Experiencing a descent into the unknown requires us to let go of old ways of thinking and being. While challenging and uncomfortable, this journey can also lead to deep introspection and transformation, as we shed old identities and make space for the new.

In this episode Christine speaks with nature mystic Annette Knopp about her multiyear journey into deep spiritual practice; and two moments of descent that resulted in profound despair, a dark night of the soul, and eventually became medicine for her life. Annette speaks to developing the capacity to feel pain as a practice, and the realization that some things remain unbroken even in our darkest moments.

Trigger warnings: suicide, self-harm, and sexual assault

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• Blue Spirit

I'm Christine RainE.

Welcome to the Heroine's Journey podcast, where we understand our personal stories of change with insight, compassion, and inspiration.

The second phase is characterized by the dissent into unchartered territory, the leap of faith that we take into the unknown things we previously understood to be true, dissolve, leaving us disoriented and confused.

Alone in the dark we become intimate with fear.

The fear of leaving our old story behind, the fear of being abandoned, the fear that we will never move beyond darkness.

This journey of unlearning can appear chaotic and disorganized to others further isolating us.

The descent culminates in the death of something important and brings us into contact with grief and mourning, like the moist soil emerging from decay, something new is wanting to emerge.

I'm so.

Happy and feel warm in my heart as I give.

Welcome to our Guest for this episode.

Annette Knopp is a meditation teacher, a somatic counselor and nature mystic, who facilitates group retreats and mentors clients in their unique journeys of awakening and transformation.

She draws from a rich background of Buddhist meditation, Hindu, a nature-based wisdom tradition from the Peruvian Andes, and modern western somatic approaches to repair trauma.

Annette is an ordained wisdom keeper and also the co-founder of the Blue Spirit Retreat Center in Noosa Costa Rica.

And that's actually where I met her, uh, as a facilitator in a retreat, a women's retreat that I attended that was very, very special.

And I was immediately drawn to her way of showing up into the spaces.

It was a retreat where some things that were out of the organizer's controls were a little bit difficult and stressful, and yet she always had this calm, incredibly centered demeanor and treated everyone with kindness.

And then the actual activities that we had with her were very oriented towards the sacred, towards being in touch with nature, using our intuition as a way of transforming things.

And I truly felt like, wow, this, this could be a woman that I could learn a lot from and that could teach me a lot.

And we also share the fact of having German ancestry.

And so there's so many other things I could say, but for now, what I wanna say is, Annette, welcome and thank you so much for gifting us with, with your time.

Thank you so much Christine, and thank you for this warm welcome and deeply flattering Descript

Yeah, you're, you're welcome.

Thank you, and I'm gonna dive right in.

They say that there are moments of realization in our lives when something fundamental about our belief system, who we thought we were, or how the world is changes.

This is usually triggered by a rupture of some kind.

It could be a massive disillusionment, a separation, a death, illness, betrayal.

What is true is that these fresh eyes mark a before and after and take us into a moment of deep introspection and questioning, and often we feel in a space of darkness and chaos as we try to make meaning of what happened.

I'm wondering if you can identify a moment in your life when you had the realization that your world as you knew it would never be the same.

Yes.

Um, I am sure I'm not the only one who would say there are many descents in life.

and yet I, I feel there are two, particularly let's say big ones or two that were particularly shattering, that come up.

And, maybe to give a little bit of a context first, just very briefly.

So, um, I had, uh, been born and raised in Germany.

I left Germany when I was 21 and moved to Spain.

And, um, after having lived for almost nine years in Spain, I had met a wonderful man.

He was, you know, you could say he's my fiance.

Once, my fiance, and he proposed several times to get married and have kids.

And, and I had a really good career as a simultaneous translator and interpreter.

And, um, long story short, on the outside I had sort of, I.

Ticked all the boxes that society was telling me are the ingredients to be happy.

And I also lived, um, on a little island, the Canary Island, uh, Loizou.

So I lived even on the beach and I had this independent career and a man who loved me and wanted to be with me.

And we had a dog and all of that.

Yeah, it seemed ideal.

Yes, the ideal exactly.

Yet on the inside I was starving.

And for some time I believe there was something deeply wrong with me and.

Fast forward, it came to that I couldn't find a yes to a marriage, a yes to having children.

