Emotions on the spiritual journey (part 1/2)

What struck me particularly about my spiritual journey was the variety and intensity of emotions which came up. Sometimes the emotions were so strong that I thought I could no longer endure them. And at other times, I felt something but was not able to label the emotion.

Walking the winding road uphill on my journey, where every turn of the road represented a challenge I was facing at the time, I experienced many emotions and feeling states which are typical for challenging situations, especially helplessness and despair, overwhelm, anger, but I also experienced the feeling of strong intent and determination to deal with the external circumstances in order to improve them so that I could then change my emotional state. That was sometimes a successful approach, but not always. Sometimes, I had to find my inner peace first and then attend to the uncomfortable circumstances.

Along the journey, there was a feeling of homesickness. A strong yearning for that place of Home which is my birthright. After coming into contact with the inner peace from the Awareness Watching Awareness meditation, I felt like hanging out in that peace forever and not wanting to come back to engage with life. Somewhat like NDEers may experience a reluctance to come back into the body after they had been in the bliss of the unconditional love of heaven.

Then there was the collapse of meaning. My previously held goals, especially regarding work, were not valid anymore. And the 3d realm was not our real home anyway. So why should I bother to engage with anything here? What was the point? I sank into a calm and disengaged state with very little motivation to do anything. In addition, I was observing my body as if it was a space suit for interacting with this virtual reality game. Everything seemed distant and unreal.

Being in the witness place gave rise to suppressed stuff coming up which was mainly a feeling of strong guilt without any apparent cause.

Added to the mix of these unpleasant emotions was often a feeling of confusion. Was this normal? Does everyone on the path go through this? Why do I feel such a strong guilt without any discernible reason? How do I deal with these emotions?

But there were not only the unpleasant emotions mentioned above. There was also inner peace and joy found from looking back at awareness itself. There was awe, wonder, and gratitude for the synchronicities and little miracles which happened. I felt safe and supported, developed heightened intuition and also a greater sense of fearlessness when it came to setting boundaries.

So, for me this was definitely not a continuous climbing up the vibrational ladder as some texts about this journey would suggest. But it was a frequently changing mix of a wide variety of partly very intense emotional states. In my experience, it was definitely not just about peace and bliss.

The next post about this topic is here: Emotions on the spiritual journey (part 2/2)

Challenges and benefits of sharing my story

I would like to share my view about the challenges and benefits of sharing my story.

On the challenging side, there was the fear of making myself so vulnerable and in danger of receiving judgment. That was a big one.

And what was my message and who was my target group? For whom was I going to write? This would affect what my message was and how I packaged it. Maybe my target group were not my fellow travelers on WordPress (who wore the T-shirt ‘been there, done that’). But maybe I should address more the random visitor to my blog who found me via a search of the terms ‘Dark Night of the Soul’?

Then there was the more practical challenge of finding an underlying theme or connecting thread in my journey and choosing a metaphor for telling my story.

And of course, there were countless hours of reviewing old journals and taking notes of which stories would convey the message best and trying to organize this stuff into a readable form. After all, I am not a professional writer.

And even after that, I found myself in a struggle again over some stories. Was it okay to share them? Was it not too personal? What if other people were involved, family members or not. Was it okay to share stories about difficult relationships, too? How do I protect their anonymity?

Now about the benefits.
In Campbell’s Hero’s Journey, the hero returns after his long and lonely adventure and brings a gift. So, returning with some gift is built into the blueprint of this journey. While I could not channel or heal or see auras or whatever, I decided that my gift would be sharing my story and sharing my insights about this journey. That was my intent: to share a travel report of my journey for fellow travelers.

Writing down my own story in a form that could be shared with readers (and not just in my journal) forced me to decide on what was my truth. In my journal, I could flip-flop back and forth between my ego’s perspective and my higher self’s perspective. But on my blog, I didn’t want to write anything which I would regret later. So, I forced myself to aim for that higher perspective when sharing things. Which did not mean that I had to pretend that all was seen through rose-colored glasses all the time. Quite the opposite. I decided I would authentically share even those feelings which were not spiritually correct even at the danger of receiving judgment for it. So, trying to find the higher perspective when sharing difficult events helped me to process these things. In that respect, finding a narrative to make sense of my life in retrospect had a healing effect.

I hope there has also been a benefit for others from reading my experiences. I always found that messages from other spiritual authors stuck in my memory best when there were transported via a story. And not only via a parable, but with an authentic real-life experience. These were the stories and messages I would remember best. And I aimed to share my messages in the same way.

Last but not least, while writing itself was often laborious, in the end I often felt satisfaction after having birthed a well-written text.

Soul alignment and the happy dream

The spiritual journey as I experienced it had two parts, A) getting to know who I was (creative consciousness) and then B) coming into alignment with what guidance asked me to do.

I think of this process as being connected to my higher self with a string with much slack in the beginning which allowed me to exercise my free will without severe consequences. As my journey progressed, the string got shorter and shorter and choosing to go against guidance was felt like an uncomfortable jerking sensation. If that higher power told me to take a right turn, but I insisted to take a left turn on the road of life, then I would get more and more immediate unpleasant feedback. So, I still did have free will, but using it against guidance became more and more uncomfortable.

As I mentioned in the previous post, each piece of guidance which I got (like writing a draft for a book, setting up this blog, doing my first youtube video) would put me on a fork at the road. There was a way sign pointing to the right which said ‘Follow Divine Guidance, but there is Fear’, and a way sign pointing to the left with ‘Avoidance and the Easy Way’. I thought that ‘Fear’ didn’t sound attractive, therefore I would rather choose ‘Avoidance’ because it sounded like the easier way.

