Do you know what rock bottom looks like? If you do, this article will only serve as a reminder as to where you’ve come from and the strides you have made, it may even put a smile on your face when memories past come to light about those turbulent days.
Many people claim they have hit “rock bottom”, we hear it from students a lot mid-way through their college semesters, “I've hit rock bottom”. Most of the time, from what I can gather from personal experience, “rock bottom” has become a metaphor for any amount of “hard times” and lost its matte black lust and the ideology attached to it.
We go out of our way to avoid our real rock bottom, the one where we have to fight ourselves to climb out, the one where we are consumed by darkness for a chance at limitless self-progress. The real rock bottom we avoid has no map on how to navigate the pain and hardship, there is very little resources available on how to figure out where to begin looking for a way out once you’re actually there. Even worse, when you reach real rock bottom, most people you believed to be your friends, companions and lovers will jump ship, unable to see the entirety of the path you are taking they focus on the step you just took.
In our day to day lives, the thought of not being a product of our highest possible attainment can induce raw emotion which then pushes away those who expect better from us. One such example, maybe one of the more dramatic examples, would be drug addicts. Faced with intervention the addict will double down on their choices even if everyone around him or herself know that it’s self-destructive. The addict will reaffirm their position and continue their choices despite a room full of people telling them that they are capable of so much more. In life, when people find themselves backed against a wall and their only choice is to continue self-destructive behavior or go for rock bottom in order to rebuild themselves, many will choose to double down on their current life style. I am arguing that not only should you allow yourself to fall to your lowest possible point, but that it is a necessary catalyst for the light you are capable of producing for the world.
Choosing to “let go” and begin a self-evaluation process allows you to formally identify the behavior which has been holding you back in life, it allows you to begin the downward spiral to rock bottom. When you begin to recognize all that is holding you back, you begin to build a mentality which leads one to believe that they are living a lie, or at the very least, someone else’s truth. Over time, the repeated identification of negative thoughts and behavior will allow you to take autonomous steps towards bettering yourself, which includes hitting your subjective rock bottom. For many, rock bottom is where a series of rash decisions are made, which outsiders will identify as callous and even crazy.
A person hitting rock bottom at full speed may choose to leave their job, ditch negative individuals, move towns, go for broke and may seem to be losing their mind in the process of all of this, that is because they are. In order to re-build our habits and change our lives we must be willing, quite literally, to lose our minds in the process. We cannot afford to progress with our current mindset, and changing it requires a re-wiring which can only be done with patience, self-love and respect for the process. You cannot call the number on the T.V and have a new mentality shipped to you, there is no pill, no shortcut, which will allow you to move past rock bottom and onto higher attainment.
Despite there being no tangible shortcut, there are ways to significantly ease the process of moving past your lowest low and onto better things. These processes are most usually clouded by the chaos of your life at rock bottom, but in moments of clarity we can catch a glimpse of our future ease. As you wade through the tides of rock bottom, it is important to recognize that you will move through it at the same speed as you are willing to surrender to it entirely.
If you want to find a way to make it out the other side, the side where you are living your truth, the side where you are reaching your highest potential, the side where you recognize your divine center of power and capabilities, you must be willing to surrender yourself to the cause. Fighting yourself at rock bottom serves no purpose other than to protect a fragile ego which is on its way to being systematically dismantled. Your ego desperately wants to protect the false image you created for yourself, while on the other hand, at rock bottom, your soul desperately wants to create your new truth. The violent collision between what ‘was’ and what ‘is‘ can stifle all forms of progress and prolong an unnecessary suffering at your lowest low, despite suffering being necessary to get started. More so, some will unfortunately never be able to move past rock bottom, I think we have all met one of these individuals before and it is a hard sight to watch as your words go in one ear and out the other. It is solely their responsibility, your responsibility, to bring yourself out the other side of the darkness but you must be willing to go to battle and fight your ego.
The ego is a shadow side of yourself which strikes fear into the depths of your heart and consciousness in order to protect itself. The ego will cling onto any inclination that you are hesitant to change yourself, which is all it needs to drag you back down and keep you there. The ego makes false promises of comfort and tranquility, the ego coats itself in consumerism and materialism, it promises that happiness isn’t something you can demand, but rather something that can be purchased. The ego will compare and contrast itself against others and create jealous anxiety that you are “failing” and “not good enough”, it will demand an insatiable amount of attention and worthless products in order to keep you from recognizing what you actually are, a divine being capable of absolutely anything you desire or imagine.
At the point where your life is falling apart, where there seems to be no way out, where you feel lost and hopeless, this is where you will find yourself. From the ashes of despair is where you will find the necessary resources to rebuild yourself. From that pain and suffering is where you will find the wisdom needed to lift yourself. It is only when surrounded by a consuming darkness that we will desperately search for the light, and it is only in the light that we may let go of the darkness. As you begin to let go of your false sense of identity, the one which begs you to stay in line with social norms, the one which finds happiness in the things we purchase not the things we accomplish, the one which looks for approval from outside sources, we can begin to feel true freedom. True freedom, independent of another’s opinion or comparison, even the tiniest bit of it, is absolutely liberating. It allows you to explore spirituality free of religion, it allows you to explore your passions free of surrounding opinion, it allows you to find out who you really are and move towards it with ever increasing speed and ever decreasing fear.
Moving into rock bottom is the yin to the yang, moving into the darkness is in itself moving into the light. Once awareness is gathered and you recognize your pattern of thought as a direct reflection of your reality, an awakening process can occur which begins the necessary steps for independent freedom. Recognizing that suffering is necessary for joy and noticing the patterns that death brings life will allow you to use that suffering to build a foundation for your highest attainable self. Awareness that joy can only be recognized because of pain allows you to translate the language of suffering into valuable lessons which can propel you to great heights and begin to form your independent truth, free of the chains which ego has placed on your soul and consciousness. Most individuals will never reach their highest attainable self, regardless of if they decide to shed their ego, and yet the point of trying to do so anyway seems to be the foundation of a happy life, true happiness, not ego happiness. The happiness derived from ego is a superficial happiness which cannot fill a void in our soul which we all have but often fail to recognize either at all or until it is too late. The happiness derived from tearing yourself apart to rebuild yourself seems to be a happiness derived from an inner peace which is hardly explainable through the use of lexicon, but can most certainly be felt.
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