There was something inside that just really called to me and I didn't know what it was.

but it was clear I had to find it.

And I remember one day it was like, almost like epiphany.

I saw this big ship, far out on the ocean, on the horizon.

And as it was sort of passing, I had a sense, this is your life and if you don't jump now, you will miss something really important.

How did that moment feel in your body?

At first, I didn't look for any sign.

Like at that point in my life, I was always looking for the answers in my mind.

I would ask everybody around me.

And I mean, this was a, a difficult decision, so there were not so many people.

I really felt I could openly speak, definitely not with my partner.

He, he wanted me to be with him, so he was heavily biased.

But I remember when I saw the ship and then this.

Knowing, and it was so calm in my being,

An interesting thing that I find is that despite that quality of calm that accompanies the message, oftentimes what the message is requiring of us is extremely uncomfortable.

Yes, absolutely, because usually true transformation.

Or leaving behind what is no longer true or what has never been actually reliable, we can't even say false will definitely shake us up and shake our sense of identity, our sense of safety, the familiar perspectives of what, how we believe or think that the world or our life should be.

So yeah, there's usually, you know, whether it's fear, panic, anxiety, leaving the known behind to step onto a path of the unknown.

Entering the forest at the darkest spot, as Joseph Campbell said so beautifully.

Exactly, and so what did you do at this point after realizing this?

Well, it took me only a few few days, and then I, I told my partner that I had to leave, and then a few weeks later I was off on my way to India.

I don't know anything about that, about going to India to try to find myself.

Right, so I, I, but then, you know, I had to reduce all my belongings, you know, I think I had 40 pairs of shoes, you know, and, I left with, uh, a backpack of 19 kilos or 40 pounds for those who were thinking pounds, and, but I thought I just need to sort myself out.

It was just the sense the old doesn't work anymore.

I don't know what's wrong with me or, but like, this can't be it.

And, um, and first I thought, yeah, I would just go to India.

I would find myself, and then I would come back.

But the truth is I kept traveling for three and a half years.

After India there was Nepal, Thailand, Japan, New Zealand, Australia, and, um, the most important was sort of, gaining perspectives and practicing, you know, in a, yeah, contemplation and meditation, but also at the same time as I was living out of my little backpack, and also soon my, travel chest got reduced.

I had to find work.

So I was working often illegally in all sorts of different things.

So it was a very, drastic, Immersion.

Real, real life immersion intensity of finding myself in all these very different contexts and cultures and making a living and being just utterly open and trusting just this inner compass that what I was after, like trying to find the meaning of my life or who am I really would surely find, bring me to the to the right place in the right moment.

And here's where the descent comes now.

So the descent was my first or first descent happened in Japan, and I woke up one morning and as soon as I opened my eyes, I knew something was very different.

And as I tried to make sense.

Feel into my being, what was so different, I eventually realized with quite a shock that the central figure, this familiar identity of me as the experiencer, as the one who decides, as the one who acts, the one who manages, who thinks, and so on so forth, didn't exist.

And there was just a vast, vast centerless expand and the world didn't seem separate.

It was just a complete collapse of, um, separation.

And today, with all the practices, studies, insights, you know of traditions, I know this is a really potent and beautiful realization.

However, when we don't have the knowledge, when we don't have a framework that tells us, yeah, that is basically the nature of reality, there is no, nothing is as solid or concrete as it appears to be, and the separate self is a construct.

It's not real.

Then it's quite terrorizing.

So for the mind that only things in duality and, the mind that corrupts or colludes with the culture of the paradigm of separation, this doesn't make any sense.

And.

It got to a point where even, you know, I, I, I stood up and I looked into a mirror because I felt so inb.

I knew somehow I still existed, but the way I believed or thought I exist was completely shattered.

So at some point I thought, I look in the mirror, and there was a moment where I even was afraid to look into the mirror, because as a kid, I had seen all these movies of vampires who don't have a reflection in the mirror.

And, and this is how it felt.

But then when I looked into the mirror, there was this split second of relief because of course there was this familiar face, there was the body.

But as I looked longer, I realized this is not me.

How old were you at this moment?

32.

Mm-hmm.

I was 32.

Yeah.

And I had left Spain and gone on my journey, two and a half years earlier.

And, I mean, I couldn't speak to anybody about that because I didn't even have words for it.

