F*ck trying to give Spirit a body.
what it looked like to walk into the void and find hope.
So, here’s the thing: I am a mind-body practitioner.
Currently in school for a master’s in mind-body medicine and pursuing my international accreditation in integrative wellness coaching. I am working towards creating an evidence-based, well-designed, and well-informed space to do meaningful work helping people, especially women with chronic illnesses, reach their highest potential.
And that paragraph feels completely wrong.
It is 100% true and yet, feels like it encompasses nothing of substance.
Even writing it felt stiff, irritating, and inaccurate.
because that factual account is only but one small sliver of this lifelong journey I have found myself walking. That introduction is the structure, the safety, the guardrails.
All the things that feel “right” and acceptable.
But there is something so much messier and real that is missing, and honestly has been missing from much of what I share and talk about nowadays.
This feeling came when I recently took a values assessment through the VIA Institute of Character, and to my surprise, Spirituality ranked #1 among the 24 values in my results.
A simple assessment I casually took while listening to a lecture on Zoom had me pause, think, journal, contemplate, and analyze over it for over a week.
Turning it over and over and over again in my mind and journal.
Turning and turning all because there was a part of me that wasn’t sure, given my journey so far, that it was ever possible for spirituality to feel that intimately close ever again.
Shifting from an all-consuming identity within the modern christian church since birth to a more vast and experimental delve into mysticism1 in the past 7 years definitely left me disconnected to the idea in many ways.
You see, when I left the church and entered the grey void of “not knowing,” a big part of me gave up the idea that I could ever be as spiritual as I had been in my youth.
The days of being deep in prayer throughout the week, leading multiple small groups, turning to the big guy in the sky for all my answers and guidance, and a stream of constant study, felt so far from me.
And when I left, there was this gut-wrenching belief that no path was richer in connection than the one I was leaving behind, and I mourned that.
I mourned the ease of “having answers,” people to confide in at all hours, and Sunday potlucks.
& at the time, I struggled with the very real possibility that the “hell” I was so intimately familiar with would be waiting for me at the end of the choice to follow something different.
But even with the threat of damnation and loneliness, I mourned far more for the harm I was witnessing unfold before my eyes.
Hell didn’t feel as scary as the pain I could see in front of me.
I watched as the church so adamantly fought, and continues to fight,
for the same exact systems of fear, power struggles, control, war, and corruption that drove the cross into the ground for Christ to bleed upon.
And it broke me.
With a great and deep divide in my chest, it felt as if I parted with Spirit.
& I parted with prayer.
My greatest gift.
My oldest ally.
And I wept.
But oh, how grateful we should be for the forgiving nature of Spirit,
whether within the bounds of religion or to spite them, one cannot part.
One can ignore, denounce, avoid, shame, and repress,
but one cannot sustain a parting of the Spirit.
That is why it is not simply mind-body, but, as with god, three in one: mind-body-spirit.
I struggle even now to use the written word to encapsulate an essence that transcends human understanding, but for the sake of trying,
Spirit is everythingness. It’s all around, it’s all within, it’s all without.
The Mycelium Network2 that connects everything to everything.
And at this point, I hope I haven’t lost you, because for me, Spirit often has a way of helping me get lost in it.
To abandon the helm of the ship I am so adamant to steer.
Spirit guides me, shakes me, holds me, illuminates me, and pulls me from my oneness into my everythingness.
& to be frank, fuck all with trying to give Spirit a body.
To try to trap it in our limited systems, power structures, and expectations.
Fuck trying to squeeze essence into a bottle to be mass-produced and sold.
Fuck it.
I don’t want to drown in the holy water of never-enoughness and always-too-muchness that rigid belief systems are so adamant in providing.
I want to swim in the rushing river of hope that exists in knowing that every moment of every timeline of every human life is a ripple across this vast and expansive universe.
That we all play an important role,
yet are so small a drop in the ocean that we should not concern ourselves with it.
That there is no brokenness, only humanness.
THAT is what has been missing.
This “secret” #1 value of mine that guides, inspires, molds, and refines every part of me and every choice. The topic and relationship I can never cease to find fascinating.
A complete detachment from needing spirituality to make sense or align with logic, even though it often does.
It shapes my practice, my person, my work so intrinsically that even when I state that it has felt like it has been “missing,” it’s been here the entire time.
In my bio on Substack, even,
“Deeply spiritual. Passionately rooted. Radically loving. You are welcome here.”
And as my practice forms and my work refines and my creativity shifts and my journey evolves, I trust so unshakably that when I stop trying to force the ship to the shore, Spirit will show me the vastness of the ocean and there I will find my drop of purpose in this boundless universe.
Namaste.
My VIA (top 8) Results
In my words, Mysticism is like being agnostic, but your idea of god is at least somewhat honed in on collectivism, humanism, and a belief that all beings can have direct and meaningful communion with “god” or source or whatever else helps you sleep at night.
Mushroom mycelium networks can be found just beneath the surface of all land mass - and this unifying force of nature carries an enormous responsibility. These vast cellular mycelial networks connect the root systems of plants and trees, create and transfer nutrients through the soil, and destroy invading pathogens that would otherwise harm thriving ecosystems. Mycelium is an immune system protecting habitats by nourishing a diverse succession of collaborating organisms that are continuously exchanging resources and information. Within these life-giving networks - just one cell wall thick - comes the power to steer entire ecosystems on their evolutionary path. - Read more here