Wind of the Soul

After writing my post pertaining to the film, Peaceful Warrior, I thought this would be a good time to elaborate a little further on my own journey towards connecting with the mystical. I don’t claim to have arrived by any stretch of the imagination. Life is an ever expanding process which I sometimes pursue fearfully and other times joyfully, but always as consciously and as aware as possible.

I don’t intend to offend anyone with this post, I only intend to be as open as necessary, to bring across the information. I have come to an understanding that there is value in all journeys, whether they are similar to my own or not. I don’t feel there is only one correct path to achieving a mystical/spiritual connection, but I do feel there is one which is incorrect- and that is anything that causes you to forsake your own feelings, emotions and inner guidance. When you tune out your own inner awareness, taking into consideration what others think and view, as being correct for your life, you have started down the path of losing touch with yourself.

The following resonates true for me, in the form of observations and conclusions that I’ve come to through my own emotions, experiences and the aid of great teachers (whom I’ll definitely be elaborating on in future posts). As I said, I by no means consider myself enlightened, but I am currently having a much more joyous life experience, than ever before in my adult life.

I seem to have amazing recall for events that occurred prior to age four. I can remember the entire layout of my parents’ apartment when I was two years old. I can recall my toys, my thoughts and my friends. I can remember what it felt like to go to the barbershop for the first time and my fascination with running my hand against the grain of my shortly cropped hair. I remember watching original episodes of “Mash,” “Mary Tyler Moore” and “The Bob Newhart Show”, well before they ever appeared on TV Land or Nick at Night.

I could spend an entire article describing a solid chunk of events from my life, prior to turning four years old, but what sticks out the most, for the purpose of this post, are the events that occurred in my bedroom, late at night. I remember having the feeling of a presence in the room with me, long after my parents put me to bed. This presence never caused fear or anxiety. I don’t remember ever crying or going into my parents’ room at that age. Those fitful nights came a few years later, but when I was a toddler, I only recall something serene interacting with me near bedtime.

I never had imaginary friends as a child, but I do remember carrying on conversations, either in my head or aloud with something “in the air.” These conversations took place prior to my understanding of the mainstream accepted concept of god, so I don’t believe they were prayers to a deity.

During these talks I can recall my body feeling extremely light and experiencing a great state of euphoria. I’m not sure where and when these conversations ended, but I believe they were occurring because doubt and cynicism had not yet crept into my awareness. I was at an age where I had not quite become conditioned by society, enough to fully cut off my connection with what we like to call god/soul/and the higher self.

As I grew a little older, I became enamored with the paranormal and ghostly entities. My Mom and I used to check out all sorts of books from the library that dealt with this subject matter- I probably knew what a poltergeist was before I entered the first grade. I appreciate those early readings sessions my Mom and I shared, because those books, along with my recall of the experiences when I was two, planted the seed for my interest in the metaphysical and the search for life’s meaning.

As an older child I never regularly attended church, but I used to spend every Sunday morning reading the bible with my parents. I never developed a typical relationship (for a child) with the god of the Christian bible, as I found myself questioning many of “his” decisions and rules, but I still believed in a form of the Christian definition of god and managed to pick up a little sprinkling of the dogma, which accompanied that belief, along the way.

Reflecting upon that time in my life, from this vantage point, I can see that many of my questions stemmed from a feeling that something was missing from the modern biblical texts. I do recall being fascinated by how Christ accomplished his miracles. However, I never felt like I wanted to worship him- rather, I felt like I wanted to learn how he was able to achieve the miraculous and mystical.

Throughout high school and my stint in college, I continued to question the bible and its accuracy. After many years of learning historical truths, as they pertain to most religions, I abandoned the bible as a valid tool for interpreting life and its meaning. This abandonment had far more to due with man’s interference in religion than it did with turning my back on god.

I was now an adult, accepting the average adult interpretations of existence, completely submersed in a world that seemed to have lost the majority of its magic. While I was still fascinated by the supernatural, I eventually went the way of the cynic on most subjects, and accepted that life was supposed to be an uphill battle, full of drudgery and woe.

I was working a dead end job and attending college courses on and off that I could care less about, all while fighting with major bouts of depression and other troublesome issues. I essentially had reached my wits end by the age of twenty four. My life lacked meaning, and for the first time I realized I didn’t believe, or better said- wasn’t sure if I believed in much of anything anymore.

Yet, there was still an underlying fear in fully confronting this revelation. While I had been living in this manner for a few years, I never consciously acknowledged it until a particularly rough stretch came along. I realized I had been battling myself over the knowledge I had obtained and the fear in actually confronting the realization that I was becoming agnostic.

Despite my doubt over the bible, I always wanted to believe there was still a creator in some shape or form. However, I had never been exposed to any teachings outside of religion that allowed an understanding of what that creator could be like. And I had long sense tuned out my own natural inner guidance (an awareness that is within us all), to embrace much of the majority of society’s ideas and beliefs.

To many people, becoming an agnostic would be too horrendous to contemplate. However, I would have to consider it a fantastic experience. It definitely was one of my most worthwhile choices- due to one simple fact: I was able to release a large chunk of fear and the feeling of lacking power. Despite my doubt about conventional religion, I had still held to my loosely based Christian idea of god.

Once I was able to fully release from that concept, I feel I achieved my first true victory in a psychological battle which had been raging (mostly on an unconscious level) for years. It may sound odd to hear someone say that straddling the fence with regards to their belief in god actually empowered them, but that’s exactly what happened. I felt like a large part of the slate had been wiped clean.

As I continued to live my life with this new devil may care attitude (no pun intended), I began to notice interesting occurrences. I started actually having experiences that were more in tune with my inner senses again. Amazing new books began finding their way into my life- books that I never would have considered reading, prior to my new stance. I also noticed more moments of serendipitous occurrences and huge coincidences taking place with events, the people I was interacting with and the way my life began to unfold. It was as if I had been living my life in a fog bank and when the fog lifted, I found there was an entire world around me which I never knew existed and couldn’t wait to explore.

Looking back I now realize it was all due to the act of consciously releasing. I never approached the agnostic attitude in an obnoxious manner. I didn’t carry it around like a chip on my shoulder or a banner to be waved. I was not doing it to rebel or to upset others. I did it for me, because it seemed logical.

After realizing my decision and letting it sink in for a while, I simply relaxed about it all and allowed my fears to release. It was through this allowing that I feel I’ve come full circle- back into contact with that warm presence in my bedroom, which made me feel so fantastic all those years ago, before I acquired cynicism, before my struggles, and before society’s input and social molding took hold. It’s through this allowing that I now feel I understand god/the human soul better than ever before, minus all the religious overtones.

The reason I feel my journey into agnosticism was so important was because it was a huge turning point in my life. Many people reach similar situations, but the straw that breaks the camel’s back for them may be about their job, marriage, finances, etc. Mine just happened to be more about religion.

Of course, I acknowledge there were a multitude of other events occurring in my life that also aided in my reaching the breaking point. Knocking down the dogmatic barriers was not about thumbing my nose at organized religion. It was more symbolic of my mind breaking free from society’s molding and standards, be it religious or otherwise. It was actually my first step in pulling back and re-examining the life experience I was living and the realization that there are infinite ways to interpret it. But it predominantly was a representation of releasing and going within, to where the only true source of knowledge resides for us all.

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This entry was posted on Saturday, July 7th, 2007 at 6:52 pm and is filed under Releasing Fear, Spiritual Empowerment. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.