However, I came to realize that not only did this left-hand path never lead anywhere, but it would lead me in a circle back to the decision fork over and over again. And also, it was not just the easy way, but even though there was no fear, there were other unpleasant emotions, namely strong guilt and then all sorts of weird stuff happening, like sickness and things breaking down in the household.

Eventually, I had to take the leap and surrender, over and over again.

So, what did I learn from that?

One bottom-line, key takeaway is that it is not enough to just rest happily in the bliss of looking back at awareness itself. Awareness is not just the silent, detached witness. But the void of awareness is a place from which direction comes. This place has a will, the divine will. It directs us. And resistance is possible, but it hurts more and more the closer the connection is.

This void of awareness is not just the detached witness, but dipping my big toe into it, I felt that there was a current like in a river. And like in a river, it is possible to exercise free will and insist on swimming upstream. Or grabbing onto some branches at the riverbank. But swimming upstream will only exhaust us. And holding onto branches at the riverbank will leave us bruised when the current moves by very fast.

Recently, I saw the movie Evan Almighty which is not only entertaining and funny but also shows many of the features of this process of coming into alignment. Evan, a politician with high career aspirations, is suddenly told by a mysterious guy who introduces himself as God to build an ark. But Evan does not see the point and does not want to abandon his career and make a fool of himself. So, he resists until resisting becomes more and more difficult because things keep happening that reveal to him that this is indeed the path he must take even if he does not like it.

When I read the description of the movie after watching it, I realized that Evan had actually prayed to God to have the opportunity to change the world, a fact which I overlooked when seeing the movie. But he meant to change the world with his political party, not with the ark. But the story with the ark seemed like an answer to his prayer nevertheless.

I liked the movie because it covers a lot of the features of the process like the persistent and steadily increasing guidance Evan gets as well as his thoughts ‘Am I making this up? Maybe I am just crazy. What will other people think? I don’t want to make a fool of myself. How on earth do I share this with my spouse? Can’t I just pretend to still be the same old me?’

So, coming into alignment has a certain inevitability about it.

Even though coming into alignment may have happened after overcoming a lot of resistance, isn’t there something good to say about alignment? And yes, there is. This state does not only have the features which appeared for me after choosing inner peace above anger, which are faster manifestations, new intuitive abilities, and things falling more into place in general. But on top of that, there is a renewed sense of purpose.

Being in alignment is still like a dream, because I still think that I am the person-avatar carrying out a mission in this virtual reality game rather than living in constant nondual awareness.

But it is a happy dream.

Guidance on the spiritual journey

After awakening, guidance kicked in. It was there already during the early time on my path when I first became interested in metaphysical literature. But it came in more strongly after awakening to awareness.

What was a surprise to me was that guidance came in many different forms. Due to the channeled literature I had read, I was familiar with the notion that there was guidance at all, but I thought it would mainly come in as an inner voice which some people were gifted enough to hear.

But guidance came in many different forms. It could be on my inside as an inner voice (sometimes audible, but mostly silent), as visions, songs in the head, dreams, inner knowing, inner urge, physical sensations (like tingling or muscle twitching), or illness.

It could also show up in the outer world as words, pictures, numbers, animals, patterns of events (with literal or metaphorical meaning). It could show up uninvited and spontaneously, or it could show up after asking for an answer and then drawing a tarot card, opening a book at random, or getting a psychic reading.

In 2017, I gave a one-time, in-person workshop around this topic and afterwards put the content into a script which you can download here if you are interested in more details about the topic of divine guidance.

When guidance came in, I realized what a powerful force there was behind the veil which would point me into a certain direction.

Resistance

I often struggled with resistance to this force. Why wasn’t I free to decide any more what I was going to do? Or, well, I still did have free will. But if I exercised my free will and went against what I had been told, then there would be unpleasant consequences like weird stuff happening in the house or I would get sick. So, that was not really free will, I thought, if exercising my right to say ‘no’ meant that I couldn’t breathe properly anymore.

Manifesting excuses

I realized another interesting phenomenon around the resistance. The resistance would often result in procrastination. And in turn, this would somehow manifest little distractions all over the place. It was as if when I procrastinated, then suddenly many little, annoying things were provided as excuses so that my procrastination was justified (because I had to deal with these annoying little things).

Loss of personal will

My resistance to the guidance had several different causes. Fear of being vulnerable and being judged was one of them.

But another important one was the loss of my personal will. I had lost my drive and motivation to do anything. If I was just content in awareness with life as it was, why do anything? If this body and this life was just something like a virtual reality game, then what was the point of pushing my avatar up to the next level? Why bother? I was never into games anyway, neither board games nor computer games. While I was good at setting intentions and pursuing them with intense focus, effort, and also success before awakening, afterwards I fell into a blissful relaxation which was bordering on apathy. I had to learn to muster up the will to set an intent again and to pursue it with effort and discipline as usual.

The decision fork and procrastination loops

Each piece of guidance which I got (like writing a draft for a book, setting up this blog, doing my first youtube video) would put me on a fork at the road. There was a way sign pointing to the right which said ‘Follow Divine Guidance, but there is Fear’, and a way sign pointing to the left with ‘Avoidance and the Easy Way’.

I thought that ‘Fear’ didn’t sound attractive, therefore I would rather choose ‘Avoidance and the Easy Way’.
However, I came to realize that not only did this left-hand path never lead anywhere, but it would lead me in a circle back to the decision fork over and over again. And also, it was not just the easy way, but even though there was no fear, there were other unpleasant emotions, namely strong guilt.

Eventually, I had to take the leap and surrender, over and over again.