It was just a radical groundlessness.

And I started to shy away to meet my friends.

I lived in Tokyo because I didn't wanna have any deep conversations because I was afraid that,

The topic would come up

The topic somehow would come up or somehow would say, you are so different.

And, and I said to believe I had gone insane.

You know how the mind is, you know, there's, the mind always looks at what's possibly wrong with you versus what's actually true and right.

I, I mean there were moments also of just peace and stillness and silence and just ease.

But then my mind would kick in again and saying like, whoa, hang on a minute.

You can't trust this.

This is not real.

You are crazy.

and it came to a point and trigger alert where I was so, bereft of any.

Sense of orientation that I thought, why don't I just call it quits?

And um, I think there was also a point of, you know, I didn't feel like could go back to Spain or I could go back to my family or anything because I felt like I'm insane and I've just reaped what I've sewn.

There was shame.

So I, one evening I came home, I was teaching at a language academic in Tokyo and I was winter and it was cold.

And I came into my little tatami room.

I lived in a old traditional Japanese house and my eyes fell on a bottle of Saki that a private student had gifted me and uh, was still enclosed.

But some of this idea came up, why don't you just drink a little and you go to the 7-Eleven, which was 24 hours open, and you get some razors, and you just, you know, you end your life.

And I, at that point thought I was just calm and I was just calmly executing my steps.

But as I was in the 7-Eleven and I was going through the eyes trying to find the razors, and I couldn't find them, I asked the clerk.

And then in that moment my phone rang

And it was 2:00 AM in the morning, and on the other line was a distant acquaintance, a man I had met two, three times.

Really nice man from New Zealand.

And, um, he just called and he said, I know this is crazy.

I am so sorry to call you this hour, but I was asleep and something woke me up and told me I have to call you.

And I screamed into the phone at that point, you know, I realized I wasn't as calm as I thought.

I was angry, and I think it was more sort of upset.

But he got through to me and he realized that I wasn't well.

He said, I, you don't sound well at all.

Please get into a car.

Come to my house.

And I, I didn't even know where his house was, but he gave me instructions to hand the phone over to the clerk, and then the clerk called a taxi, and then the taxi brought me to his house.

And then I broke down and I remember I said, I don't know anymore who I am.

And this poor man said like, well, you're Annette.

I, I think you were born in Germany and now you're in Tokyo.

And we're like, no, no, no.

This is not who I am.

but there was something in the setup.

It was a sense of, here I was or what I thought I was or wasn't.

Wanting to end my life.

And then at 2:00 AM completely out of the blue, someone very distant calls me to stop me from going through with that plan.

And something realizing that in me deeply relaxed, it was Okay, life doesn't want you to die.

Let go.

Something takes care of you now.

And that was a moment where my mind just dropped all.

It's trying to figure out, it's trying to control, it's fear of what if I lost this?

It's just sort of dropped away.

And then I was, um, just hanging in a very dispassionate, edgeless space of just living in the moment.

It sounds, well, incredibly intense and, it just brings up in me how powerful in a negative way, sometimes it can be when we can't understand something, you know, when we don't understand something like how attached we are to understanding things.

And if we can't understand them with the mind, then there must be something wrong with me, inherently wrong with me.

And then a lot of other thoughts and beliefs can, can develop after that.

But I, I heard you speak about that as the turning point for you

You know, sometimes, people say with me on retreat, well, you don't know how negative my mind is.

And I said, well, welcome to the club.

You know, everybody's mind is fundamentally negative because it is not looking for what is true and what is whole and what is good and what is right, and what is pleasant.

That's sort of like Teflon, right?

Just slips right through it.

But if there's one thing that is painful, one thing that's uncomfortable, something that doesn't fit our minds familiar perspective, or what our culture or family of origin tells us is so quote unquote, then there's a freak out in the system

Does that come from the amygdala?

From the reptilian brain?

Yes, also, and the hippocampus.

And then it depends also on what memories we have archived, you know, what, what is our, family's origin like, is there a lot of under charged trauma in the ancestral line?

Then our, of course our personal traumas, so it can be stronger for some people than for others.

And our brain is constantly trying to make meaning in order to navigate the groundlessness of life.

But the truth is life.

Life is groundless.

