How could my life be so dark?

For years, I've been struggling with a string of bad luck. And then one day, my luck got even worse. My mother called me from a hospital telling me she was admitted because she had issues with her stomach and her skin was yellow. She had jaundice! I'm not a medical practitioner, but I automatically knew that she had pancreatic cancer.

I didn't need to consult the Internet to confirm this. In a mad rush to get home to be by her side, I found my mother in the hospital. She was frail and tragically thin - lying immobile in a hospital bed.

She was clinging to life. In addition to cancer, she had an infection that the physicians couldn't resolve. My mother was the one person in the world that supported and loved me unconditionally.

She was the one person who understood me and who didn't reject me or criticize me for who I was. In addition to being my mother (she was a very loving and nurturing mother), she was also my best friend. She was the love of my life. Since the crash of the oil industry in Alberta in 2016, I found it really difficult to find a job and was constantly moving from one city to another to find employment. I had been moving across western Canada for a number of years. My home was in Calgary.

My mother lived in my house and cared for it while I moved around the country. Between jobs, I'd sometimes return to Calgary (my home of 30 years) to live for a while. And, then I'd be on the move again to a new place and a new job.

The stress of fighting cancer

When I got the call from my mother, my world became so dark! I was devastated. Not only was my employment situation a continuous mess, now I was going to lose the most important person in my life. Needless to say, I left my job in another city to return home to be with my mother until she passed. The stress of unemployment and cancer care nearly put me in a grave. My mother lived for 15 months after her diagnosis. It was a difficult period as I was her primary caregiver. The universe did send me a consulting job that allowed me to work from home so that I was able to pay the bills (I'm deeply grateful for this job).

I found myself working two shifts. The day shift with my job and the night shift with my mom.

Darkness in my world

And, then the inevitable happened. My mother died. While my mother was alive, we would still have moments of laughter and joy. We would sometimes talk about past memories and of good times together. My son would visit and we would take my mother to the park and play games. She would watch and laugh and tease us from her lawn chair as she watched by the sideline. I also learned about her life before I was born. She told me of her childhood and of her journey from Europe to Canada in the early 1960s, as she escaped communism. She filled in the details of the past that she had not previously shared with me. There was still joy in the horror of the disease. But when she died, my world became dark. Not long after she died, my consulting gig came to an end. And, I was back on the trail to find a new job or another consulting gig. The organization that I worked for told me that they could renew my contract for six months but it'd definitely come to an end because they were moving away from consultants.

I started looking for work because Christmas was coming and the six months would be more like three months which isn't much time to find a job. I had many interviews but nothing came of it. I was in my mid fifties and got feedback that said: you're a lovely person but you're just not a fit with my team. In addition to going through grief over my mother, I was also on a downward spiral financially and professionally. I just couldn't find a contract that lasted long enough to pay the bills. I was slowly spending all of my savings to subsidize the lack of income during the gaps in my employment.

My other investments, such as a rental property, was continuously being abandoned and destroyed by tenants. I lost money on the investment property and eventually sold it at a loss. Nothing was going right. And, I still have ten years to retirement. But the worst part was the darkness that I felt due to the grief.

Turning on the light

One day, I searched the Internet on grief and found a YouTube channel from Suzanne Giesemann - Messages of Hope. I started watching her channel. Though her focus is on grief as a result of losing a child, the content was all about grief and loss. And, it talked about how our souls live eternally and go on to live across the veil. Initially, I was skeptical of what she was saying but she was so credible. A very kind and genuine person. She's a former commander in the US navy and appears to be rational and to have common sense. I was drawn to her and her style. I continued to peruse through her channel and her website until I became a believer.

The spiritual awakening

It took many months to watch her videos. I also purchased a few of her courses and meditation series. One of Suzanne's courses was through the Shift Network. I took other courses on the Shift Network about ancestral trauma. And, I started meditating regularly using Suzanne's meditation series. At some point, I adopted the new way of seeing life. I then found other people in the same space and started watching more videos and taking more classes. It was a funnel of hope and it gave me a new purpose. The darkness had not lifted but there is a break in it. I see some light streaming in at the end of the tunnel. I have hope that all could one day be well.

Meditation

In the mean time, I'm meditating. I've always had pretty good intuition but I've ignored it most of my life. In fact, there were times where I thought I might be crazy. I would hear a voice.

It was a masculine voice and a little rough or gruff. It would say things to me and it would come from the side of the head by the temple. I often ignored it.

