AMA | Dark Night of The Soul: How To Make Peace With Your Inner War

Dec 6, 2024

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Wellness + Wisdom | Episode 697

Wellness + Wisdom Podcast Host and Wellness Force Media CEO, Josh Trent, shares how to navigate the dark night of the soul and create peace within yourself.

Today's Question

Jared Fekete: How can I understand the role of vice as a guide during my dark night of the soul and how do I integrate the wisdom it offers while moving towards wholeness? I feel I'm in a big moment in my life of self-discovery.

Is there a topic that you'd like us to cover in the next AMA episode?

Record your message HERE.

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Listen To Episode 697 As Josh Trent Answers Your Questions [02:50] Dark Night of The Soul

Let's get into this question from Jared.

Hey Josh, thanks for re-inviting me to submit my question. How can I understand the role of vice as a guide during my dark night of the soul and how do I integrate the wisdom it offers while moving towards wholeness? I feel I'm in a big moment in my life of self-discovery.

I've had a crazy weird wild year divorcing my high school sweetheart and I met a woman in an ayahuasca ceremony in Peru in June and I love this woman and we've decided to take a separation just, she's been such a mirror and an amplifier for everything for each other, like for everything that she's going through, everything that I'm going through and I just realized like I have had a porn addiction since I was, you know, a child.

And I brought that into my marriage and, you know, hit it. And it's very clear how all that kind of manifested. And I just lost the respect, lost all the libido in my relationship. And then, you know, getting that back in this relationship, I've had like no draw towards it at all. But I have just been chasing women since I divorced.

But then I found this woman and Everything changed and I wanted to shape it up and everything. And yeah, I just realized now that we're separated that it just comes back. It's like I want to, I want to fuck, fuck and like not think about it. And, but then I don't want to ruin the chances of going back. So I'm just like so torn right now, you know, and it's just, it feels so childish, but it's also so important.

Wow. First of all, I can relate. I've shared many times on the podcast that I have struggled in my past with porn. It is a very, very deep black hole. So my heart goes out to you, Jared, for first of all, having the courage to even share this.

How amazing is it, Mar, that people that don't even know me, that just listen to our AMAs or listen to the podcast, have the courage to actually speak in the way that Jared just spoke. I mean, it's just so, I'm smiling and my heart is blasted open because y'all, this is what we need. This is what we're all thirsty for. Like, come on, what are we doing if we're not doing this?

So Jared, one thing that I heard you say that really flagged my consciousness is you said this porn addiction has been there. But one thing that you really said that hit hard, you said, I've been chasing women. I've been chasing women.

And this is actually a real big challenge because my intention today is to deliver my wisdom and Mara to deliver her wisdom so we can stop the war, right? So if we're chasing something or if we're battling should I or should I not, it can feel like a war, right?

Mar, I mean, have you ever had times in your life where you had a war in your mind? You're like, what is this war even about? Does that happen to you?

Yeah, it happens quite often. Actually, I remember I mentioned it to you last week in our meeting that I had this inner war between the motivation I wanted to have versus the actions I was actually taking to not do anything to avoid doing the things that I actually wanted to do.

So there's like this one part of me that wants it and the other part of me that's trying to sabotage me. So that's the inner war I've been dealing with lately.

Thanks for sharing because what you just shared is actually what Jared spoke upon and it's what we all do when we are suffering. We look for the meaning. I believe Jared even said, what is this all about? I divorced my high school sweetheart. I'm going through all this pain.

Now, Jared, I'm going to say this with respect. You are being called forth to be a man. That's what this is about. I'm 44. I'm still learning how to be an embodied man.

I don't have it completely mastered at all, but at 44, I can tell you that when I look back on my 20-year-old self and even in my early 30s, the reason that I was chasing women and I was addicted to porn, and I've said this many times, but it's borrowed wisdom from Gabor Mate, addiction is a disconnection from self or others, right?

Addiction is the opposite of connection. So it's the disconnection, it's the lack of connection to self that it's going to find pseudo connection by running outside of itself.

Well, meanwhile, your soul is sitting there asking for a connection. That's what this is really about, right? And so I'll speak with respect, but I'll also speak with conviction here. Your pain is the biggest tool for your growth.

So you're experiencing porn as an addictive nature, or you're experiencing chasing women and feeling hollow because every man has this biological drive to replicate. Women have it too.

But as men, it's been so normalized in our society by Instagram and Pornhub and all these aspects of how women are literally on such a deep level, such a deep level, the objectification of women, that it not only becomes normalized for men, The sad part is many women fall into thirst traps where they unknowingly normalize it with their behavior.

Maybe that's a whole separate podcast. What I'm getting out here is like when you are addicted to porn Jared and when going deep into the aspects of any addiction, you have to keep feeding it more.

I remember when I was deep in addiction, I had to keep going to more aggressive scenes. I had to keep watching really gross stuff that I went through a massive purging process over. And actually Mar, when we were doing breath work here during our retreat, there was still residue in there that I ended up sharing with the group at 44 years old that I didn't even know I didn't was there.

In other words, I had unconscious incompetence to the residue that pornography created in my signature that I got to belch out and burp out and breathe out through my breathwork ceremony. The reason I'm sharing this I chased women too. And I think it's just this really challenging thing that we experience as men because on one hand, you're a biological being filled with testosterone, right?

And so when you're in your twenties, like you're basically a walking testosterone stick where you're just looking to hook up and play and do all these things. These things, am I here to say that conscious sex from that place is wrong? No, I'm not.

