What was my path to get here—to a place of wholeness—today?
What a loaded question, right?
Beautifully so, I’d say.
A co-facilitator and I posed this question at the opening of our intergenerational, interfaith women’s group when we were facilitating a session about “Spirituality and You” last fall.
We meant to stir up a conversation of breadth and depth. And the answers about paths to get here ranged from the commute to the pub to one’s religious upbringing.
I went with the easy out, a brief summary about how my bandwidth had shifted in the previous few months allowing the opportunity to step up and lead the session. In truth, I wasn’t sure how long it would take to truly answer that question.
Definitely not a minute. Perhaps I can sum it up in five blog posts?
In this blog series, “Discovering Wholeness,” I’ll attempt to distill 15 years of searching, growing, becoming into five posts, including this one, about my spiritual path to get here today.
What was my spiritual path to get here today?
Here:
- Where I deeply know my inherent dignity and worth.
- Where I forgive and embrace my imperfections.
- Where I eagerly spend time with myself and with what (not who) I know as God.
- Where I also deeply know it’s not about me.
- Where my purpose is first and foremost our purpose: to live in harmony with nature.
- Where living each day to the fullest means being as true as possible, not doing as much as possible.
- Where I bring loving attention to everything I do.
- Where I can’t imagine going another day not living this way.
Do I have it all figured out? Oh heck no. Far from it.
Turning Inside Out
But I have it figured out. I have peeled back every layer of the onion until I got to the kernel of my core where my deepest fears and deepest desires reside. And I stayed there, getting to know them.
I turned myself inside out as I had the sense I needed to do. And then I started anew.
Technically the same person—the same fears, the same desires, the same weaknesses, the same strengths. But, with a totally different relationship to the world.
A relationship grounded in the sense of a personal spirituality “cultivated, nourished, and harvested” along the way.
Most simply, spirituality refers to direct experience of the sacred, said Dr. Roger Walsh, a longtime practitioner and professor of philosophy, anthropology and psychiatry who wrote Essential Spirituality in 1999 about seven common practices of the world’s great spiritual traditions for recognizing the sacred and divine that exist both within and around us.
He describes spiritual practices as those that help us experience the sacred —that which is most central and essential to our lives — for ourselves.
Another scientist, and renown atheist, Dr. Carl Sagan said, “Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality. When we recognize our place in an immensity of light years and in the passage of ages, when we grasp the intricacy, beauty and subtlety of life, then that soaring feeling, that sense of elation and humility combined is surely spiritual.”
And as Michael Singer, author and devoted buddhist practitioner, says in The Untethered Soul:
“When you contemplate the nature of self [and soul], you are meditating…It is a return to the root of your being, the simple awareness of being aware…You woke up. That is spirituality. That is the nature of self. That is who you are.”
And so, personal spirituality, or “a religion of one’s own” as former monk Thomas Moore calls it, forms “the fundamental precepts by which we guide our life are cultivated, nourished, and harvested in time,” as poet Wendell Berry says.
Understanding, Accepting, Releasing
A year ago there was a series of events starting around the Spring Equinox, including a fateful retreat, moving to a new cottage home, and a blessing hosted by my spiritual communities around Beltane (a mid-spring celebration of abundance on May 1).
It was the beginning of the end. In the very best way possible.
I sensed that my journey over a decade plus years of active searching, growing, becoming was coming to a close.
Perhaps it culminated due to the position of Jupiter in transit?
As my astrologer friend tells me, that’s a rare element on a chart that represents a process of rebirth within one’s lifetime.
Perhaps the journey was part of my soul’s mission in order to get to the life’s work I’m really here to do?
For me, the path to get here today is a braid of spiritual, entrepreneurial and personal experiences. Intertwined, not separate.
The details and results of the experiences are extensive and unique to me. Tales for the next posts in this series.
While I do believe many lessons must be learned alongside others — partners, children, communities, students, teachers — ultimately our learning journeys are our own.
From our intuition and wisdom to deeper places within.
Perhaps that’s why sometimes it takes us many times to finally grasp a certain lesson?
Even as others provide sound guidance. Even as our inner teacher provides sound guidance.
Until it’s heard, understood, accepted and released, it remains unlearned. At least that’s been my experience.
Universal Lessons, Unique Path
The practices and tools I’ve discovered and absorbed into my “spiritual portfolio” as I like to call it are also extensive, so I’ll also save specifics on those for later posts.
But the process—the process of using these practices and tools throughout all these learning journeys along my spiritual path—isn’t that unique to me?
Me and the other millions of seekers and students and teachers in the world?
Well, I’ll leave that as a rhetorical question.
So, here’s the story of my journey to get here. Here’s my story of my journey. Which may or may not be the truth.
It’s the truth as I sense it, now, in my head, my heart and my gut, based on the information I currently have.
This is the first in a five-part series about my spiritual path and how I came to live from a place of wholeness into a space of sufficiency. Raised with New Age roots and inspired by world religions and native cultures alike, I have built a portfolio of interfaith spiritual practices that sustain me. I currently worship in nature and at a Unitarian Universalist church, find fellowship with the Sacred Fire Community and Bras, Bibles & Brews, and have active personal practices including Sabbath, yoga, prayer and seasonal retreats.
[To be continued]