The darkness comes just before the dawn

I had a call from a client just now. This client, who I consider to be a bit of an 'awakened soul', told me he was having quite a character-forming time; he felt he was being challenged 'on all levels' and things that he had taken for granted before - like parking spaces magically appearing when he needed them and people serendipitously turning up to help him out when the going got tough - just weren't happening to him. He said it felt like Life/Source/The Universe, which he had always felt he 'could rely on', had 'turned against him' in some way.I felt an inner smile spread through me as he said this - not because I was enjoying his discomfort in any way, but because I felt there could be another explanation for what was going on. I asked him whether, rather than conspiring against him,  life, the universe, everything... could potentially be doing just the opposite - that life, or his soul, was actually conspiring for him to bring his attention to something that he really needed to look at - something that he would perhaps have avoided looking at unless he was 'pushed against the wall' like this? (Sometimes, let's face it - this business of self-transformation is not easy!)I told him about a time on my own journey where it had felt like this for me. It was like nothing was easy, nothing flowed - and I was forced into a tiny space in my life where there was no room for movement; no way of avoiding the issue at hand - in this case, the practical, nitty-gritty details of my life that a part of me had wanted to gloss over. But this phase in my life taught me that if we truly want to grow and reclaim all the gifts and qualities of our core selves, we cannot afford to do this.Many of those of us who deem ourselves 'spiritual' (the 'star souls' in life), it seems to me, have spent much of our lives 'in our top chakras' (if you relate to that way of seeing things), connected in to the higher realms, the inspirational - and, because of our focus there, have tended to neglect the nittier, grittier aspects of life - the physical, the practical, the financial. But, as an early teacher of mine once said, 'If we're not grounded, we're of no Earthly good to anyone'. And I think she was right... we have to integrate all sides of our being, leaving no stone unturned, if we want to truly walk the spiritual path and reclaim our wholeness.So in this phase, for me, there was simply no option of escape. Every time I was tempted to 'cut a corner' on a practical level, something would happen to make this impossible. Every time I started to settle into a well-worn groove, life would 'nudge' me to take a different path, one that forced me into the 'high density' situations and scenarios that my being needed to experience fully, and transform, in order to shift onto the next (evolutionary) level. At least that's the way I see it now. Sometimes the density and darkness and heaviness was enough to make me cry - but when I finally sussed what was happening and gave up all resistance - I experienced such an expansion that I was grateful that I had been forced into such a tight corner!After all, it's the times when the job that we thought was 'in the bag' goes to someone else, or when the parking space doesn't magically appear that we learn the most. So, next time you feel yourself getting tight about something, feeling beleaguered and persecuted and close to tears, dig deeper. Yes, maybe, like me, you 'thought you were beyond this,' but, as they say, the greatest darkness comes before the dawn - and there'll be a point, when you take that final step and you feel a shift inside and the light comes streaking over the horizon and everything can start to flow again.What do you think? Does this relate to your experience?