“No tree, it is said, can grow to heaven unless its roots reach down to hell.” ― Carl Jung
Everyone tells you that spiritual awakening is about peace, meditation, and positive thinking. But what if it begins in chaos? In shame? In the quiet pain no one sees? This blog explores the hidden truth: sometimes, the mess is the miracle.
The nights that nobody sees are where the real work happens.
Not in yoga retreats or soft-lit meditations,
but in silent, shame-ridden moments…
…when you relapse into addictions you swore you’d quit,
…when your room reeks of cigarette smoke and unspoken regret,
…when the anxiety you thought you’d defeated comes back angrier than ever,
and no “positive thought” can reach you.
This is not failure.
This is the path.
For years, I thought awakening was something clean—something you reached once you were done with all the dirt. I chased discipline, purity, and self-control like they were prerequisites for God. But life, like a wild Zen master, ripped all that apart.
It didn’t arrive to reward my perfection—
it came to shatter my illusions.
In the mess—in the relapses, the loneliness, the inner chaos—I slowly realized something terrifyingly beautiful:
This is not separate from awakening. This is awakening.
The Spiritual Illusion No One Talks About
We often believe healing meant becoming someone else.
Someone calmer. Cleaner. In control.
The ones who wake up early, meditate in sunlit rooms, and speak in soft tones with peaceful eyes.
You see them online—serene faces, folded legs, perfect captions.
You see them in temples—draped in white, unmoved by chaos.
And then you look at yourself,
…scrolling, relapsing, restless, lost.
And you wonder, “Is something wrong with me?”
But here’s the truth:
That image of the “spiritual person” isn’t wrong—it’s just incomplete.
It’s a filtered moment.
What no one shows you is the storm that came before the silence.
The real spiritual path doesn’t begin with peace.
It begins with collapse.
You don’t find the soul by transcending your humanity.
You find it by honoring it—mess, desire, rage, confusion and all.
That’s the part they don’t post about.
But that’s where the real transformation begins.
My Journey: A Necessary Bloodbath
I didn’t walk a pretty path.
I didn’t have a graceful unfolding.
I had a bloodbath.
And I say that with full respect.
Because this journey has demanded everything from me.
Physically, Mentally, Emotionally—I suffered. I moved through life with visible and invisible wounds.
I left jobs—stable, respected, promising ones—because I simply couldn’t lie to myself anymore.
I went through difficult times, financial stress, isolation.
I watched my dreams disintegrate more than once.
I’ve smoked to survive. I’ve given into desires—not out of lust, but numbness. I wasn’t chasing pleasure. I was reaching for something to feel, even for a second.
And I know I’m not alone in this. Many of us carry wounds that don’t heal with positivity — only with honesty.
People talk about transformation like it’s a glow-up.
For me, it felt like being torn down to the bone.
But strangely… it was in that tearing apart that I met my truth.
No part of my journey has been clean. But every scar I carry is sacred.
What This Path Has Taught Me
1. Relapse isn’t failure. It’s part of the fire.
Every time I went back to old patterns, it wasn’t because I was weak.
It was because something inside me was still hurting.
My cravings weren’t my enemies. They were signals. Messengers from wounds I hadn’t yet tended to.
When I started meeting them with awareness instead of shame, something softened.
They stopped owning me.
Healing didn’t begin when I stopped giving in to my cravings.
It began when I understood why I had to look for these escapes .
2. Discipline doesn’t awaken you. Honesty does.
You can meditate for hours and still be running from yourself.
But one moment of raw honesty— “I’m struggling, and that’s okay”—can break the chains.
Your soul doesn’t need your performance.
It needs your truth.
3. The chaos is sacred.
The emptiness. The disillusionment. The nights you think it’s all pointless—
These are not detours.
These are death rituals.
The old self dies silently.
But in that silence, the real self begins to rise.
4. Your inner voice is your compass. Trust it—even if it ruins your plans.
My inner voice has made me walk away from safety.
It has cost me opportunities, relationships, and the illusion of control.
But it has never led me astray.
The path may get darker.
But the voice never lies.
5. Those who tread on this path bring clarity to themselves and others.
The ones who keep walking through the mud, who face the storm again and again,
emerge not with applause, but with clarity.
And that clarity is worth everything.
Not the kind of peace that looks good.
The kind that can’t be shaken.
The Forgotten Part of Buddha’s Story
We often talk about Buddha as the serene, glowing figure who attained enlightenment under the Bodhi tree.
We speak of his royal past—his palace, his wife, his son.
And then, suddenly, we skip to the end: his awakening, his teachings, his peaceful eyes.
But very few speak about the part in between.
The forest.
The years he spent wandering alone. Starving. Searching. Sitting with madness.
Not knowing if what he was doing even made sense.
Not knowing whether he would make it through.
No one really knows what happened in those forests—because no one can.
That part of the path is invisible. Internal. Intimate.
It cannot be explained.
Only those who’ve walked through their own inner forest can understand.
But I know this much:
That forest must have been a bloodbath.
Not of violence, but of illusion.
Of ego torn apart, belief by crumbling belief.
Of all the false identities—prince, son, seeker—being burned to ash.
Of endless hunger, inner storms, and silent collapses.
That was the real work.
That’s where the foundations of awakening were laid.
The Bodhi tree was not the beginning of his enlightenment.
It was the culmination of everything he had already endured.
It was where the lessons from the palace and the pain of the forest came together,
where the puzzle pieces of his life finally clicked into clarity.
But the soul-breaking, bone-deep labor—
that happened in the dark.
That’s the part no one celebrates.
Because it’s very personal, very intimate.
No one else can truly understand it.
But it’s real.
And it’s necessary.
But I know now:
Every awakened being first walks through a forest no one sees.
Buddha in the forest
The Real Invitation
If you’re in the dark right now—ashamed, addicted, confused—
here’s something I want to tell you:
You are not broken. You are becoming.
You don’t have to be clean to be close to God.
You don’t have to be pure to be on the path.
You don’t even have to believe in anything.
You just have to stay with yourself.
Your cravings, your pain, your restlessness—it’s all part of the process.
Don’t run from it. Don’t rush to fix it. Just sit with it.
Breathe. Listen. Break if you must.
Because that’s where the gold is.
And if all you have left is the courage to take one more breath,
that’s enough.
You are walking a path very few dare to walk upon.
And if you stay honest, and you keep walking,
you will find the light inside you—shining brighter than ever.
From one fellow traveler to another:
Keep going.
There is more to you than the world will ever understand.
And one day, your pain will become someone else’s lighthouse.
Musings of a Warrior Buddha 
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