And I'm saying this not in any holistic way, because that's sort of, again, that's an interpretation of the mind of, oh, it all then everything is meaningless, no.

Everything has deep meaning, but life is the meaning.

And then each of us very uniquely will orient, hopefully find what is personally very deeply meaningful to us.

And that's then the meaning of our life.

How, how did you make sense of what you were experienced in that moment?

So I couldn't, still couldn't make sense, but the importance for me was that I had experienced wanting to end my life and something so drastic happened, or so Irrational or surreal happened of someone calling me.

So there was then this trust, a sense of trust in surrendering, got restored.

And that was also what I had when I set out on the journey, even though I was scared shitless.

And I was, I mean, it was so scary to leave everything behind and just jump into the unknown and not having a plan and intention or had an intention, but not a future goalpost.

It was like an endless journey.

So that sort of restored a sense of trust and allowed me to relax into the openness of life.

And that felt extremely pleasant.

Not pleasant in the way of, uh, exciting or, you know, but it was ease.

There was a sense of dps in that surrender.

And After some month, another friend got in touch with me, and I won't go into all the details, but I met a spiritual teacher, even though I wasn't looking for any spiritual teachers anymore.

But, um, I ended up at this gathering and I think he, he could see that something had deeply shattered, you know, my familiar sense of identity or separation.

And even though I hadn't asked to ask the question, he said, please give the microphone to this person.

And very quickly he brought me to this.

It's a pretty famous question, who are you?

Which, you know, is known as a, an inquiry question that I think first was really posed by, um, Ram Mihaly, late as Indian sage in India who died in the.

Uh, beginning of 1950, I think, or late 1940s.

And he basically said, don't, don't think about anything that you've ever known or people tell you you have a soul.

Just let it all go.

Just in your own direct experience.

Who are you?

And while before, I couldn't touch a permanent sense of self to anything anymore, everything.

I was no longer this Annette, I was no longer this body.

I was no longer this familiar identity.

All of a sudden something turned around and I saw I'm everything.

So I wasn't just nothing.

I was the everything.

I was the microphone in the hand, the chair was sitting, I was the people around.

I was the ocean.

And that was, that was extremely liberating.

And I laughed because it seemed to be such a cosmic joke that I ever could have felt that I had ever been separate.

And then I lived in that, uh, pretty blissful spaciousness.

However, here comes second descent is I trusted that guy that I had met, blindly.

Because after all, grace had brought me to this realization.

Grace had put this mentor, guide in front of me, but wasn't there to trust.

He, he basically violently assaulted me and raped me.

And that was, I mean, I don't have words for that, how utterly, earth shattering it was.

In fact, it was so.

Earth shattering.

And so, that, I forgot it happened.

In, you know, such significant, uh, shocking events when so much is happening, like unexpected, um, violently, so much stimuli come into our brain and the brain can't process it, so it starts to dissociate.

The truth is, with those events, every part of our brain is affected.

And I forgot, I dissociated from the memory for years.

However, with that dissociation, it's sort of the brains or the organisms short term way of surviving of, shutting off these compartments.

In your psyche, in your body, that have been damaged or flooded.

So you can continue to function.

But you obviously continue to function in a very limited way, in very restrictive mental emotional patterns.

And also, I had panic attacks and emotional meltdowns that didn't make sense.

And I, I was severely destabilized for years to come.

Um, second guessing myself constantly.

Any, any, any little sound movement in the environment could startle me.

It was, yeah.

What were the stories that that died after that event?

You know, it's funny sometimes, you know, we, we say the dark night of the soul, and that was really the dark night of the soul.

And the dark night of the soul is actually when we don't have any spiritual framework left anymore.

And I had sort of become, homeless in my own heart and what died.

I mean, there's so many levels of that.

But first, I, Was just, um, assaulted by terror, by so much pain.

I have to say, this teacher was inviting his students to spiritually bypass.

He was a spiritually bypasser.

And what that means for anyone who maybe hasn't, uh, heard this term before is when we use spiritual insights or sometimes just spiritual, parroting of everything is divine as a way of not addressing, practical reality.

For instance, you know, we, we all do this to some.

Some degree special bypassing where maybe sometimes we even, as you said, you know, before we spoke about meaning and we tell ourselves, wow, I feel really so bad, this must have a meaning.

So we grasp for things in order to maybe make us feel better.

