Earlier this year, I wrote a post called "A Skeptic's Guide to Faith," about finding a pinpoint of light in the darkness and following the path where it leads, a highly personal story about taking my own doubt seriously. It's an arena where facts are sparse and opinions are aplenty, so I was terrified to publish it, but shared because it became impossible to talk about things like confidence and fulfillment without addressing that experience.
It's been my most shared post this year, one that I think resonated with so many because it's a very human struggle. (If you haven't read it, start here before reading this post.)
Establishing a foundation of faith in something beyond all of this human-created bullsh*t and exploring my relationship with and connection to that entity (which I call God and Being, maybe you call it something else, like Universal Intelligence) were two distinct processes for me. Finding faith was an intellectual journey for me. Applying that faith to my daily life was the opposite, a process where I relied almost wholly on intuition and looking inward. It's what my Catholic teachers meant when they talked about developing a personal relationship with God: spirituality is recognizing and experiencing a connection to God and Being within yourself.
It's a connection that I could not recognize or experience when I was in a space of judgment, fear and negativity, but is now the biggest source of peace and confidence in my life. While I believe you can only explore your spirituality by going inside of yourself, I did a lot of searching and reading on this topic specifically. These are the frameworks that helped me, and that you may find useful as well.
#1 Find a conceptual visual for God and Being that resonates with you
In The Shack, a book about tragedy confronting eternity, William P. Young illuminated his personal visual for what a nebulous collection of souls connected to God and Being might look like. It's been seared in my brain ever since, a vivid spiritual image for a concept I learned in several different books on both theology and quantum physics:
Imagine all of Being as an ocean, where every soul is a droplet of that ocean. The same principles and particles of the ocean are within each droplet. The idea of a human as a microcosm of God is covered in a lot of religious texts, as well. For me, I think of "all that is seen and unseen" as Being, pulsing around me wherever I go, myself a microcosm of it, and God part of Being but also a distinct entity beyond it, the source of all love, truth, peace, goodness and joy. (Are you with me, or is this too out there in no-facts-land?)
#2 Envision what your direct connection to God looks like
For me, I like to imagine there is an invisible string at the top of my head that is connected directly to God, one of billions of strings connected to every human head on Earth that allows us to hear and speak directly to the source. It's an idea that I learned from reading about Hindu meditation practices, and their belief that we each possess a chakra at the crown of our heads that is our connection to divinity. The crown chakra is a portal through which the life energy enters our body, one that can become blocked.
#3 Understand what has been blocking your connection
So if you're with me on this string connection to God concept, it's helpful to understand what blocks it. I believe that we're born with that direct connection, but we lose our ability to intuitively use it to listen or ask for guidance. Richard Rohr talks about this in his book The Divine Dance, calling our direct connection to God "a free flow" and asks, "Do you allow the free flow or stop it with judgment, negativity and fear?"
(Just to make sure you got that, there are just three things that block our intuitive ability: judgment, negativity and fear.)
Before we can use our string, we have to overcome our impulse to give in to fear-based thinking. For me, it was impossible to tune in to my spirituality when I was shrouded in negativity. It's a daily process to check those thoughts in my own mind, so that I can keep my connection clear. (And I’ve found it’s a positive reinforcement cycle, that once you’ve started a habit of using your connection, it’s easier to keep those thoughts from triggering.)
#4 Learn how to use your connection to ask for and receive guidance
This is highly personal, there's no right or wrong way to pray, to meditate, to commune with God, but I learned how to do it by taking advice from others, so sharing in case it's helpful to you. And I know this sounds woowoo, but stay with me.
When I was first starting to solidify my understanding of spiritual concepts and practices, I felt awkward about trying it for myself. Aside from kneeling at my bed and reciting prayers as a child, I had no experience with spiritual communication.
While I understood that this direct connection to God was mine to use in whatever way felt most natural, nothing really felt natural. I was also in a place in life where I had a lot of existential questions. For whatever reason, it felt right at the time to establish communication with God by sitting on my couch early in the morning with my journal and pen, and asked a set of open ended questions relevant to my life at the time:
Who would you have me be?
Where would you have me go?
What would you have me do?
As I sat there, I simply paid attention to the thoughts that came into my mind after asking each question. At first, my thoughts were a jumble, but a really clear, strong and peaceful message came to me for each one. I wrote them down. I did this the next morning, and the morning after that.
It gave me incredible peace that, after days on end, the same message resonated for each one:
Who would you have me be? "Yourself, exactly as you are now."
Where would you have me go? "Wherever you go, you are home."
What would you have me do? "Write."
The voice and phrasing was more loving and confident than any thought I had conjured on my own before doing this exercise. I cannot describe the level of peace and relief it gave me, lifting a cloud of uncertainty that had followed me around for years.
#5 Develop a daily practice of tuning in to your connection
Although I started with specific questions in my practice (call it prayer, meditation, whatever), it took me awhile to build it into a daily habit. For me, it's helpful to have some structure. Mine is pretty simple: I sit on my couch with coffee every morning, take out my journal, and pose an open-ended question to God. If I don't have something specific to ask, I use this: "What would you like me to know?" I stay quiet and pay attention to the first clear thoughts that come in to my mind, and write them down. Sometimes I have a specific question, and I follow the same process.
Then I spend time giving thanks, writing down five things that I am grateful for each day, and say a small prayer (usually phrased as an intention, like "Please help so-and-so with this struggle" for someone who needs it). Lately, it's been a set of intentions for people struggling with the global crisis.
It starts my day with such peace and clarity, even if I wake up with anxiety or irritation.
Spirituality is a lifelong journey, one where you are always exploring and learning more. If you're well down your path, I'm sure this is pretty elementary to you. However, I think this is an arena that so many people are going to be exploring more deeply for themselves as we start to process our path forward on the other side of this grim time in the world, so wanted to share what helped me get started.
Ok, that’s it for now. If you read all the way to the end, congratulations on reaching enlightenment! Just kidding, but I do hope you found something useful in this post. I'd love your thoughts in the comments if you care to share. Also, if you have practices or books that helped you, please share those too because I’m sure other readers would appreciate it.
Love,
Colleen