Dante’s Journey

November 17, 2023

 I’ve retreated from the world quite a bit, as a way to preserve identity and ease my ever growing social anxiety. In all honesty, the anxiety I’ve experienced since early childhood has left a permanent mark on me, in the form of chronic illness. All of my functioning bodily systems seemed to stop working properly, with a symptom list of over 50 medical anomalies ranging from mild to severe. My psyche was deeply wounded, and frankly exhausted. 

After years of unraveling and peeling back the layers of myself, I discovered that underneath the facade that I had built to appease those around me, was a wounded child. A child who loved to color, play outside, and be alone with herself where it was safe and quiet. As I chose her, chose to play, to be still, I found the courage to rebuild. Rebuild an identity that I would choose for myself. This long and painful journey confused me. Should I do what everyone is telling me to do in order to have a full and successful life? Or should I listen to my body, my heart, and my anxiety; and choose a life that gave me peace and joy. These two “things”, or feelings rather, were unbeknownst to me. I had felt little of either during the years where I played my part in a world that never seemed to accept me. It knew I was a fraud. That my attempts to make something of myself were founded on a false promise of equilibrium. The so called “peace” and “joy” that I experienced during that life was overridden by a debilitating mental illness that controlled my every action, and thought. I was helpless to myself. I found myself in my own personal hell, with very little support that could help me climb out. 

Dante’s journey through the nine levels of hell was led by a guide, Virgil. As I unraveled my ego I found myself bouncing through the levels of my own hell. At the very end, I reached a point of complete acceptance and surrender. To death. The death of a version of me that could no longer exist. I begged for my life, over and over again, recognizing how very alone I was in this journey. The entity that I was pleading to was not a God of higher power, it was myself. Now, in my journey towards spiritual enlightenment I came to the understanding that the spirit that we label “God”, is nothing other than our higher self, intertwined in a universal energy source of love that we cannot truly understand in our mortal form. The absolution of a godly existence brought me into a dark depression. Without the existence of a God that was dictating your fate, what was the point of being here. 

The point is, my friends, to live a life full of peace and joy. To become ‘as a child’, as Jesus himself said, and follow your inner voice, or the Holy Spirit, towards a life full of experiences that bring you all that you need to learn in this life. Throughout my spiritual journey I also have come to the understanding that you will live as many lives as it takes for you to learn the universal truths that exist in natures law, and to live them deeply to your core. This is the gift of eternal life. To experience a mortal condition over and over again. To experience love, and joy, and pain, until you can understand that which you are meant to. 

At my deepest level of hell, as I was begging for death to release me from my misery, I found myself in purification by fire. Yes, this was a state of being that as long as I chose to stay, would burn the literal hell out of me until I was changed. This is where you become your own guide, where you become Virgil. It is your own responsibility to guide yourself back out of hell, to visit each layer of ego and psyche until you have confronted and accepted them. You can choose who stays, and who goes, and which parts of you need rebuilding. There was a wise Balinese medicine man, Ketut Liyer, who said that heaven and hell are the same, and they are love. As above, so below. It dawned on me one day that in order to be released from my personal hell, I needed to love and accept every part of myself. A key to rising from the ashes and escaping your own personal hell is to embrace yourself at every stage, to forgive and love yourself for not knowing then what you know now. To embrace yourself in full selfless love, is heaven. The frequency of love will then literally lift you up.

In my experience, I found that once I was released from my deepest and darkest level, a totally raw and sensitive little baby, I could revisit lesson cycles and learn in any order that I wanted to. This, is what I understood as “healing is not linear”. On the way down I was completely consumed by my pain, that I could not see the lessons of that phase for what they were. A majority of my time healing was spent in the pain and agony of re-experiencing traumas. On my way up, during the rebuilding and acceptance process, I found a new kind of pain as I revisited that parts of my life that wounded me most. I saw them, and myself, for what they were. I was filled with shame. I could barely look at myself, let alone accept myself for things I had done and said. I finally understood the part I played in relationships that hurt others and ultimately burned myself. I recognized how selfish I was as a child, how I acted out in hopes of getting love and attention, but was met with disdain and consequences. I was deeply wounded at a very young age; the scars dictating a neural network of skewed belief systems. I was begging to be loved and accepted, and was met with closed arms time and time again. My sweet, innocent parents had no idea how to parent me, I was ruthless, stubborn, and wild. But I also knew how to put on a mask and become a version of myself that was accepted and respected by those around me. I learned to keep others at a safe distance, because those who grew close discovered who I really was underneath the facade and for some reason or another, could not stand by me. This of course is a tainted view of my experience with relationship abandonment. However, above all relationships, in my fear of abandonment, I ultimately abandoned myself. 

My journey to self discovery was not, and still is in some ways, easy. A psychic once reached out to me on Instagram, insisting that the path I had chosen did not have to be so difficult, that an easier path was laid out for me and all I had to do was follow it. That I did not have to make things so difficult for myself. Like I didn’t already know this. Little did she know, that I had voiced some very choice words aloud in a prayer during my teenage years, words that I meditated on and therefore manifested: I want to find these things out for myself. In other words, I fucked around and I sure as hell found out. 

I am a master manifestor, to my own demise. I believed I was sick, and so my body became sick. Opportunities that I could only dream for lined up for me, even if I truly did not want them or was afraid of them. I was so afraid of my own potential that I settled for a lesser quality of life, believing that my real dreams were only attainable if I became a,b or c, or had x, y and z in my back pocket. As a recovering perfectionist, aka a ‘gifted and talented’ student, I held myself to impossible standards, belittling myself daily with thoughts like “if only I were prettier would I then attract a rich and handsome husband to take care of me for the rest of my life”. 

I was controlled by a religion that focused more on the “do nots”, and the “do this to get married” notions, rather than self love and acceptance. I was taught and instructed by my parents and leaders that the cause of my pain and misfortune was due to disobedience. When I showed early signs of mental illness and neurodivergence instead of taking me to doctors to receive help, I was prayed for and blessed. My internal experience was dismissed, ignored, and shamed time and time again. I shoved my anger deep inside, letting it explode at the worst possible moment. My ability to healthily regulate my emotions was taken from me early on, and was a touchy subject throughout my entire life. My family did not understand that something was wrong with me, that I was not choosing to be this way. Back then, we had no idea what to do. My plea to parents of highly sensitive children is to listen to, and believe them. To educate yourself with the hundreds of tools and resources now available, so that your special child can develop a healthy sense of self and love.

If you find yourself going through hell, keep going.