And sometimes, you know, people tell us, maybe you are going through an incredibly difficult time, and then people come and say, oh, you will see this will be good for something.

Versus allowing you to maybe feel the grief, feel the pain, and joining you without needing to fix, analyzing or giving you a pat on the shoulder.

And I know, you know, we often do these things out of care, but it often also shows how we are.

Not capable yet to actually sit with our own helplessness and vulnerability or cares or not knowing.

So for me it was, you know, I had this deep realization, but I threw out the baby with the bath water, which is, I left common sense behind.

And I had been extremely street smart on all my journey around the world.

And I just met this man and I just, you know, trusting him like the, the perfect healing father.

And how did you navigate that period of your life where, where fear and uncertainty were so common?

Eventually I broke off and I went back to Europe.

I had a European passport, so I could live in Europe with more stability.

And I just started to, um, get a part-time work and just ground myself.

And, and eventually I was lucky.

I met another teacher, a real teacher, a good teacher.

And he helped me to see that this, I mean I still didn't remember the rape, but basically that whatever was going on for me energetically, that, that it probably had been a significant trauma.

And then I found my way also towards more somatic, centered spirituality, working with my body, being able to sit with pain, uncertainty, fear, discomfort, but no longer making it something about who I was.

So I, over time, and this took years, I built up the capacity to meet difficult experiences without the self-talk, without the constant commentary.

This means this and means that, but sort of bringing, you know, love to the darkness, bringing love to the difficulty.

And, and, and I think that's basically is the full circle of a spiritual journey of bringing the gold down to the mountain.

It because it, spirit doesn't wanna be up there in the lofty peaks.

It wants to be brought into the world.

It wants to be embodied, to express, it wants to inform and permeate our human life.

So that was how, I worked with it to my best ability.

And so often I failed.

And, uh, but it was a long time of sitting with pain.

But I see today this is a profound, uh, chemical process for all of us.

You know, if there's something important or what is the medicine of the descent or what is gained at the end?

It is, first of all, letting go of any, you said.

Parts of us, or any behavior that is not deeply true, not grounded in our being.

The grasping outside.

Right.

I grasp for this teacher of like, you know, I felt so devoted.

I wanted to to be my, my daddy forever, that, and that, nothing, and no one is a hundred percent reliable.

it's only really within our own hearts.

And finding that validation within yourself, that self-love, because you spoke of, and I think this is something that is so common for human beings of seeking that external validation, right?

Asking other people, asking our, even if it's our mind, our rational mind.

And I at least experience you now and from several things you've mentioned about the journey as someone who has developed the muscle over time of embodying knowledge, of embodying intuition, of understanding life and the way it moves through you in a different way.

I like that you used the word muscle because it really is a practice.

It's a muscle that we strengthen, and that doesn't mean that I never, ever experienced anxiety anymore.

I think this is really important, you know, because to the body this psychological, physical processing organism, life is fundamentally unsafe, meaning anything can happen any moment.

That's, that's the truth.

Whether it's an accident, whether you get falsely accused and you end up in prison, I mean, I'm making it very dramatic, right?

But we know, you know, economies, scrabble, you know, marriages fall apart.

Friends that we thought, whatever, you know, betray us and so on, so forth.

So there are many, many descents.

However, with that practice, adverse city pain, discomfort, we gain more and more capacity to let it be, to let experience unfold without us trying and needing to fix it, or making it mean something about who we are.

I think, and we've talked about this before, we are living in a society where there are so many distractions for us to not feel pain.

And there are big repercussions to not developing that muscle and that practice of being able to feel what we feel.

So what can we do?

Three things come up.

So the first is, usually when there is pain or discomfort, there's an automatic identification with it.

We take it to be us.

I am depressed, I'm reeling, I'm in pain.

And obviously language, you know, is, doesn't make us a big favor there because there is, it's sort of built in, at least in the English language that, you know, immediate identification.

So if, we feel something like that and there's the identification, meaning there's no space between the experience and the acknowledgement of what is going on, so it's good to learn to unuse a little bit and just saying like, okay, so, what's the experience right now here?

So we can name, just naming our experience.

Honestly, there is, like heat in the body.

There is shallow tense breathing.

There is, the diaphragm is tight.

I notice the mind has all these worst case scenario playing over and over again.

