From Darkness to Harmony: The Next Step on Your Spiritual Path
- Ben Neil
- Oct 5
- 2 min read
The Chamber of Balance: Awakening Beyond the Dark Night of the Soul
There was a time in my life when everything I thought I knew about myself began to fall apart. What once gave me certainty suddenly felt empty, and what once felt secure crumbled beneath my feet. I was lost in what mystics call the dark night of the soul—a season of stripping, breaking, and deep questioning. At the time, I believed I was being undone. Looking back now, I see that I was being remade.
The darkness served a purpose. It tore away the illusions I had built around a false sense of self—the roles, identities, and expectations that I clung to out of fear. Slowly, painfully, those layers dissolved. What I thought was failure was actually freedom. What I thought was loss was preparation. The dark night removed everything that was not truly me so that I could finally begin to see the light within.
Emerging from that experience, I discovered something profound: beneath the masks and fears lies an eternal self, untouched by circumstance. This self is expansive, luminous, and quietly waiting for us to remember. It is the higher self—the part of us that is not bound by limitation or fear, the part that knows we are here not just to survive, but to consciously create our lives.
The path forward became one of balance. Life will always hold duality—joy and sorrow, light and dark, endings and beginnings. The ancients understood this paradox and taught that the goal is not to escape it, but to stand at the center of it. Through mindfulness, surrender, and non-resistance, I learned to rest in that center. Balance does not mean life becomes easy; it means that no matter what storms arise outside of us, there is peace within.
That peace comes from living with openness. It comes from offering the world not a mask, not a performance, but our true selves—fully healed, fully open, fully present. This is the greatest gift we can give, because when we show up in this way, we give permission for others to do the same. Healing ourselves becomes a blessing for the whole world.
My hope in sharing this is simple: to remind you that your struggles are not signs of weakness, but invitations to awakening. If you are walking through your own dark night, hold fast. The light within you is greater than any shadow, and on the other side is the truest version of yourself—whole, radiant, and free.
The ultimate goal of this journey is not to become someone new, but to remember who you already are: your higher self, shining through once the false layers have been removed.
If you’re interested in reading more about these subjects, I urge you to visit my websites and explore my books from The Initiate Series.
Here is a list of my websites:
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