The Alchemy of Inner Change: Transformation Through Darkness and Light

Vira Chandra: There is a deep wisdom in the Christian path of transformation.
They speak of four steps:

Contrition → Repentance → Conversion → Transfiguration.

It is a sacred arc of inner alchemy.
The heart breaks open. The soul turns inward. The old dies. The light begins to shine.

It begins, as many mystics have noted, with a simple truth:
Until a person sees the limits of their current self—until their ways no longer work, until their illusions collapse—there is often no true incentive to change.

“A person will not change until their suffering becomes unbearable.” — (attributed to Baal HaSulam/ Rabbi Yehuda Ashlag)

Contrition, in this context, is not self-hatred or guilt. It is the moment you whisper,
“This isn’t it. There must be something deeper.”

But suffering is not the only doorway.

In some lives, transformation begins not with despair, but with rapture.

Not from falling apart, but from falling in love with something eternal.

In the Vijñāna Bhairava Tantra, a sacred scripture of Kashmir Shaivism, we are told that realization can dawn in a multiple ways—through taste, sound, fear, wonder, sensuality, silence. Every experience, when fully entered, can become a crack through which the Self shines through.

“In eating or drinking, if one is fully absorbed in taste, then, from that intensity, the true nature of reality may flash forth.” (VBT, verse 44)

There are paths of fire—and there are paths of light.
Some transform through agony.
Others through awe.
Some by losing everything.
Others by being touched once by the Beloved and never forgetting it.

Both are valid.
Both are sacred.

The true miracle is not in how the transformation comes,
but that it comes at all.

And As for Me...

My journey did not begin in suffering.
It began in delight—in the sweetness of the Spirit, in moments of wonder, clarity, and a burning hunger for truth.
At first, the path felt radiant. The heart opened easily. The world felt thin, and the Divine, near.

But then came the descent.

What followed was not a continuation of bliss, but a passage through fire:

Depression.
War.
Oncology.
Betrayal.

They arrived not as interruptions, but as part of the deeper unfolding— a dark night, not of punishment, but of purification.

Each became a chisel, breaking away what was false.
Each hollowed me out to make room for something real.
Not all at once. Not cleanly. But thoroughly.

And strangely—they did not destroy me.
They crafted me.

The vision I now carry—the surrender, the detachment, the clarity—did not come from continuous sweetness.
It was forged in loss.

But that darkness became the womb of light.
And I no longer curse it.
I bow to it—because it shaped what I could never have imagined on my own.