I feel my palms are sweaty.

I'm so just being sort of a neutral but kind, curious reporter of your momentary experience

is that kind of like describing the experience without labeling it and identifying with that label?

Mm-hmm.

Well, we do label it, we name it.

But in the naming, there's a reframing that happens, instead of being completely fused, let's just say, with the discomfort and the pain.

And the anxiety, by just saying, wow, there's anxiety here.

Or you can say, A part of me is anxious because it's never all of us.

Instead of saying, I am an anxious person, or I am a depressed person.

Yes, yes, exactly.

Yeah.

And, uh, reframing as much as possible from giving it meaning.

Cause the mind wants to jump to a conclusion.

For instance, if you feel a sinking feeling for something, you might well immediately say, oh, this means because you're not good enough.

Versus the body, the brain just got a little shaken off and there was this moment of insecurity.

And that's it.

And I can let it pass.

I can be with embodied immediate experience, but without needing to add all that self-talk.

This means, this means this about me, or this means that about you, et cetera.

in Buddhism, we have a very pithy instruction, which is drop this storyline, stay with the energy.

So not spinning further narratives.

Let's say someone said something to you or me that was hurtful or was shocking and there is then a response or reaction in the system, like, you know, a little startled response or, but it's instead of meaning this means this about me, or that, holding the body in the embrace and feeling maybe the shakiness, but not needing to make it something about who I am.

And then once there's a little bit of reframing, I'm personally love to give the body a little container.

And you might just hold onto your, you know, taking your right hand and hold your left upper arm and taking your left hand and holding your right upper arm so you're holding yourself in the hug.

I call it the self hug.

And just holding yourself even maybe as you name your experience and this self hug, apart from that, it does something neurobiological to your experience, hug yourself and hold yourself in positive regard.

And then the third thing, and this is a really good inquiry, just throughout our days, whenever we notice we are sort of caught in the mind, lost in thought, spinning back and forth, mental time, traveling, strategizing, planning, scheming what to say, what not shouldn't have, right?

You could ask yourself, what am I trying to not feel right now?

Because the mind is not a villain.

It just tries to help.

But it's help is pretty unproductive.

It's sort of it backlashes.

And underneath is a part of us that maybe feels helpless, vulnerable, Insecure, out of sorts.

And hey, could we hug that part?

Could we hold hand with that part of our being versus trying to fix and move out of it and disconnect through further and further thinking?

Because basically everything wants to feel held, everything wants to be in a state of connection, and by turning towards what seems difficult and dark, we restore connection.

Yeah, I think of it sometimes as a refuge within myself, and it's a beautiful feeling.

It's, it's like coming home to yourself, feeling safe inside yourself.

And, ah, and I'm just wondering, you know, Annette, after going through that period of dissent, which took years and developing this muscle of being with your pain and being able to feel that pain, there's a rebirth after death.

There's an emergence.

New things begin to emerge.

And I'm just wondering, what died for you in that process of dissent and what did it give way to

I think what dies is ignorance.

You know, sometimes in English, the word ignorance has a very negative connotation.

I could also call it innocence, but in a sense has too much of a positive connotation.

So it's basically, you know, hopefully what we all gain, as we move through life, there's more wisdom.

And wisdom can have many aspects sometimes as we gain the wisdom of kindness, the wisdom of compassion, the wisdom of tolerance.

Sometimes it's wisdom of deep insight, you know, into the nature of reality.

I think what I've gained is that it's okay to be human.

You've shared a lot about what you learned about yourself and life and just reality in this process, but I'm wondering if there's anything in particular that you wanna say to people who might be listening to us right now and might find themselves really identified with, with undergoing a process of extreme pain and chaos and confusion or shame, fear, guilt, all of these feelings that are very common

For me personally, was the most difficult in the descent, was feeling isolated, feeling alone.

And I think for anybody who, maybe is passing through a period of extreme difficulty or darkness, while yes, we are alone in having the experience and yet we are never alone.

There are countless human beings.

No one gets a free ride.

We all, it's part of life.

And yet a part of us remains unbroken.

And I know this is maybe difficult to understand or grasp, but even in our own hearts, Our hearts are fine.

The surface level of the heart or the front of the heart often say, might feel heavy, might feel torn, might feel like it's shattering in a thousand pieces, but the back of the heart, the essence of the heart is undamaged.

