Becoming “Woke”-ish

Theodore Roosevelt once said, “do what you can, with what you have, where you are”. To me, this quote always felt freeing.  Like he was personally handing me a permission slip to drop the pursuit of perfection, and be ok with the idea that I really am, doing the best I can with what I got. 

No matter where life takes me, this quote continues to give me permission to embrace the here and now, while stumbling like a drunk baby asking for directions to the path of enlightenment. 

Being exactly where I am, has been a cornerstone of my spiritual becoming process. I like to think about it like this. Before I came to planet earth, I was super clear on why I was coming, who I was coming with, and what our mission was. Oh yea, and part of the conditions of the mission required that we forget all of it upon arrival. 

The human experience, to me, is like one giant waking up process. But while we are waking up, we are also providing each other training simulations on how to not be a dick, be present to the unexplainable beauty that is life, and expand. Our expansion, to me, is what makes the human curriculum the best school in the universe. 

In every awakening, allowing myself to be totally and completely submerged in the simulation, no matter which version of myself I awakened into, would become a rinse and repeat method of self exploration and evolution. 

I have met so many versions of my spiritual self that have been edited or cancelled out, but always expanded upon. At this point, I am pretty certain of a few consistent things, but mostly have endless questions about the unquantifiable vastness of the universe, and all the shit I still don’t have words for.  

Looking back, my spiritual awakening was more of a stripping down process. 

Picture a radiant little girl in a shiny dress. Put a 100 coats on her, a pair of dark sunglasses, an oversized hat, cover her in dirt, and give her just enough air to breathe. By the time I was 11, I was convinced that the human I was pretending to be wasn’t the correct one. And I definitely wasn’t sure how to be a person that people would want to be forever friends with. 

I truly believe with every fiber of my being, that our greatest pains in life give birth to our soul’s purpose and the roles we play here. Every pain has a coping method after it. 

My coping method at age 11 was found in the obsessive quest to figure out the “equation of people” and how to become the “correct” variable in that equation. 

Don’t get it twisted! I have nothing less than gratitude for this experience I was given. It is because of this pain that I grew wise with perception. I would develop a compassion so large for the unseen and the unheard, that I would make it my mission to understand and accept every human I met, even the triggering ones; especially the triggering ones. 

There are also about 10,000 layers of healing, radical honesty, confrontation, practice, and tons of sweaty angel wings from my divine team that would have me arrive here in this moment of reflection and growth. 

Healing comes in stages. 

As an adolescent and young adult,  I hid behind the masks of pleasing others, twisting and conforming myself to the parody of someone else’s character, and fashioned some awkward story of resilience that “I’m fine and everything is ok” when I was filled with so many holes that I was bleeding out insecurities, sickness, and depression. I must have put on a pretty good show since most people who didn’t get the honor of knowing me closely didn’t have a clue I was fucking lost. 

I find it interesting how convincing our shells become when we lie enough to ourselves. 

I’m still not quite sure who I was trying to be by trying everyone else on. But, I know that without a doubt, I was terrified to be the wrong one.

Call it mother wounds. Call it the abandonment wound of dad. Call it the self-labeled outcast. Call it repressed rebellion. Call it the trauma-trapped little girl. Call it aces. Call it diamonds. I called it so many things in an attempt to understand what exactly I was or what life was attempting to tell me. 

The prison inside of my mind was a rubix cube so impossible to solve, the only voice that could get through was the voice of God. 

The fear of getting it wrong and being ok with where I am, has, and still is in many ways, the lesson I am perpetually learning. 

My walk with spirituality has been a firm reflection of this. 

Raised in Christianity, I learned that God is love and in everything. Back then, God was a He. An all-powerful father-like figure, and had a rage-y side when his kids got too rebellious. Despite the burning in hell part, the idea that there was an omnipotent being that made the universe, me, and everything I touched was comforting. 

I also learned that there was some version of holiness I was supposed to be that on one hand, taught me how to be a loving human. I created a strong moral compass that would guide me through adolescent peer pressure and made my grandmother proud. On the other hand, I had several questions about what to do with the fucked up thoughts in my head, where to put them, and how to remedy the incredible amounts of shame that I experienced when I wasn’t busy being the perfect Christian. 

