Mindfulness
Despite the angel’s kiss I didn’t suddenly declare myself spiritual. After the power and glory of that moment, I tried to go back to my life as a software engineer. A life that did not have any room for spirit in it. Even though I now had overwhelming evidence of spirit, it was just too much. I packed it into a box and stacked it way, way back in the closet of my mind. But bits and pieces of it kept on leaking out. And then more. I knew on some level that I was not an atheist any more but I didn’t really want to think about it. It was too much. Over many years (this would have been greatly speed up if I had just done the process consciously) occasionally my spiritual intuitions came up. And eventually I just started to allow them. Maybe not for very long, but I started to just allow that I had now another way of looking at the world. Then I let myself start to investigate what these spiritual longings were all about, and the fear that came up with them.
What I needed most was to really trust myself. To trust that this new way of looking at the world was just as valid as anything my rational mind came up with. To really trust that I loved myself way too much to ever forsake the rational/logical side of myself. Even as I started to venture off into these new worlds of spirit, I promised myself over and over that I would not forsake the other parts of me. This is the nurture/need step of RAIN. It was so necessary. It let me start to integrate this whole new world of spirit. I accepted that I am extremely intuitive and can at times sense people’s energy. I started to integrate this spiritual side of me. Really let myself bring both spirit and rationality into how I decide if something is true. And I realized that I did not have to choose between being a rationalist or someone having a spiritual awakening. I was both and more. And I started to get curious, just how big am I? Just how big is everyone if they only knew? And then I go back to gratitude for finding all of this. What a gift. What a gift all of this is. I’m so very grateful.
Waking up
Finding your connection with spirit, is a very personal thing. No one can do it for you. You first need to be open to the possibility of spirit even existing. If your heart and mind are firmly closed to it then it won’t happen. So the very first step is to simply start to notice. When does Spirit touch you? It usually is nothing so dramatic as an angel’s kiss. Usually it is much more subtle, but it is none the less just as powerful. We think that maybe Spirit only shows up in a church or certain rituals, but in fact it can show up anywhere. Maybe we feel it when we look up and up at that tree. Maybe we feel it when we fully love our child. Maybe we feel it when we dance around and around in a circle with others. It is there, it is always there. The trick is to remember. Oh! Silly me! I fell asleep again and forgot that everything is love. How could I possibly forget something as important as that!?!. And yet we do. Over and over. Only to wake up once again.
The Medicine path
As I deepened into my spiritual awakening it felt so amazing that I wanted to share. I wanted others to also find this place of joy inside themselves. But how? Religion works for some, but not for others. We need something else. And then I did my first guided mushroom trip. Yes. This. Spirit is something you have to actually experience. Feel it in your beating heart that we are not lonely, separate beings making our sad way through life. Feel it in your bones that we are one and that love is an ocean waiting, begging to be let in. Not just pretty words living just in your head, but as much a part of you as your skin.
There has been a lot written about psychedelics lately, but, again, I particularly recommend this book:
This book charts the author’s journey from post rational (Green) to self discovery (Yellow). But what is perfect for my Blue purposes here is that he explains to people who are firmly rooted in rationality, the worlds of magic and the sublime. Because make no mistake — our internal worlds are vastly larger than most of us realize. It is a myth that we use only 20% of our brains, but it is absolutely true that we mostly live in much less than 20% of what is available to experience.
So if you are at all open to this path, I strongly recommend that you find a trusted guide and try doing a plant medicine sitting. Before going straight into psychedelics, however, make sure that you have done some work on your traumas. If you jump straight into a psychedelic experience with untreated, unrecognized trauma it will likely be a very challenging trip. It could even make things worse. That is why my school’s protocol was to do mdma first. It was both to build up trust with the guide as well as to find and work with all the traumas that might be present. Unfortunately mdma is contraindicated in many cases, and some people understandably only feel comfortable with plant medicine. In that case, just use one of the other trauma methods, and when you do start with plant medicine, start with a low dose.
Don’t expect a mystical experience right away. It could happen, but that may or may not be what your internal guides will choose to show you. Quite likely you have lots of other unfinished business to handle. Your internal guides will show you that. That was the case for me. So maybe you won’t go straight to spiritual enlightenment. What will happen, however, is that you will directly experience a much bigger, richer world than what we live in day to day. A world with mystery and wonder. We do a pretty good job of explaining the universe outside us with science. But it is the universe within that we are exploring here. The very first step to spirituality is to encounter and be humbled by this internal universe.