awakening
   


Personal Mastery


Contemplating SUICIDE
& the search for Self-Knowledge

with Julie Way

Julie Way    

In a safe situation where people feel they can tell the truth -ask a room of 20 people if they have ever reached a point in their lives where they contemplated or attempted suicide and a ratio of perhaps 12-14 people will likely respond. It is a subject of taboo in our society however, almost as if to admit to these feelings of utter despair will subject people to judgement and segregation.

Yet it is a point that many normal people can reach at some stage in their lives. My experience of reaching that make or break point is that we encounter it as a ‘dark night of the soul’ experience, and we reach that point so that we truly catapult our selves into a real knowledge of our true strength and our True Self. When one contemplates suicide, basically the bottom line is that we are afraid of the next steps in front of us. If it is severe depression and a feeling of nothingness, emptiness inside, as in we cannot feel a reason to live, then we are facing a wall within ourselves that has something else behind it, that often needs to be addressed consciously, often with professional help to help us know the truth.

An Opportunity to Know the Truth

There is a wonderful saying that encourages ‘When you are going through hell – keep going!’ What feels like a breakdown is actually heralding a breakthrough. Reaching a point of contemplating suicide in one’s life is a powerful point of choice and a huge learning curve in the evolution of that particular soul. It is an opportunity to know ourselves deeply, to find and build a solid foundation within us of who we are and what we are capable of, and what is the truth, rather than believing the lies of negative thinking, depression and limitation when we identify with our little ego.

A Point of Choice

My thought is that we, as souls, may have suicided many times in our lives, each consequent life bringing us to the same point of choice, to the same physical, emotional, mental state, where we have the choice to end it all or do something different. We can choose to go through the feelings that we do not want to feel, to go through the mental state that feels so bleak and to face the future that looms so overwhelmingly. Despite our pictures and present state we can Choose to stay and move through in some way. We can move through that big blackness to the light or to the other side by not accepting that how we feel or view the present situation is necessarily how it will stay. We might even see that we do not even have to endure it at all in that way. When we make that choice, we go beyond that crossroads that we were standing at, and move onto other learning and experiences that open us up to who we really are. To do that will often ask us to go outside our normal frame of reference –to ask for help or to expand in some way from a particular way of thinking.

A Breakthrough Point

When someone is contemplating suicide they are on the lowest rung of the ladder. They cannot go any further down. I believe this is a breakthrough point, a crisis point that opens up to new, unexplored realms if we choose to stay with how we feel no matter how bleak and move through these feelings, knowing that we can and that there is more than these feelings of hopelessness and despair. When we do have faith and keep going - a door is opened and we discover parts of ourselves that we never knew existed. We see through and beyond the fearful darkness –which though it looked and felt real, was really an illusion. Contemplating suicide is really a powerful initiation through into experiences of greater depth, insight safety and richness of being, peace and sustaining love.

In short, feelings of despair and breakdown signal a time preceding a breakthrough in one’s life where one is about to start something new and very significant. It is time to recommit to being here, to make a choice for oneself to live in the face of ‘aridity and disenchantment’. To remember in some form one’s vision and intention that was conceived for this lifetime. ‘Blessed are they who have faith who cannot see.’ It truly is the darkest before the dawn.

Quotes in last paragraph from: Desiderata, A Course in Miracles and the Bible.

 

 

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