Spiritual Bullshit

Dear G,

My spiritual journey has always been on the main stage of my life. From a very young age I knew exactly what was in my heart but as I looked around to find a box that my heart fit in I became discouraged. Everywhere I looked, every conversation I had left me frustrated and angry.

How is it that every belief system has such strong convictions that they are right, everyone else is wrong and only a selected few are loved? How could there be so many different standards to live by? I had a father who strongly believed all religion is bad. Religion is at the core of all war. I don't think he is wrong but I don't think he is right. Power and control in the name of religion are at the core. I had a mom who taught meditation and gave many people a spiritual connection my entire life. The two of them never found the common ground between what they believed. I agreed with both of them and often, at a very young age, had to show them their agreement. They couldn't hear behind me above all their own passion and emotion.

Where did I fit in all of this? The truth is in your heart! I wanted to scream. I wanted to teach. I wanted to show the world how stupid they were but I was too young. No one wanted to listen. Even when I decided to go to ministry school, The Sanctuary of Peace with Kathryn Barley, I was the youngest in the class. As we read and learned and discussed I felt like I was the least heard simply because of my age. Not only did I have few years on earth, my earth bound journey had been full of trauma and pain. While part of me still wanted to impart wisdom there was another side of me desperate to heal. I let the healing take over and absorbed all I could.

My spirituality never went away but it took a back seat after I graduated as an interfaith minister in the '90's. I was tired of the struggle to show people who I was. I didn't want to talk about it anymore. I thought I had gained inner confidence and I didn't need to scream or fight for what I believed. As an ordained minister and a Reiki master I performed weddings and healings. I didn't advertise or talk about who I was or what I could do or even what I believed. I listened a lot and if people found out (usually through my mother) that I had these gifts I would allow myself to use them. 

I just wanted to fit in. I was never going to find a religious box that I fit into so maybe I could find a basic box. So I settled. I found someone who I thought I could create a basic life with. I tried to create a white picket fence. I was a good wife with a good job and a middle class house.

I tried to live without Christmas. I tried to embrace Judaism. I thought it didn't really matter because I knew what I believed in my heart. I thought I was just creating new family traditions. It wasn't until I realized how embedded in my heart my own family traditions were that I started to feel the pain in denying who I was. Over the years when I tried to show a little about what I believed in my heart and my true religious beliefs I was met with put downs and emotional abuse.

SPIRITUAL BULLSHIT
SPIRITUAL BULLSHIT
SPIRITUAL BULLSHIT

I was punched in the face every time I wanted to emerge. What had I done? Where had I gone? I was so desperate to be basic I allowed myself to be buried. Part of me was actually starting to die. For years I looked for reasons to escape. I tried to rebuild myself. Every time I found someone to teach Reiki to or meditation to or even to perform a wedding ceremony. I was met with rolling eyes and ...

SPIRITUAL BULLSHIT

A lot led to my nervous breakdown. It was easy to talk about what was going on around me, other peoples shit that I took on as my own, the sexual abuse was even easier to disclose then my spiritual journey. Sometime in my 20's I stopped talking about it. When my family would talk about religion or spirit or who I was and what I could do I got angry. DO NOT SHARE MY HEART! ITS NOT YOURS TO SHARE! I still have a hard time being around them because they are embedded in our beliefs and they want to talk about our path constantly and I am still coming out of the closet. I know who I am now and I will let the world know. Please do not define me for me anymore. 

My nervous breakdown, while truly the scariest thing I had ever gone through was the best thing that could have happened to me. I needed to have all my fears surface so that I could walk through through them. I needed to prove to myself that I was stronger then my demons and I was brighter than the darkness. 

I was beat up emotionally, spiritually, sexually and physically. I was strangled until the point of loss of vision and then I was arrested for losing my shit and causing the hands of the beast to come close to killing me. The year after this night I spent a lot of time alone. I prayed, I wrote, I didn't go back to work. I started changing the way I spoke. I had to get my life back. I had to get me back. I started telling the people in my life I am changing. I am going to be happy with or without you. I am going to be me! I started looking in the mirror, looking at my eyes. It was time for me to rise.

Of course I lost a lot of people. These people I should have never let into my life anyway. I had attracted toxicity because I was a cesspool of misery and make believe.

Quickly my life started to "fall apart", no, what it really did was fall away. The layers of crap were being removed, I was shedding the fat. I was detoxing years and years of shit and by my 40th birthday I found my smile. 

This is the story in my book. This is the recovery I write about in my blog. These words, this life is my gift. Not everyone has to test their strength to find their smile but I did. I still don't fit into any box. I never will. I no longer will allow anyone to define me. I am okay with not having a box, I am proud of who I am  and the freedom I have without a box. 

My truth is love. Finding your primal heart, your god love inside is the only way to radiate love to the outside. 

I'm ready to share all of the gifts you provided me when I came to this life. I'm ready to teach love and manifesting a life of pure joy. All of my life has led me here and this is divine happiness.