Oh, that's so beautiful and it reminds me of a Irish poet, John Donahue, and he speaks of how, beyond the interpretations, the thoughts, the experiences, the feelings, there is an essence that is untouched.

There, there is a part of us that is free and wildly luminous and wildly beautiful and, and unharmed.

And it's there, it's there somewhere.

You know, there's this beautiful phrase that, that to me is kind of the, the mantra of this podcast, at least in this first season.

It's a phrase by a musician that I really love, called Nick Mulvey and says, making honey from my darkness, gold from my disease.

A hundred percent.

I call it making medicine out of poison.

Yeah.

And I think the medicine is always love, right?

Love and compassion and kindness within and without.

There's a surprise question that I'm asking everyone that I'm interviewing, and it's using a little bit more of the language of symbols because I think the heroines journey it's kind of like this force that enables us to reconnect with a very deep inner knowing in ourselves that, that some people can call intuition or you can call your higher self or different things.

And I think that in this realm, Symbols are very important, and visual images are very important, and poetry is important.

And so I'm asking people, if you could describe that moment of your life, of dissent visually as if you were a painter, what would it look like?

It actually, um, I have a painting in my office cottage by a dear friend who's an incredibly talented New York artist, and I have the painting.

And it's basically, a oxy in turmoil, and yet the sky buffet is luminous in gold.

And from the sky it comes down a trickle of little turquoise line.

And it's sort of like, to me, it represents this, you know, there's never darkness without light.

But also it speaks so much to the luminosity that's always there.

Even in the deepest dark.

And, and maybe even like this beautiful quote by Leonard Cohen.

There's a crack, a crack in everything.

This is where the light gets in..

This episode was made possible thanks to the Hotel Belmar in the Monte the Cloud Forest in Costa Rica.

It offers elevated hospitality while embracing nature's transformative energy.

You can find them at Hotel Belmar dot Nhat.

Thank you also to nucleo a holistic business consulting in service of new social systems.

Find out more@nucleo.com.

Wow, what a story.

I feel so appreciative to be able to hear a person speak in retrospect about such a devastating period in their life with so much wisdom.

The kind of wisdom that only comes from experience.

I am really curious about what you're taking away from this conversation.

I'm taking some great gems.

The first is the importance of being able to sit with pain, uncertainty, fear, discomfort.

And to do that as a deep spiritual practice, and realize that we can experience it without making it about who we are.

In other words, and as Annette shared, referring to her Buddhist teachings, drop the storyline, stay with the energy.

The second is this ability that we can develop to meet ourselves with love.

To give ourselves a physical embrace and become our own refuge.

I love this notion that Annette shared that everything wants to feel held, everything wants to be in a state of connection, and that by turning towards what seems difficult and dark, we can actually restore that connection.

And finally, I want to refer to the medicine of the descent that Annette speaks to.

What is gained in the end?

And she says, letting go of parts of us.

Any behavior, any thoughts, any identities that are not deeply true, not grounded in our being, we finally give a rest to the constant grasping outside, and realize that everything we've ever wanted is within.

I was really moved by what Annette mentioned about the most difficult part of her journey and descent being how isolated she felt.

How alone.

I can certainly relate to that, as well as feeling shame in my moments of descent.

And I think it's important, as she said, to know that in these moments of extreme difficulty and darkness, while we are having that specific experience alone, we're never alone.

Like the Nick Mulvey song in this podcast says, all I have lived, but not alone.

Lastly, I wanna share a phrase that Annette said.

Spirit does not want to end up in the lofty peaks, it wants to be brought into the world, it wants to be embodied, to express, it wants to inform and permeate our human life.

What a beautiful image, and thank you for listening.

Remember to follow us on Instagram at the Heroines Journey Project where we keep you posted on new episodes and provide you with complimentary information of the phases.

This week we'll be sharing the three step practice Annette talked about during this episode.

In our blog at christineraine.org/podcast.

See you next time where we will be talking about the third phase of the heroin's journey, the emergence that comes after death.

And we'll be having that conversation with my Italian soul sister, castle guardian, and co-founder of an organization that offers adventure therapy to children with serious illness.

Her name is Sophia Reini, and I can't wait for you all to meet her.