Life always has a funny way of letting us explore those questions if we keep asking them. 

Pouring myself into science and psychology in college, I turned humans into predictable equations, sought physics for answers about the unseen, and used my relationships to extract painful wisdom and teach me about how much I have yet to learn about people. 

Even when I distanced myself from Christianity and was triggered by every Jesus comment and worship song, I could still hear the voice of God in my journey. At that time, God was energy. “He” became “the universe”. Under this new paradigm, I could give the philosopher within me a new stage as I became obsessed with teachers like Alan Watts and Ram Das.

I learned about the construct of reality, the nature of beliefs, and how the shame I carried was the result of conditioning, programming, and unhealed wounds. I learned that everything is neutral, that we live in stories, and tried on the idea that maybe the universe in its duality isn’t good or evil. 

It was the first time I had felt that my life began to make some sort of sense. It would take several years to strip off the layers of conditioning before I would begin to see the gold. 

Being a witness to my own process and the process of others, I believe that when we do our deepest healing work, we cannot help but have a spiritual awakening of some kind in the process. 

At 27, I experienced what is classically referred to as the “Dark Night of the Soul”. I was full of suicidal ideation. I didn’t want to die, but I didn’t want to live. Every day for months was pain. The detoxing off the drug I once called the love of my life, was the most painful breaking of my adulthood. 

The pain, however, brought me a gift. A cold hard truth serum about where I was. 

One by one, I began to remove the coats… the glasses… the hat… the dirt. I began to awaken into something that felt unexplainable. Over the next few years, I poured myself into trainings, books, courses, teachings, healings, experiences, anything that would grow me and provide a pathway of healing. 

I began to see God in every human being, every painful moment, every ecstasy, and every part of life. 

With every layer of emotional release, I began to open myself up energetically and even more spiritually to the unseen. This unquenchable thirst for more became an obsession with becoming the divine I had tasted. 

Because I had seen spirits, and heard whispers out-loud and various languages in my head as a child, it didn’t scare me when I began to see them in this new spiritual lens.

I was fascinated by symbology, the gods and goddesses of various religions, and interdimensional communication. The hunger to know more and seek more only seemed to reward me with more intuitive gifts. At the time, I saw it as a way to serve humanity. I told myself, “this is what that voice was talking about when I tried to choose out of life”. 

I remember looking at various individuals in the spiritual community I was a part of and thinking, “wow, it would be really cool to have THEIR super-power.” And just like that, I would suddenly begin to see, hear, and feel things. I could move the energy blocks, channel messages, read tarot, see different dimensions of space, talk to spirits, and see what I interpreted as past lives in others. I felt purposeful. I felt like I could finally help people like I always wanted to.

It didn’t matter if I didn’t make money with it, I could help and that felt good enough. Nevermind that I need to pay rent or live in a world that uses money as a currency to open doors to more opportunities. Fuck that, cause I’m a healer!

The way I had come to relate to God was that not only was God everything, but I was God in fractal form. That the power I had was mine. That the manifestations I had were mine, as God. And that there was no such thing as evil, just the projection of evil into humanity.  

The irony of this awakening is that I had taken off the human clothes, and put on other clothes that looked a lot like “divine guide”, but smelled a lot like self-righteousness, spiritual bypassing, and broke bitch. 

Have you ever noticed that as humans, when we find something new and shiny that we like, we simultaneously create platinum level justifications to keep it? Even when there is a small part of us that calls bullshit? 

That’s where I was. And I helped others be there too. I suddenly became a beacon of answers for a community who was seeking like I was. 

I always had and still have the best of intentions when it comes to helping others. And I truly believe that most people have the best of intentions no matter how wackadoodle it looks on the outside. 

Under the belief that I was here to bring light, raise my frequency, and be a bridge to the unseen, I opened doors to the divine that I didn’t know how to close. I experienced side effects in my home life, in my mind, and when I would step out into the world. 

My son would experience spiritual attacks at night when he slept, I would feel out of place when I would be around an ounce of negative energy, and I felt like I was continuously phasing in and out of reality leaving me unsure if I was dreaming or awake. I would sometimes stare out the window and wonder if anything was real. 

