Dungeon of Sadness by Elizabeth Gilbert

Once you have reached the very bottom 
of the dungeon of sadness,
you will find yourself standing in the dark,
knee-deep in a thick murk of shame.

This is the worst of it, and now you might want to die. 

But then — thank God! — you will find a shovel,
left behind by some ancient miner, long ago.
Now you will construct a cunning plan,
with which you hope to save your life:

You will dig through that murk of shame,
examining every single mistake you have ever made,
until you discover your own FUNDAMENTAL FLAW —
that original and worst thing about you —
which is to blame for everything. 

Painful though it is,
you will bravely keep digging until your hands bleed,
certain that if you can just
figure out what is wrong with you,
then you will find a trapdoor beneath all your sins and mistakes,
through which to make your escape from this hell realm.

My beloved.
Listen to me.
This is not the way out.
There is no exit to be found
beneath the murk of shame.

There is only one way out:
Drop the shovel.
(Trust me. The person who left it down there, died down there.)

Lift your tired arms upward in the darkness.
Move your hands about in the damp air,
until you feel a tiny strand of thread,
thinner than a cobweb.
You are almost afraid to touch it,
because you fear it might break.

It will not break. 

This is the thread of love from my heart to yours.
This is the thread of mercy that says,
"I have been exactly where you are. I am the same as you."

Now feel about some more in the dark air.
Can you feel all the other strands above your head?
These are the filaments of love and mercy
that connect you to every other human being
who has ever lived.

And to every other human being
who has ever suffered.

Which is all of us.

Every strand, faint as it is, says:
"I have been exactly where you are. I am the same as you."

Imagine all of us,
struggling in our own dungeons.
Look at our lives.
Look at our innocence and our pain.
Look at how hard we have tried,
and how much we have hurt ourselves,
trying to excavate what is fundamentally wrong with us.

Ask yourself: "Do any of those hearts deserve to suffer?"

(But you already know the answer to that,
don't you?
Because you are kind.)

And until you realize that you don't deserve to suffer, either —
that you are nothing more or less than one of us —
you will never rise out of there.

So now I implore you, from my heart to yours:
Never touch that shovel again.

It is not your God. 

Instead, gather every strand of mercy you can find above you,
that connects you to us.

Braid it into a rope stronger than you could imagine.

Wrap that rope around your life.

Together, we will pull you free.