The Day I Crossed the Abyss

As soon as I sat down, I cried uncontrollably, so much so that I couldn’t contain the sounds my body was making. I felt so much sorrow and despair and it reached the depths of my soul.

This was my experience in crossing the Abyss in Kabbalah.

While you don’t need to understand what Kabbalah is, you can probably guess that the Abyss is not a fun place to be. Sort of like the Abyss they showed in Stranger Things. Very close to that.

I didn’t expect to experience such anguish. In fact, I didn’t really know what to expect. All I knew was that my teacher, who led our monthly study groups, said that the experience here will leave you changed forever.

I didn’t know what she meant until I experienced it for myself.

Getting to that room required me to first walk through something many of you will recognize, usually somewhere in the middle of a life that looks fine from the outside, where you realize something is missing that you can't name.

You’ve probably even done some healing, read the books, gone to the workshops, said the affirmations. Built all the things. Checked the boxes. You know how to set goals and hit them. You also know how to get shit done.

And still. Something underneath it all is quietly reaching for you. Waiting to be heard.

I know that feeling. I lived there for a long time before I understood what it was asking of me.

While I was crying uncontrollably, snot and all (lol), I had this vision.

A greyed out soul with hollow eyes, weakly reaching out for help, inside a person’s body. Trapped. Screaming without a sound. It felt like it had been slowly dying for quite some time, dying from malnourishment, dying from being disconnected from its source, living like a ghost in a body it no longer recognized as home.

I felt the ache of it in my own chest.

And then I realized... this is where most of humanity is today.

Our souls are always reaching out to us. But we either ignore it, or we don’t even realize it’s been talking to us this entire time.

We live in a noisy, noisy world filled with conflicting opinions from every platform. I know how easy it is to get lost in that noise. To feel unseen. To not know what to believe. I used to be that person, and if I’m being honest, there are some days when that version of me still shows up.

The difference now is that I know more about myself. I’ve done the work of healing myself. I have spiritual tools and I know which one to use and when.

It took a lot to get here. But it all started when I got initiated.

Crossing the Abyss was the most recent fruit of that journey.

And when I say I feel deeply changed by that experience, that’s an understatement.

Because in the middle of that deep despair, in the darkest, most uncontainable moment of grief I have ever felt, I also felt God’s unconditional, loving embrace.

I felt deeply supported and held.

And I heard the words: “free my people.”

God’s people are hurting. They are locked inside the prison of their own minds, and most of them don’t even know it. I felt it in my bones in that moment. I felt the weight of it so completely that I couldn’t hold the sounds that my body so wanted to naturally express (That experience moved through me so completely that I wrote a song about it. I listen to it when I want to remember this moment. I'll share it with you at the end of this article). I couldn’t be silent. That moment is why I’m here, writing this to you now. It’s why I crossed the Abyss even though I didn’t know it at the time when I made the decision to do so.

I’m crying tears of joy and appreciation now as I write this, just from remembering how abundant His love is for us, all the time. There’s so much of it. Yet some of us are looking for love in the wrong places and, because of it, feel unworthy and dissatisfied and like something is fundamentally missing.

So I want to say this to you directly.

Take a moment right now. Just let this sink in. Feel His love. It’s surrounding you now and it always has been. You haven’t been abandoned. You haven’t been forgotten. You’ve just been engrossed in the noise.

The initiation didn’t give me answers. It didn’t hand me a better strategy or a cleaner mindset or a new framework.

It changed the level from which I operate.

Before, I was reaching for God, for clarity, for abundance, for purpose... the way that grey soul in my vision was reaching. Weakly. Desperately. From a place of disconnection.

After, and I mean immediately after, I stopped reaching because I recognized how deeply supported and held I was!

From that moment, everything shifted in ways I hadn’t anticipated. My relationships deepened, my business moved differently, the way I carry myself in the world changed. My sense of what I’m here to do became so clear it was almost startling.

Here’s what’s crazy…the circumstances around me didn’t transform overnight, but something far more fundamental did: I changed, permanently, at a level that no amount of mindset work, therapy, or strategy had ever been able to touch.

That’s what initiation does. It breaks the chain of what used to hold you back and it does it at a level so deep that nothing on the surface can undo it.

And once I experienced it myself, I knew I couldn’t keep it to myself.

I’ve spent years learning, healing, practicing, and building a life around these tools. And the thing I keep coming back to is this: the most profound shifts I’ve ever witnessed, in myself and in the people I work with, don’t come from more information. They come from direct experience. From transmission. From being in a room where the energy itself does the work.

That’s why I’m opening a door.

I’m hosting a retreat in October.

It’s called Initiated Into Infinity, October 9 through 12, 2026, at a private estate beneath ancient live oaks in Covington, Louisiana.

I’m bringing in my teacher, Sue Ananian, a woman who has spent over 30 years devoted to this work, to deliver the Initiation of Light to a small group of seven souls.

This is the initiation that started everything for me. The one that cracked me open in the best possible way. The one that made crossing the Abyss possible, because I had already begun building the internal foundation to hold what I found there.

I’m not hosting this because it’s a good business move, although I believe it is.

I’m hosting it because I saw that grey soul in my vision and I recognized it. Because I know that soul is reading this right now.

If something in you has been quietly reaching, for more, for deeper, for real... this is the invitation.

Six spots left. One October weekend. A transmission that has been preserved for thousands of years, waiting for those who are ready.

The full details are here:

I'm Ready to Cross

And if you want to talk before you decide anything, just DM me or reply to this post. I mean that.

I see you. I see you reaching. And I am here now, reaching back.

We cross together.

With all my love, Anna

I wrote this song the same week I wrote this article. It’s called, “Reach (From the Other Side),” It came from the same place as my Abyss crossing. Press play when you're ready.

Anna Dornier is a Reiki Master, Kabbalah practitioner, sacred facilitator, and the founder of Ascend Systems, a marketing automation agency for soul-led entrepreneurs. She writes Magnetic By Design at the intersection of the sacred and the strategic, because she's lived proof that you don't have to choose between the two.