If you really love someone and you feel like you respect them and you have a unique connection, I think that sex is a beautiful way to experience love or that's why they called lovemaking, right? That's the whole point of it all.

But what happens is, in uncertainty, myself and all of us as men, we fall into this trap where we reach for something that we can create as certain. And an orgasm or that deep breath after orgasm, or even the feeling of like the rush you get from catecholamines and epinephrine and norepinephrine using porn, masturbating with porn, or using women to masturbate, because essentially that's what unconscious sex is.

You're using a woman's body to masturbate with. The reason why this has been so normalized is because souls like you, Jared, are rare. Souls that want to reflect and go deep into why their behavior is showing up in a way that they despise is rare. Now we're making it less rare...

[15:30] Spiritual Maturity

I'm just so amazed that the layers of awareness feed into each other. I was on a beach in Maui this year with my mentor Margo, who's been on the show before, and she flipped open a Rumi poem. And Rumi says that the cure for the pain is the pain.

So the cure for your pain here is to go into the depths of this pain so fully and feel it so deeply that even in you feeling the pain itself, you can develop the skill set and the spiritual and mental maturity to be able to just lift your hand up to pornography and say no at any time.

But the only way you can be forged and you can really figure that out isn't from your head. And this is the part that messed with me more for so long. I put blockers on my computer. I did pornography programs. I even went to like an essay meeting because I thought that, oh, maybe I'm a sex addict.

The only thing that really healed me was actually a blessing through ayahuasca that so deep into my pain and gave me such a psychic break where I was throwing up in a bucket on the face of my future son with ayahuasca shouting at me so loud saying, if you continue to watch porn, this is what your life will become. You are vomiting on the soul of your unborn son. That was the severity that I needed.

I mean, I can still feel that right now, just talking to you about it. And that was 2019. Do you have to go to ayahuasca to have that experience? No, you don't. And actually, for 2 years, I recovered from that experience, which I've talked about many times on the show and with Paul on our episode.

I don't wish that experience on anyone, but what it really taught me was It's in the uncertainty and me embracing the uncertainty of what's going to happen if I continue down this road. Well, I'll tell you, friend, once you have enough behavior that puts you in so much pain, you know exactly what's going to happen if you continue down that road. You don't have any uncertainty.

The scary part is who would you become without the porn?

Who would you be without that relief valve?

Who would you be if you were an alcoholic and you didn't have the drink?

Who would you be if you were a workaholic and you didn't have an 80-hour work week?

Who would you be if you actually turned and faced your family and said, I'm sorry for the ways that I've shown up and I'm here to make it better?

Who would you be?

It really boils down to an identity, Jared, because the identity that you get to have is that you're never alone. That's what this is all about, man. You're not alone. It may feel like you're alone. It may feel at times that you're on a cliff with no one to save you.

But the reality is, is that that suffering that you're feeling, it's going to pass. You know, in the Bible, there's a phrase, this too shall pass. Because everything that is chaos seeks order. That's the law of the universe. Nothing can be in chaos and perpetuity. So how do you confront this corner?

Well, first you realize that the dragon is you. You are the one, the aspect of yourself that you're rejecting actually the fuel source for that dragon, for that monster doing pushups...

[30:15] Gather, Apply, Embody

There's always this fleeting that whispers in our ear when we lay our head down on the pillow at night. And it usually says something like this, there's more to life than this.

There's more to life than just going out to the bar with my friends on the weekend.

There's more to life than just following football games and Oprah.

There's more to life than just taking care of my pets.

There's more to life than this.

And I'm not here to shame anyone that doesn't answer the call because the call comes sometimes really softly. Sometimes it'll hit you in the face with a fucking sledgehammer. Like the call will be so severe that you can't not answer it.

But the courage that we must develop in order to take an honest look at picking up the phone and answering the call of growth, that's the rub, that's the inflection point. That's where the threshold is breached.

And Jared, I'm gonna tell you, man, you've already breached the threshold. You're in the perfect place for your healing. So now you're in this phase of the arc of wellness where you're gathering. You're gathering, man. Now it's time for you to apply, right? Because we gather, we apply, and then we embody. It's on the screen right now. We gather, we apply, and we embody.

We gather podcasts, we gather conversations, we gather ayahuasca sessions, and then we actually do the things that ayahuasca showed us. We do the things that our meditation showed us. We apply them.

Cause I'll tell you going and doing a plant medicine ceremony could still be in the gathering phase. It doesn't mean you've applied it yet. It's only through the application of wisdom that you become embodied in the wisdom that you're seeking, period, full stop. And we all can fall into this trap.

So Jared, the only way out of this is right fucking through it. It's right through it, my man. You are going to meet yourself in the next 1 to 3 years in a way that I'm so excited. I like almost makes me want to cry for you. It's so exciting. You're going to meet a part of yourself that's going to be so loving. And when you finally find that part of yourself through conscious, humble inquiry, you're going to cry. There's going to be a reunion.

You're going to feel your own heart again, you're going to be able to hold your younger in ways that nobody ever could. He's waiting for you. Young Jared, young Mar, young Josh, young anyone, they're always there for us. They're always there for us.

And all they're asking for is just a handhold, a hug, and a conversation in the same way that if anyone's blessed to be a parent, you know that the same way you treat your children is the same way you treat yourself. It's all the same.

The way that I'm triggered by my children is the way I'm triggered by myself in life. The way that I make love with my woman or that I treat her or am triggered by her is the same way that I make life. It's the same way that I'm triggered by life. It's all the same, but we think it's different. We fall into this trap of it being linear, of our growth being linear, but I'm here to tell you it is not linear...

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