Spiritual Suicide - Part One

Spiritual Suicide - Part One
While at my master mind meeting last week, we were
challenged to share our core compelling story - to reveal
the soft underbelly of our business success. What prompted
each of us to pursue the path we had and why did we feel
the passion we did about our businesses? What was the ONE
thing we really DIDN'T want to talk about - because it made
us feel vulnerable, exposed, silly, stupid, needy, or just
plain weird?

It's no big secret that I was suicidal in my late teens and
again in my late twenties. I even wrote about it in my "How
To Read Your Own Hands" study course. However, it's one
thing to write it down - it's another thing to express it
to a live audience of 80+ people.

In my 29th year, I was depressed, deeply depressed. I knew
that there had to be more, but what? I was trudging to and
from my day job, knowing that there had to be more to life
than answering pointless emails, attending pointless
meetings and making money just to pay the bills and buy
more stuff. A bigger TV was not going to cure the angst and
agony chewing a hole through my gut.

I wanted to die not because I hated myself or this
beautiful planet; I wanted to die because my life lacked
meaning. Although I love the freedom and security money
provides, I am not motivated by money. I am motivated by
meaning. I was well into my "dark night of the soul." I was
having a spiritual crisis. I may as well as have been dead
because I was committing spiritual suicide already - I
could not find the POINT, the REASON, the MEANING.

Late one night, in desperation, contemplating the various
methods of extinguishing my life available to me, I called
a dear friend in hopes she would talk me out of it. (I
didn't really want to die - I just SO BADLY WANTED TO
LIVE!) I told her what I was thinking. Her response was not
what I expected. "Beth, that is the most selfish thing I've
ever heard. If you kill yourself, I will chase you from
this lifetime into the next. I will never stop hounding
you. You need to get outside of yourself and find a purpose
to your life. You need to help someone else. Do you really
have no idea how loved you are? That makes me sad - that
you have no idea how much we need you."

Her slap upside the head was exactly what I needed. I
thought of my mother and the potential guilt she might feel
- thinking that perhaps she had done something 'wrong' to
cause my misery. It was nobody's fault, there was nothing
wrong. I was simply lost. Many spiritual teachers speak of
this emptiness as the beginning of true living.

"Well," I asked my friend, "what should I do?" She said,
"How about asking?" "Asking whom?" I said. "Spirit," she
said. "Ask the Universe to show you." And so I did.

That night, kneeling by the edge of my bed, my knobby knees
digging into the floor, I asked: "Great Spirit, God,
Goddess, Universe, whatever name you choose to go by,
please help me. I beg of you. I am on my knees. I am at my
lowest low. If you show me my Life Purpose, I will forever
be your humble servant." I did not realize, at the time,
the intensity nor consequences of the prayer I was making.

Two weeks later, a knock came at my door.

(...to be continued in Spiritual Suicide ' Part Two.)

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