Life is a series of ups and downs. Anyone who’s lived one and thought about it will attest to this universal truth.

Sometimes life feels amazing. We’re in flow, high on the joy and achievement of what we’re doing. It seems as though the gods have aligned, and we’re flying along the causeway of purpose.

Sometimes life feels fucking hard. We’re pulled down into the fear, grief and resentment, wondering why on earth nothing is going our way. It seems as though the world has conspired to fuck us at every turn.

It’s the dance between these polarities that defines in large part, the human journey.

We come here to learn. To incarnate in Earth School is not for the faint of heart. It’s no picnic. Earth is like a melting pot of our galactic diversity. And things never stop changing here.

This is quite aside from our current predicament, living inside a culture that has drifted further than ever before from the spiritual truth of who we really are. We’re carrying generations of trauma from centuries of heinous abuse and violence. Our technology has outpaced our wisdom so far, that we’re actively destroying the biosphere in which we live. Uncertainty is at unprecedented levels, far higher than our neurobiology is built to handle.

It’s not an easy place, or time, in which to be alive as a human.

The Depths are Here to Teach Us

If you think of the lows as the wrong way, and try to escape them or avoid them, because you think you need to be up higher, then you will miss the point entirely.

For the lows are teaching us something that we can learn in no other way. Why else would an enlightened and immortal soul willingly choose to come and incarnate down here in this severely limiting and scary experience? Because it’s an incredibly potent form of learning. You get the message, deep down inside you, forged in the midst of dense struggle. It’s embodied learning in the most literal sense.

The infuriating truth is that, if you keep running into the same wall, it’s because you haven’t got the message yet. Infuriating to the little one in us, who rails and whines, baffled by the unfairness of it all.

“Why does it have to be so hard? I’m trying so hard and then this happens! I’ll never solve this!”

We choose this. And whatever wall you keep banging your head against is the one you knew you were coming here to work out. You wanted to. In fact, you were excited to come and take on the challenge.

Though it’s a lot easier to feel excited and capable when you’re an enlightened soul on the other side. It’s a lot fucking harder when you’re Ewan, or Jim, or Janet, wondering how on earth to get through it.

We don’t want to descend. Our culture does not value it—we’re taught that it’s better to be flying high than down in the dumps. But a culture that refuses the journey of descent produces leaders and stories still captured by their own shadow.

If we were to trust our inner compass, we would climb all the way down to where the clues and directions lie.

Surrender to the Descent

Over the last couple of years, I’ve developed a practice of “going to the bottom of the well”. It’s been forged in those low moments.

When I’m in the “life feels fucking hard” zone, and the dark clouds form up, I stop what I’m doing, and face the pain. And I allow the ‘negative’ emotions to pull me down into the truth of the moment.

To do this I have to contend with my conditioning, which wants to resist this descent. It’s dark, it’s scary, there could be all kinds of monsters down there (says the little voice inside). At the very least it’s going to hurt or feel really unpleasant.

I have a hundred patterns which want to distract me or pump myself up and push it away.

Instead, I choose to trust the deeper knowing, which has no fear of the dark, which knows it’s all just different dimensions of source, of God.

So, I allow myself to fall, to descend right to the bottom of the well.

When you allow yourself to fall right to the bottom of the well, you encounter a whole bunch of feelings, sensations and experiences which are challenging to be with. This is the point. This is the stuff you’re desperately trying to remain afloat on top of. Using increasing energy to keep yourself away from.

When you learn to just be in the pain at the bottom, you’ll begin a healing process. For when the dark comes into the light, it begins to transform.

But what I’ve found most powerful in this practice is this…

At the bottom of the well, there are messages written on the walls. They’re messages that you can’t receive anywhere else. You can’t hear them higher up in the hustle and bustle of life. Only here, only down at the bottom of the well can you fully receive them.

How to Go to the Bottom of the Well

So how do you do this, practically? Here’s what I suggest.

The next time you feel yourself being pulled down into the dark, make a choice to do so consciously and with intent. This is the first challenge—to be conscious enough to notice you’re already feeling low, and then choose to trust the fall.

Find a quiet and safe space where you can make the journey.

Light a candle. Put on some evocative music. And get on the floor. Getting on the floor is important. It’s the physical representation of “down”. Get on your knees and put your head on the floor, or lie flat on your back. If it’s really dark, curl up like a foetus.

Close your eyes.

And trust God as you’re taken down.

Let go. Surrender. Allow yourself to feel all you are feeling. Let thoughts drift past. Allow your body to soften to the feelings you fear.

If you feel scared, just allow yourself to be afraid. If you feel sad, just allow that grief to move you. Let your body move as it feels. Just stop clenching, and allow the feelings to do what they will through your movement.

Breathing is important. Keep breathing. This is what allows everything to move. Breath is the spirit that adds light to the mixture.

And then listen for the messages. Watch your thoughts for things that really speak to you.

There’s a knowing that is available here. Open yourself to it.

It may not be easy to hear. You may want to turn away from it. Keep surrendering.

The more you let go, the more space there is for wisdom to enter. Watch for it. You might hear it, as a voice whispered. You might see it, like a dream image in your mind’s eye. You may just feel it and know.

And then take your message, and nurture it. Like a small ember that can light a fire that burns through the wall you keep banging your head against.

Remember it. Write it down. Tell the story to someone you trust. And let it do its work.

And if you don’t get the message? Never fear, another invitation to the bottom of the well will come around before long.

This is the gift of the dark. To show us what we don’t want to admit or cannot bear to see. But only in the light of this insight can we find the path forwards.

And as you learn to appreciate these gifts of the dark, and you become accustomed to the trip down to the bottom, it will become much less scary. Indeed, it will become a super-power. A capacity to access deep knowing and higher wisdom that is found in no other way.

It gives you a structural integrity that can hold the whole of you. It allows you to find the way into the higher reaches of yourself. For as Jung said, “No tree can grow to heaven unless its roots reach down to hell.”

Befriend the descent into the dark and it will teach you all you need to know about the higher path forwards.