Looking back

Looking back at my spiritual journey, at first slowly winding uphill through life’s challenges, then resting in blissful meditation at the lake at the mountaintop, then downhill again with more lessons and tests and resisting or following the flow of the river which guided me to share, I see two distinct phases.

One phase was the uphill part of the journey. It was not only tumultuous and painful, but also shattered my worldview at every turn of the road. It was a mixture of painful letting go of my former self-image, but at the same time joyfully embracing a new worldview. The pain of the rheumatoid arthritis sucked, but on the other hand it was great to learn about the wonders of homeopathy. Likewise, it was very painful to let go of my self-image as the engaged and successful employee, but how cool to discover that my thoughts can influence the weather! I would describe the uphill phase as letting go of what was before and as a crushing of my self-will. Eventually, this uphill way culminated in coming to see myself as awareness at the mountaintop.

The next distinct phase was going downhill again. This time, there was a new boss. After my self-will had been crushed, there was divine guidance leading me what to do. The role of my human self was just to observe, record, contemplate, and accept the lessons that showed up and to stop making such a fuss when I was guided to write and share.

At the beginning of the unitive life

Early in my journey when I came into contact with the spiritual literature, I was intrigued by accounts of people who had permanently lost their sense of being a separate self. Not just temporarily in a blissful meditation experience but permanently (as described in the books of Suzanne Segal and Bernadette Roberts, for example). Could I get there too? And how? And what would it feel like? I was very interested and determined to find enlightenment.

But along the way, I realized that this is not something that can be forced. The very thing that strives for enlightenment (the separate self) would be annihilated in the process. So, I gave up on that ‘project’ and thought it would be best if I just followed what I was guided to do, namely write and share my story. And that is what I did.

The path I have traveled represents barely coming to the beginning of the unitive life where one acts guided by divine will. And since I still have not only a separate sense of self but also a lot of ego running the show, I want to note just for perspective that, on a general map of the journey, enlightenment (or the permanent loss of the sense of being a separate self) is still many miles down the road so to speak.

The journey is by no means finished, but I have received signs from my guidance that I should finish part 1 of this online-book project here at this point.

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At this point, I want to say a big thank you to all my dear readers who have followed my journey up to this point. I appreciate your views, likes, and comments.

I hope you got something out of my story for yourself. Maybe my sharing made you think about your own life’s journey. You could ponder the following questions, for example:

1.) Did you go through challenges?
And if yes, how did you cope?
What did you learn from it?

2.) Did you have worldview shifts along the way and what were they?
And what triggered these shifts?

3.) Do you feel guided, maybe by an inner urge or by nudges from beyond the veil to take your life into a new direction?
If yes, in what direction?
In what ways does guidance come to you?
How do you react to guidance? Are you cooperative? Or resistant? Or maybe impatiently rushing ahead faster than the river flows?

4.) If you had to explain your journey to someone else, would you choose a metaphor and if so what kind of metaphor?

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This post is part of a series about my spiritual journey (table of contents).

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