other kids her age. She can’t even concentrate on her schoolwork. Suddenly, every facet of this child’s life is affected by her need for the safety this blanket supplies. 

Life would be much easier, and she would have so much more freedom if she didn’t need this blanket in the way that she does.  

It can become a slippery slope to cope with pain by medicating (with things like mind-altering substances). It can create both a mental and physical dependency, like the child with the blanket. It’s like locking chains to your feet that you carry with you, wherever you go.

My experience was that I needed to have these medications to interact with others in everyday life. When I had anxiety or knew I would be going into an anxiety-inducing environment, I would take my pill bottle with me or take a pill beforehand. It was much easier to take medicine than to be forced to face my “demons.” 

You hear people talk about “rock bottom,” but one can never fully grasp the experience of another. Pain is subjective; one small situation that sends one person into panic may not affect another.  

My world was consumed by what was around me, by who I became up to that point. My relationship was part of who I was, “I am his girlfriend.” 

My body was part of who I was; that was what I was born into. “I am Alexis, and I have this body.” I never planned for the possibility of having it cut short. 

I was also the “high-schooler.” Then eventually, I would become the “college student.” 

At each stage of my life, my “I” was defined by my life’s circumstances. I was my body, my belongings, my roles, my things, that would inevitably end. That was Alexis. 

Identification with things, relationships, people, and jobs is what leads to suffering. If “I am this body,” then when this body gets old, or when I get sick, identifying with “I am this body” can create pain. The temporary must always come to an end.

Before my life shifted, “my body” and “Alexis” showed themselves to be impermanent. The suffering because of that realization began. All these concepts of “This is me, and these are my things” were ripping at the seams. The whole world was morphing, flipping upside down. In that chaos began the search for “What, or who, am I?”  

“What you run from will find you.”

Transforming into a new form can sometimes be preceded by being “killed by the tiger.” Perhaps this death is only the death of one form of “self.”

A flower transforms as it reaches out of darkness into the light of the world to bloom. The chick must crack the egg to fight its way out of its surroundings to become new. A rocket must battle with the forces of gravity as it propels itself toward the ends of the earth. That is, until it breaks through the atmosphere into effortless floating, peace, and quiet.

Pressure means change, and change means a new form. Many times, right after that moment of breaking out of the atmosphere, we find ourselves floating through the atmosphere into pure serenity and silence.

Sometimes nothing needs to change in the external world. The breakthrough can manifest solely within one’s state of mind and consciousness.

The Break-Through

At 19, I found myself in that “liminal state,” just before my life’s own “new beginning.” I was in college and working at a pizza place. It was that “party” phase of my life and the part where the most “escaping” occurred. I had some painful experiences within another relationship and was being threatened to be kicked out of my home. 

There I was, a 19-year-old, fearfully packing what I had into boxes. I didn’t know where I was going to live. My whole future seemed as if the universe catapulted it into immense uncertainty. I had no grasp on my independence. How was I going to support myself? Where was I going to go? How was I going to feed myself? Would a family member be willing to give me a place to stay? 

Right before my “shift” began, I had a moment of breakdown. I sat in the backseat of a car having a panic attack. My friend and her boyfriend were upfront, and as he drove, a feeling of doom came over me. Through tears, I told them, “I feel like I’m going to die!” 

This idea seemed so certain to me. It was like a premonition that “I” was about to end or that my life here was going to be cut short. The “knowing” of my imminent death plunged me into a deeply rooted fear. 

Now, I believe that feeling was my unconscious knowing, that a shift was about to occur in my life. Indeed, I was about to die, but not a physical death. In the words of an old Zen saying, “When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.” That was the case for me. 

I felt drawn to a man who sat in front of my English college class. I never spoke to him directly, but he would become the person to introduce me to the ideas and understandings that would change my life. 

He presented his final project on the last day of class (a research paper and PowerPoint). It was a presentation about the power of music to heal. He explained the ideas of Albert Einstein, talked about physics, and told us concepts about energy, vibration, and healing. He grabbed his guitar and began to play a song. Each strum rippled chills throughout my body. 

A profound calmness overcame me, a kind of peace that I had never experienced before. I was completely present, completely accepting of everything going on in my life, outside of that classroom. All fears about where I was going to live, how I would support myself, everything, seemed unimportant.

Have you ever had a dirty windshield for a while? Over time, you become accustomed to looking at the world through that window—even with its water spots, dirt, and bugs that have unfortunately smashed into it. Then you get a car wash, and suddenly as you drive, the world takes on a new view. I love the feeling of seeing that contrast. 

When I heard these spiritual ideas and this man sing, it was like my car windshield cleared. I left that class feeling a lasting and deep-seated peace, which transcended all external factors. It was a type of peace that no substance ever gave me access to— a cellular, soul-quieting moment. 

I was like a young girl, with darkness caving in around me, searching ceaselessly for the key to escape my prison. That day, I felt like someone slid a key under the door to allow me to open it.

That night, I went home and began my spiritual search. A tsunami came crashing through my life, destroying, and wiping everything clean, allowing me to start anew.

In one fell swoop, in cold turkey fashion, I stopped taking anti-depressants, anti-anxiety medications, sleeping aids, stopped drinking alcohol, and quit smoking. I haven’t touched any of those things since that day.

I don’t recommend this to everyone—in fact, I would consult a doctor for more information if you’re in that situation yourself (I am not a doctor). Sometimes making a choice like that can be dangerous to someone’s health. In my case, I was determined to change my life, and I wanted to do it on my own.

I felt like the empty hole in me (that I was trying to fill with substances) was filled. I decided I didn’t need or want those band-aids anymore. I wanted to crawl out of the cave now, and to face the things I was running from.

This one 15-20-minute presentation had a massive impact on the rest of my life. It seems now as though it was all destined to happen precisely the way that it did—break-down, hardship, sadness, and all. 

On that day, in that college classroom, that one moment was the beginning stages of the birth of a “new” Alexis. That was the day my life as myself began. My journey into the worlds of spirituality, the metaphysical world, and my inner world, commenced.