For about four years now, I’ve been going through a spiritual reform. My faith has been uprooted, shattered, renovated, and refurbished. At the present moment, I’ve found a home in open belief. This may not be your path, but it has served me well. I have opened my heart and mind to new possibilities and miracles like never before. But it took a while to get here… this is my spiritual awakening story.
I went through a season of conviction and absolutes to one of questions and curiosity. And, a couple years ago, when I traveled to Israel on a 10-day guided tour for Christian college students (essentially the Christian edition of Birthright), everything boiled to the surface.
My Spiritual Awakening
Numbing Out
I went to Israel feeling distant from God and ashamed. I had spent the past 10+ years of my life cultivating a “good Christian girl” identity, only to find myself floundering for air. It was June of 2017, I had just graduated from one of the most prestigious universities in the country… I was also moving back home, the one thing I swore I would never do (what you resist really persists, huh?), to help my mother recover from a long overdue back surgery.
I had also spent most of the past year in relative seclusion, using thesis, job hunting, and my studies to avoid the fact that I felt lost and alone. I was trying my best to feel optimistic and positive, despite how anxious and fearful I was.
But, unlike the year before, I liked the solitude.
Sure, I had roommates, but I didn’t feel safe enough to be my full self. I didn’t understand why I couldn’t allow myself to just show up as exactly who I was, instead of the many personas I took on in different crowds. I didn’t trust anyone to receive the real me, so I squirreled away to tackle more impending questions like what I was going to do with my life and what my purpose was.
Somehow, finding me meaning of life made the list of daily drama traumas including: trying to finish pre-med courses (despite knowing I wasn’t going to medical school), writing a 130+ page thesis, getting my life together (aka losing weight and transforming into a hireable unicorn), and avoiding the emotional scars and wounds of my family that year, including the loss of my grandmother, which I neatly tucked away along with any and all fears of the potential loss of my own parents…
Releasing Identities & Surrendering to Your Knowing
By the time I arrived in Israel, I was like an emotional soup, everything was in my pot: joy, excitement, anticipation, openness, receptivity, fragility, fear, anger, resentment… everything seemed to be coming to a head, not least of which was the realization that my spiritual path was unfolding in unexpected and seriously inconvenient ways.
I had reached a somewhat comfortable place in my faith. Those initial years felt like I had moved into a new house, unpacked everything, bought new furniture, only to have my soul whisper:
Now, flip some tables and move the fuck out.
I mean, that couldn’t be right. I had found a path to righteousness and salvation after all. I had people who were supposed to be neighborly and act like my “brothers and sisters.” I was finally mastering Christianese, literally talking the talk and walking the walk. Plus, our campus events had a ton of free food… and now I was supposed to go become a wayward hippie heathen and possibly face worldly and spiritual condemnation????
Like, can we not and say that we did??
It was so much more convenient to stay. I resisted for as long as I could and, of course, my life situation began to reflect the suffering I was keeping myself in by refusing to let go and allow transformation.
The False Separation We Create
At the time, I was majoring in religion, studying the relationship between science and religion, and had become obsessed with personal development and wellness. It was a season of questioning every institution I had previously subscribed to, including allopathic medicine.
As I grew to question everything I knew and remain open to other possibilities, I was beginning to feel the cracks in my religious foundation, as well. One of which was the pain I felt for those who were rejected by church communities and culture. Maybe I developed it in youth, but I had a passion for inclusion. Though I knew I could mimic the personality and spiritual rigor it took to make it into the inner religious circles I noticed so often in my Christian communities, I couldn’t bypass the ache I felt for those who were excluded.
While we prayed and sung for oneness with God, we created separation amongst ourselves, setting boundaries and limitations on who we could love, who we identified as our spiritual brothers and sisters, and even who was sanctified enough to share our lives with, even in friendship… While I recognized the need to guard your heart and create close friendships with those who spark joy, there was something that just didn’t feel right.
I couldn’t reconcile the fact that the God of love I was slowly allowing back into my life and getting to know, didn’t fit the profile I grew up with of vengeful creator who would burn and destroy His creations for their inability to adopt very specific beliefs regardless of circumstances.
What Happened When I Gave Up “Sin” & “Brokenness”
But ultimately, it wasn’t ideas that got me to expand my religious views, but the fruit of my spirit. Or, rather, lack thereof.
Though I was devout, my life was not getting any better, nor did I feel true authentic change within my heart. While the strictly Christian path may work for some, it just wasn’t working for me. I was getting nudges to do things differently. After reaching a valley in my faith and life, knowing that things had to change and I had to be the one to change them, I decided to eliminate words, like “sin” and “brokenness” from my mind and vocabulary.
I recognized that the more I saw myself as a victim to my own “sinful” nature – out of control and powerless to things I couldn’t control, i.e. the sins of Adam – the more I became a character in this story of brokenness. I acted out the belief of destined sinner and broken being, becoming my own worst enemy.
By simply eliminating those words and beliefs, my spirit became lighter. I experienced a complete 180 revolution, going from suicidal and depressed to inspired and determined to manifest the craziest of dreams I could think of. It was enough to tell me I was on the right track.
Still, by the time I arrived in Israel, I felt guilty for my discoveries. I felt like I had gone in through a back door, snuck into God’s leer and stolen some truth I wasn’t allowed to have. Could I really have any goodness that wasn’t given to me from God directly through my conscious communication with Him?
