The Role of Ketamine in Shadow Work/Ego Death
SPIRITUAL BYPASSING
It is a superficial way of glossing over problems in a way that might make us feel better in the short term, but ultimately solves nothing and just leaves the problem to linger. Spiritual bypassing acts as a form of defense mechanism. It protects us from things that seem too painful to deal with, but this protection comes at a cost. Ignoring or avoiding the issue can make stress worse in the long-term and make the problem more difficult to solve later on.
Spiritual bypassing is a way of hiding behind spirituality or spiritual practices. It prevents people from acknowledging what they are feeling and distances them from both themselves and others. Some examples of spiritual bypassing include, avoiding feelings of anger, believing in your own spiritual superiority as a way to hide from insecurities, believing that traumatic events must serve as “learning experiences” or that there is a silver lining behind every negative experience, believing that spiritual practices such as meditation or prayer are always positive, extremely high, often unattainable, idealism, feelings of detachment, focusing only on spirituality and ignoring the present, only focusing on the positive or being overly optimistic, projecting your own negative feelings onto others, pretending that things are fine when they are clearly not, thinking that people can overcome their problems through positive thinking, otherwise known as toxic positivity, thinking that you must “rise above” your emotions, using defense mechanisms such as denial and repression.
The ego is your identity of self and it is determined by how you view yourself. More than you may realize, your ego determines how you perceive and go through the world. It determines how you interact with others and the degree of your self-esteem.
Ego death is the demise of your sense of self as you know it. Ego death results in a significant reduction of self-referential awareness, sparking a disruption in how you view yourself in the world and sometimes encouraging a feeling of unity with others and the world in general.
Your sense of being will no longer feel distinct from the world, you may feel as though you are connected to the universe, you might feel you are connected to all human beings.
A goal in the use of ketamine is to dissolve ego so that you can gain access to higher self and lessons learned in that consciousness.
Shadow work
focuses on the parts of the psyche that people often keep hidden, such as trauma and resentment. Some people may refer to this as the “shadow self”. The process of exploring ones inner darkness, uncovering every part of self, that has been disowned, repressed, rejected. It is one of the most authentic paths to enlightenment.
Understanding the Dark Night of the Soul
"The dark night of the soul is essentially any time when our darkness comes to the forefront. It's as if we are doing everything we can to stay afloat, and it seems as if the universe, the world, and life is against us."
It is quite literally the darkest point in one’s journey and that the dark night of the soul will often involve suffering, setbacks, and obstacles. Oftentimes, a dark night of the soul is a necessary part of people’s spiritual evolution. The dark night of the soul is a breaking away from the illusions of fear and ego, to shift our alignment and values to what is real and true, the connection to the divine, and ultimately pave the way for your life purpose. The dark night of the soul is feeling distressed and disoriented in our relationship with the bigger meaning to life, and can affect one's worldview, beliefs, perspective, habits, thoughts, and relationships. It wakes one up to life and in every darkness, there is a diamond, and it's always about looking for that diamond and sometimes the diamond presents itself and is readily available, but sometimes you really have to dig to see it, and create the narrative, and construct the meaning that you're going to take from that experience.
Some people try to run away from their darkness, but you really can't run away from yourself. The other side of the dark night of the soul is authentic alignment, awareness, peace and heart-based living allowing for true happiness. Many step into their true purpose and live with more purpose and joy, and their life becomes more rich and rewarding." The purpose of the dark night of the soul is to make us bigger, feel more at home, expanded, stronger—and able to give more light to the world."
The dark night of the soul often begins with some sort of trigger or disruption that you're unprepared for in some way and this stage is called, "The Roller coaster" and it is an existential crisis due to intense pain caused by outside disruption you have no control over. This could be, but is not limited to, the death of a love done, extreme poverty, or an illness, betrayal, injustice, abuse, job loss, and so on. Following the initial trigger, as the dark night of the soul sets in so does despair and hopelessness. One may feel as if life and specifically the life you have been living is meaningless during this stage. Think of the journey through the dark night as an inverted bell curve—rather than peaking high up in the middle, this journey leads you down, down, down to the depths, which brings us to the next stage.
The entire dark night of the soul is not easy, but at rock bottom (or the bottom of the aforementioned inverted bell curve) it's going to feel like a breaking point or threshold of pain which is typically the darkest time in someone's life. You may become emotionally numb, lose friends and family, isolate, and/or numb through addictions during this time and often in this phase, family and friends abandon you. This phase turns into the darkest hours of life, but it will also teach us a valuable lesson if we are open to receive it.
There is light on the other side of rock bottom—and a steady climb up that bell curve . in order to return to a sense of wholeness. After your darkest hours, you begin waking up to the truth, which won't be easy. This stage can include physical symptoms of stress such as headaches, nausea, and body aches, and even psychological and emotional manifestations, One will have the opportunity to go deeply into themselves because it's an inner journey back to source. You will finally be ready to face 'what is' instead of running away from it and wake up to the greater meaning to your life and it all and the dark night of the soul will accentuate what you need to release or otherwise transform.
With your newfound knowledge of self and your purpose, then begins the fifth stage of spiritual study and attaining balance. After you've discovered your life purpose, you will start laying the foundations of the life that you are truly meant to live. You may become more curious and drawn to spiritual teachers and guides at this time, and you'll slowly but surely start to act like a creator and build the life you want.
And finally, as your dark night of the soul comes to a close, you'll discover a sense of peace, understanding, and wholeness that has previously felt lost and you'll know you're in the final stage of the dark night of the soul when you have a greater understanding of life's bigger picture, the lessons you've learned, and the wounds you have healed. So we've transformed our perspective, and then we transform the pain and suffering into wisdom, which enables us to move forward and have even more light to share with the world by virtue of having gone through that experience.
Kendra Cherry, MS, is a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist, psychology educator, and author of the "Everything Psychology Book."