If I told someone, surely they'd put me in an insane asylum. So, I kept this quiet and didn't share with others. And over time, I learned to turn this off and not listen. In recent years, my intuition had some key information for me that I ignored. A voice would tell me - Don't do that. It won't work out for you.

What happens when you don't listen to your intuition?

I have two specific examples that are worthy of sharing. Both are related to jobs. In recent years, I've had two job interviews that stand out. Both of the interviews shared a commonality.

At both of the job interviews, my intuition was screaming at me. A loud thought clearly landed in my mind during the interviews. The thought was this:

Don't take the job. That guy is difficult (unkind). You're going to regret the decision to go there.

The same thing happened on the second interview. My intuition was loudly and clearly telling me to take note of one guy on the interview panel. My intuition said: Don't trust him. Don't move there. And, sure enough, my intuition proved to be right.

Both of these guys were difficult. The second guy was was worse than the first. In fact, they might be some of the most difficult people I'd encountered. The irony is that my intuition was telling me this. In fact, my intuition was screaming at me. Don't take this job. But, I didn't listen. The first job wasn't a large a deal, as I only lost the job and was unemployed for over half a year afterwards. But the second job was painful. I moved 1,200 km to another city at a huge personal expense. The move cost me some savings and the return my home put me in debt.

Prosperity and vibration

Though I'd found meditation and a spiritual awakening, I still hadn't found prosperity (or even the ability to pay my bills) and I was again living in a different city .

I was hating on myself and saying things like: what's wrong with my vibration? What have you done in the past to deserve such callousness and meanness? What are you doing now to deserve such unethical encounters? As I meditated, I asked: Why am I having such bad luck? For the longest time, there was no answer. I assumed it was because I was a bad person or that I had some karmic debt from the past. There must be something about the core of who I was that just wasn't good enough.

Dark night of the soul

Then, one day in meditation I heard: It's the dark night of the soul. You must first experience the deep darkness and despair and then arise from the ashes.

When you abandon your ego, you'll emerge from the darkness. And, you'll come to trust us to care for you and help you achieve your soul's plan.

I heard: We are teaching you to listen to your intuition. Your intuition has always been good. When it comes to physical survival, you use your intuition well. When it comes to people, you ignore it. The results have cost you. You've lost not only money but faith in human beings. It's the consequence of not listening to your intuition. I heard: We (my guides) are here to provide and help you complete your soul plan. First , you must journey through the dark night of the soul before you come to the other side. I'm still on the journey to the other side. I haven't come out of the darkness yet but I see light at the end of the tunnel.

Path 2 Spirit

In a recent meditation, I heard: Path to Spirit. Share with the world your journey, so that they might understand what the journey looks like. Share the resources that you've found. Help them to achieve a spiritual awakening. In short, this blog is about my journey and the resources that I've used to get to my current state. I'll share my story and provide you with a high-level roadmap of how you might find a spiritual awakening and I'll also share the resources, courses, people, and books that I've used to help me find my spiritual awakening. I'll continue to add new ones, as I continue down this path to spirit. The best part is that I very recently completed a course on energy healing. It's taken a while but there are moments where I now see sunshine and joy. In fact, for the first time, I feel genuine self love.

The love is not driven by my ego but from a higher source. I still criticize myself with my inner voice but I also have times where I feel genuine self love - a genuine joy for being alive! The self love is like the love that my mother had for me - unconditional and nurturing. Things are no longer so dark. And the void left by my mother's passing, is slowly filling with my spiritual journey which is culminating in self love - a divine self love. Still fresh and new to me, but nevertheless self love. This website will contain my story (journey) and all the resources I've used along the way.

It won't be your path as no two paths are the same but the site will provide you with a high-level roadmap and resources to support your own personal journey towards a spiritual awakening.

Use portions of it or all of it. Or, share it with someone who might benefit from the info. This a project that comes from the purity of heart that I seek. It's not about getting rich or selling you products you don't need. It's about humans achieving a higher level of consciousness and living together in harmony and love. And, it's about moving to the next level of the soul and possibly moving to the next dimension. I'm going to end with a famous quote from Paramahansa Yoganada:

"You must not let your life run in the ordinary way; do something that nobody else has done, something that will dazzle the world."

I'm not sure if this website and my story is dazzling (and I'm not even sure if someone else has recorded and shared their spiritual journey on a website before). This is my attempt to share a path to spirit with you. If you are looking for a more meaningful and richer life, you'll likely find it by finding your spiritualism. I'm also looking to help build a community of people who have spiritually awakened and share insights, experiences and resources. It's my way of taking action. I look forward to sharing my journey with you and hope you find value in this resource.