Ultimately, I doubted if I was even allowed to be a part of Spirit anymore. After all, my entire life I had been taught that you can only partake if you believe all the tenants of the Christian faith. Belief was the route to salvation. Yet, I had found new life in the absence of those beliefs, not with them.
It was… inconvenient.
Now, I know that change and transformation is pretty much always inconvenient. It’s uncomfortable to be open to new ideas and to admit to yourself and others that maybe you were wrong, after all. The ego loves to identify us with our beliefs and categories; for the ego, being wrong is like death itself. But what I saw and felt in Israel, forced me to finally surrender.
Encountering Love in Israel
What I saw in Israel put a huge crack in those lingering limiting beliefs that were still clinging for some semblance of life. And truly that’s what they were: beliefs that were limiting me and my spiritual potential, and possibly yours.
It started with our tour guide. A passionate, slim, wide-eyed man from Texas named Daniel. From the moment he introduced himself, I was obsessed. At first I thought I might have a crush on Daniel, but as the days went by I realized I just wanted what Daniel had: the joy of following your calling.
The passion Daniel had for his work was palpable and the love he poured in was poured back into him a thousandfold. We all fell madly in love with Daniel, cheering him on as if he were a rockstar. And when I watched Daniel work, I got to thinking: this is God. This is literally the God in Daniel. And I wanted to be a part of him. I wanted him to be my spiritual brother, my soulful kin.
But Daniel wasn’t Christian and not a practicing Jew. My heart ached for the likeness I saw in Daniel and the fact that I would always feel separate from him because of that.
Still, I observed Daniel and what was going on inside my heart, trying to work out the knot in my stomach…
A couple nights into our trip, we went to a lecture by a Jewish woman who was speaking on inter-religious relationships and harmony. She spoke of how traumatizing it can be for Jewish people to be proselytized to by Christians, especially in light of the Holocaust and shared history.
She shared how her faith was not just her beliefs, but her heritage and a way of staying close to her ancestors and that in pushing conversion, Christians were asking for more than they realized. She argued for harmony, rather than spiritual war for souls, proposing that it was possible to have relationships without hidden agendas.
In her cry, I heard the cry for true love. A love that was bigger than labels, ancestry, religious heritage, and every possible meaningless category we group and classify ourselves into in order to create the illusion of “us” and “them.” It was also a paradoxical love that could see the label and love openly, not trying to change or transform it.
Once again, I wanted to have what she had: a vision of true love. A real taste of Spirit. So, I collected her too into my little “spiritual family” and got to work looking for God in more and more people.
Rediscovering God
I ended up finding God in everything. In the sound of our joined voices in a church in Mandala. In the waves thrashing about in the Sea of Galilee. In the generous welcome of a Jewish family, who invited over 20 of us, into their small home for Shabbat. I felt God in every act, expression, and thought of love.
And about halfway through my 10-Day trip, I spoke a part of my new beliefs to an old friend. I said simply, “I don’t believe in Hell.”
I knew there would be discomfort and no doubt some distancing, considering she had already professed that she had doubted throughout the year that I was “even Christian anymore,” simply because of my absence from weekly gatherings. At the time, I wanted to storm away in anger; what did it matter if I was or I wasn’t? Was that really what stopped her from reaching out all those months?
But it wasn’t she who had caused the separation, but me.
You are the source of separation.
Now, this I didn’t learn in Israel. This is fresh growth for me and if you’re wanting to reform your faith and your beliefs, but afraid of what others will think of you or say about you, this might be hard to hear, but:
You are the source of separation.
You are the creator of the reality in which your beliefs separate you from others, God, spiritual awakening… everything you desire. Shame is not the embodied expression of someone’s judgment of you. It’s your own judgment of yourself. Your own rejection of the truth of who you are.
Israel brought me closer to the truth that God is found in love, but in order to embrace the spiritual path Spirit was guiding me to, I had to release any and all illusion that I was separate from God, anyone else, this planet, and my experience of it. I had to embrace the true fluidity of existence: the oneness of everything and everyone.
In this new paradigm, there is no “other” and there is no separation. Just as we physically come together in love, we spiritually come together and find oneness through love.
Expect Transformation
Though these beliefs feel light and right to me today, I know that my spiritual journey will only deepen as time goes on. One day, even these beliefs will transform. The leading force in my life has become my connection to Spirit and how it informs my intuition. Some may call this a releasing of religion, but I haven’t actually released religion nor do I care to. What is religion anyway? No, really, try to define it.
It was a running joke among the Religion majors in my year that we were literally studying something that did not exist. Our departmental t-shirts said: “Religion (n.): we don’t even know.”
Maybe it’s a feeling or an institution or collection of people. However you define it, I see no need to resist it and create yet another thing to be against. Look for ways in which you are the empowered creator of your pain and not a suffering victim. Otherwise, you will only be able to live through that broken identity.
Though I still love going to church and allowing God to speak to me in that way, I’ve arrived at a place where all my life is a church. Everywhere I go, I am among my brothers and sisters in Spirit. In my speech, my work, my pain, my every movement, I look to express the God in me. Sin is simply “separation” and when I stray, separating from Spirit, self, and community, I come home. I join back to God and the God in all of creation.
Go Where Spirit Leads
Wherever your heart is leading you, however terrifying or inconvenient, I hope you take the leap into the unknown to discover that you are not alone. Don’t shy from discomfort, complexity, or contradictions. Press in and trust that, ultimately, your soul is leading you home.
Now that you know my spiritual awakening story, it’s time to share yours! Comment below!
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