It begins with a skeptic.
Actually, it began before that, as all stories do, but we’ll just start there.
She proclaimed, ‘Pfft, God is just a crutch,’ and ‘If I can’t see it, it doesn’t make sense, and therefore it probably doesn’t exist,’ and ‘Yes, it’s fiiiine and fair enough that you have your own opinions, they’re just wrong and I think you’re kinda dim,’ but that last one she only proclaimed in her head because she didn’t want to be so obviously obnoxious.
One day she got the message that trying so goddamned hard at life wasn’t working, so she went searching for answers. Answers about what the fuck to do instead of live the rest of her life as a depressed, hopeless mess of a person inside and ‘fine’ on the outside. She was a reasonably optimistic sort and couldn’t put up with such discomfort for too long.
She became fascinated by the words ‘intuition’ and ‘soul’.
They fascinated her much more than God and religiosity, even though they were all equally abstract.
Finally, she had discovered a system for figuring out what she wanted! In a way that didn’t seem grinding and gross! And all that was left to do was learn everything she could about these things and then put it into practice. She somehow knew that she had both intuition and soul, and that if she could just get the gunk of conditioning out of the way, she would be in touch with them and always know what to do so that she could be happy and fulfilled.
This didn’t seem too far-fetched to her, because there were lots of smart fellows who lived life in an intuitive, soul-based way. But at home, she was still met with pushes to conform. She needed to be “more realistic”. She needed to “just get it done” rather than waste time intuiting and figuring herself out. The pushes meant she spent more time dealing with the self-doubt than practising using her intuition.
But they also taught her to strengthen her faith in herself and what she knew to be true, and for that she was grateful. But no less judgemental of the one she left behind. She considered him ‘stifling’, ‘narrow-minded’ and ‘controlling’.
Eventually, she went rogue and left her home, despite the familiar, but discordant, warmth of it. She felt guilty and sad, but also an overwhelming sense of release.
It felt to her that the skies had opened. She was free to be herself and to learn as she wanted – and she was desperate to learn about life and the human condition.
She learned to play and pause. She learned to listen to people, to really listen, which she wasn’t capable of all the time, but understood more about how to do it. She learned to counsel from a wise and experienced teacher. She learned that she could heal herself, and that she could heal others, too, if they were willing, when her fear and her ego didn’t get in the way.
She began to see herself as a deeply spiritual person because she would have comforting, written conversations with something that was bigger and wiser than her and she trusted every word, even when they challenged her.
She felt shiny and guided and confident that everything was and would be okay.
Until she leaned so deep into her spirituality that she got lost again.
It was like a part of her said, ‘Right then, you’ve passed that level, now we’re going to up the stakes! Are you on board?!’
And she said, ‘No. What? No! I like it here!’
And that part of her said ‘Great, let’s go!’ and dragged her into the rabbit hole anyway.
And as she tumbled, she shouted, ‘Hey, aren’t you going to tell me what I’m in for here? What stakes? What stakes?!‘
When she got to the new, strange land, she threw herself in and made the best of it, pretending she knew what she was doing when she didn’t, and finding moments of solace when she had some small idea what was going on.
Again, she found herself challenged with the task of trusting herself despite what seemed to be pushes to be different.
Only it was more difficult this time, because now it seemed her ideas and practices were not quite so commonly accepted. Those who say ‘follow your heart’ can still turn up their noses when your heart is directing you to converse with a tree, for example. ‘Follow your heart, but only if it makes rational sense, like taking up knitting or starting a business, and only if you don’t make me look ridiculous for knowing you’.
Really, she was struggling with her own thoughts that kept her from even sharing this unorthodox side of her experience without immediately dismissing it as foolish. ‘Follow your heart but make sense, seem acceptably normal, and don’t let anyone know how completely silly you are.’
It’s one thing to have a play with oracle cards, it’s another to take their uncanny advice seriously, to know and feel that they’re guiding you with more love and acceptance than you knew existed.
It’s one thing to believe in god, it’s quite another to know that angels actually heal you if you ask them nicely enough, and if you’re truly ready and willing.
It’s one thing to be open to the possibility of an afterlife, it’s another to have such a profound experience with a spirit that you can’t convince yourself that you’ve made it up.
It’s one thing to say ‘Souls are eternal and everything is connected’, and it’s another to have actually experienced this eternity, this vastness, and to name it what it is.
It’s one thing to follow the science that everything is made of vibrating energy and nothing is as static as we percieve it to be, it’s another to feel, use and play with this energy in daily life.
All she wanted was to know what to do with her life and to be happy. All she wanted was to have some fun with her imagination, to see if it could help her. And in that seeming harmlessness, she had opened her door wide to immortality, the paranormal and the superhuman, and other shit that people get straight-jacketed for.
She went on delving into her imagination and intuition in private, sharing only bits and pieces with friends, but often it felt like a shameful secret.
Her soul did not want her to keep this to herself. It felt like self-rejection and limited her freedom to be herself.
First, her body gave her signals on what to do. She felt drained of energy, became emotional and fragile, wanting to stay in bed and do nothing. That didn’t get the message across because she didn’t understand what it meant.
Then, her soul resorted to more drastic measures.
Finally, she got the picture. She opened her mouth and the truths she was afraid of tumbled out in a frantic, clumsy fashion. For each word she shared, she felt lighter. It was as though she carried the secrets around on her back, and as she dropped them, she was able to move more freely. The joy of freedom filled her.
And she realised that The One She Left Behind was not the stifling, narrow-minded, controlling one. She was. There was a part of her working very diligently to keep her small and safe, to keep those unacceptable parts locked away, to be more rational and realistic and productive.
She had ignored his ‘I believe in you’s and his ‘That wouldn’t work for me but I can see it works for you’. She couldn’t even remember what he had said that was discouraging, probably because she wasn’t actually paying attention to his words, but to her own insecurities.
Other insecurities remain in her backpack of secrets.
She is simultaneously letting go of who she has learned she must be and clutching it desperately. She is both courageous and fearful, seeing people as they really are and seeing her projected self-doubts.
The thing is, self-doubts are infinite, so stepping into freedom and authenticity is a life’s work. That joyful, light feeling we experience in letting a secret fall away and heal is the same joy and lightness we will feel ten years from now, when we are more comfortable with who we are, yet still have fears to shed.
‘Don’t let who you have not yet become get in the way of what today has to give and teach you,’ she says. ‘It’s as beautiful here as it’s ever going to be.’