Remember those justifications? Well I had all kinds of fabulous reasons why it was fine that these things were happening. And in the bigger picture, I needed to be exactly where I was. What I learned about myself, the healing, the experience of helping others, the growth, the expanding, the pathway into the divine; just like Roosevelt said, I truly did the best I could, with what I had, where I was. 

I laugh when I consider that learning tarot was indeed my pathway back to having conversations with God. It has taken me years to embrace the idea that even these spiritual pathways that led me down dark and dangerous hallways, always, served a greater purpose.

I sometimes look back on this era with humility and think, “wow, thank you God for not dropping me too hard on my head.”

My next awakening came from my journey with sacred medicine. The experience with psychedelics and plant medicine was like being hit by a bus going 200mph. The amount of harsh and brutal interruption that I experienced in a single year was equivalent to the 10 years I spent in therapy as a kid. It was sobering, revealing, and for the first time I began to see the ways I traded the need to please my parents for the need to feel significant as a self-declared healer. 

The shadow work that revealed the attachments, dependencies, and unhealed trauma would be the pathway where my divinity would finally make friends with my humanity. I would learn how to make love to my weaknesses, stand in ownership of my life, and accept myself in ways I never thought I could. I met my spirit. 

It was like learning to walk again. In reality, I had simply found a new set of coats to wear, only these were colors I liked and I was the one who picked them out, not mom. 

It would take another 2 years for me to experience several more strippings, unpacking, deprogramming, and layers of awakenings that would find me at the climax of a deep life calling. What began as a tap on the shoulder turned into a peacock in heat that held up neon signs saying, “are you done running yet!?” 

Sitting on my couch one night, I did my meditation catharsis routine. Only this time, without an ounce of warning I was dropped into a black void of space. I will never forget, I felt like I didn’t have a clue in that moment who I was, or where I was. It was terrifying. What was the purpose of this? Why God do I not recognize myself? Why can't I feel my body? Please help me! I don’t know who I am! 

I can only describe it as a spiritual rebirth. It was the first night where I felt the presence of what I now know as the Christ. I was taken through my entire life from my mothers womb until that moment, and was shown each moment I was held and cared for by his presence. Every moment of my journey into false light and every false identity was revealed. I was shown how every moment of pain, every perceived mistake, all served the greater vision. 

Since I told myself I already failed at being a Christian, it took me another year to unpack not only this experience, but how to even relate to Christ, where he fit in the narrative I had learned, and where I still couldn’t make sense of him with everything I had discovered about the world, the unseen, and the rest of the universe. In a way, I felt for the first time, I truly had no idea what the answers were… and something about that felt exciting. 

In this spiritual walk, I began to meditate differently, prayed more often, and sat in the issues of humanity without looking away. I dove down the rabbit holes, challenged my biases, shook my cognitive dissonance, and tightened up my spiritual boundaries. 

I began to see God, Source, Spirit, as something so immeasurable that my idea of God transcended personification altogether. I developed a deeper listening of others and an even deeper listening of myself. My heart opened up to humanity in a way that called me to a higher level of service. I began to move from a place of vision, and full surrender to the unknown. 

Now walking in uncertainty, I tether myself to a single truth: I am in co-creation with my creator, the source of my limitless soul, and when I surrender to where I am, and be ok with it, I expand even more. 

Do I feel like I have “arrived” at THE TRUTH of life? Quite the opposite. I feel like I am 4 years old again asking every adult in my life where and why and how and what the fuck. I definitely still doubt myself, avoid, and feel afraid. 

However, I no longer buy into the bullshit that I am insignificant. I have gotten pretty good at letting go of approval, and needing to get the answer “correct”. I own my messes, laugh at my humanity, take care of my body, breathe often, and love myself deeply. 

The category of “what I don’t know that I don’t know” has gotten infinitely bigger. 

But what I DO know is this: I am not alone, everything is on purpose, and if I have something of value, give it away every chance I get. 

I also know a few things about life that seem to work for most humans, so far...
I choose to serve humanity by offering wisdom from my life and the maze of painted doors I have walked and continue to walk through, believing that like Ram Das said, “we are all just walking each other home”.