If you feel suicidal: get professional help immediately! In the U.S. call 1-800-273-8255 for the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. Then come back and read the rest.
My love, you have become blind to your own existence. You have started to see only what is outside of you. You have for some reason started to focus only on what doesn’t work, on what is awful. You forgot the other aspects. Your vision has become a little distorted. What you see is not the truth, it’s illusion.
The truth is inside you. The joy and love you want is inside. We all share in it. You don’t need anything outside of yourself to have it. Don’t believe what you see. Believe what you are. You are not the darkness you perceive. You are not your thoughts. You are not what happened to you. You are not what you did or didn’t do. Nothing can define you. Really. Nothing can define you. Never see yourself as a victim or a perpetrator. It's the biggest trap.
So how do you find your own light? Although it’s all true I’m not going to tell you that life has much to offer, that others love and need you, that you are loved and needed, that you have much to give and much to receive. It’s true but it may not help you where you are.
Instead I’m going to give you something practical, something to do. I’m going to ask you to find one thing – just one single thing – that you love and appreciate in your life. It can be ANYTHING. Maybe you have a lovely couch. Or you love coffee. Or you love sleeping. Perhaps you have seen a beautiful painting or someone said something nice to you, even once. It may seem unimportant in the enormity of pain. But try.
Find that ONE thing and appreciate it. Just sit down and focus fully on that thing for ten minutes. Look at it from different angles and just appreciate the hell out of it. Remind yourself how much you love it and how good it feels to love it. Remind yourself of all the times you have appreciated it in the past and how many times you can still appreciate it in the future. Remind yourself that it always has been there for you.
Do that concentrated for 10 minutes every day. Do it the same time every day even if you don’t feel like it. Don’t let any darkness seep in for those 10 minutes. You can do it, it’s just 10 minutes. Write your appreciation down for the days when it’s extra difficult.
Make your appreciation a habit and when it has become a habit find another thing to appreciate, appreciate for a longer period of time. Come back to it several times a day, expand your appreciation as much as you can.
It may feel difficult in the beginning. It may feel meaningless, impossible. Keep doing it and see what happens. Just see what happens to your inner light. Remember that your light is always shining no matter what. It took sometime for you to sink into darkness. Accept that it will take some time to rise into your light.
Appreciation opens up your vision. And when you can feel appreciation: Trust.
Trust is a little bit more difficult but you can do it. Trust your breathing. Trust your self. Trust life. Trust suffering. Trust joy. Trust sadness. Trust beauty. Trust your hands. Trust the universe. Trust everything fully. Be childlike in your trust.
Trust isn’t the same thing as believing. Believing is of the mind. Trust is of the heart.
The moment you lost your trust you invited suffering. It’s easy to think that we protect ourselves from suffering by not trusting people and situations but it’s the opposite. When you stop trusting you start living in the mind and not from the heart. The heart always trusts. The mind always distrusts.
By trying to protect yourself from being occasionally hurt you start to live in perpetual pain. The moment you start trusting yourself and your life again, you increase your light. Distrust makes you closed and hard. Trust makes you open and soft.
Remember that there was a time when you trusted. There was a time when you appreciated all the little things. Probably when you were little. Remember how it felt.
You can make it through. You are everything you need. I’m not saying it will be easy. But it’s possible.