155. I abandoned my spiritual self and felt the worst I've felt in a long time.
Sometimes you need to take everything you've learnt, spread it out in front of you, observe and pick back up what feels right.
I went from being a spiritual person, at ease with myself, to pushing it all away and out of me, believing that none of it was real or served me a purpose. After a while, I started feeling the worst I’ve felt in a long time.
Spirituality is a difficult concept because everyone has their own interpretation of it, and people often assign beliefs to you that you might not share or practice. I personally learned about spirituality and the Universe from people around me. Then, I deepened my practice by reading, watching videos, meditating, and following guides online.
When the gates first opened and I was welcomed in, I was new to it all. I had no idea what to expect and followed the path others were walking ahead of me. I remember the first part of this journey feeling like my outer shell was being ripped off, and I suffered in every bone in my body. Healing and breaking patterns require pain, and I felt it all. I went from being in a bad place to being in a terrible place until I slowly started to find my footing and walked away from the wreckage.
That wreckage is long behind me, but even when I’ve found myself walking back toward it, it’s never hurt as much as it used to, because I had unlocked and built a spiritual side that made me feel strong and resilient. The reason people believe in gods, universes, and higher powers is because life is hard. When we feel like we’re falling apart, having something to hold on to feels like carrying a torch while walking through a deep, dark forest. However, I had decided to take the batteries out of that torch, bury it, and walk away.
Looking back, I’m not sure why I decided to rebel against it all and believe I didn’t need my spiritual self. From where I am now, I think I needed to cut ties with what I’d learned from other people in order to rebuild myself with my own practice. Nothing these people taught me was wrong, but it was time for me to shed my skin, like a snake, and slowly grow a new one for the person I am now. This is something that will continue to happen as I age.
When I’m connected to my spiritual self, I treat myself with more kindness. I tread more lightly and with more care. I soak up more of the life around me. I feel more present, grateful for what my life is and for who I am. I feel connected to the people around me, in awe of what the world has to offer, and I see everything in a positive light. Even when things get hard, I remain hopeful and believe that I’ll eventually reach the light at the end of the tunnel.
However, during this time, I’ve been rejecting the spiritual side of myself. I’ve been too harsh with myself. I’ve felt fear, anxiety, and worry. My thoughts have been catastrophic. I’ve let days go by without feeling alive. I’ve spent more time than ever scrolling on my phone. I’ve pushed aside the practices that make me feel good. The mental battles I’ve been facing, without armor, tools, plans, or protection, have left me depleted, and I had no way of refilling my soul. These unattended mental battles became so strong that they transformed into physical ailments, which caused me even more suffering. In short, I’d fallen into the human trap, and for some reason I can’t explain, I forced myself to stay under.
One of the reasons I believe in spirituality is because I notice a big difference in myself, and in the ways I interact with and perceive the world around me, when I’m walking with that side of me hand in hand. Not only that, but when I feel connected to my spiritual self, or my higher self, I feel a specific type of tickle in my stomach—what many people call butterflies. When I’m in a good place mentally and keeping up with my spiritual practices, I feel this sensation in my gut easily, quickly, and often. I know it may sound like nerves or anxiety, which many people, including myself, feel in their stomach, but this is different. It feels softer, like joyful excitement. It feels like being a child and waiting to pick your grandparents up from the airport, standing beside your dad and brother. It feels like seeing your lover from afar, holding a bouquet of flowers for you. It feels like hugging your best friends. It feels warm and soft, and the more you feel it, the more alive you become. And, well, I’ve gone what felt like forever without feeling this—until today.
First, let’s rewind to yesterday when I cried like I hadn’t cried in a long time. I’d been feeling very sad for several consecutive days, and in general, down for a few weeks—something unusual for me. I had a knot in my throat, and every time I tried to open up to my boyfriend on our long walks, I felt the tears burn my throat. No matter how much I tried, they wouldn’t flow out of me. I couldn’t even find the right words to explain what was so painful. It felt like my communication and my throat were closed channels. I was stuck in this limbo of pain with nowhere for it to go, until yesterday.
I was sitting in the garden with C, and I slowly began to break down, letting go of layer after layer, voicing fear after fear, acknowledging feeling after feeling until the wail came. The wail is that cry that comes from your deep chest, and each tear feels like a pressure valve finally releasing what’s been trapped. My body shook, my tears poured, my eyes stung, my body sweat, and I was able breathe like I hadn’t in weeks. I could fill my lungs with air, and I could finally breathe. Once I finished, a wave of calm hit me. I was suddenly tired, and my eyes felt heavy. I lay on the sofa and felt surrounded by a bubble of calm and weightlessness, something I appreciated after many nights of lying in bed, staring at the dark ceiling, going through every possible plan of self-destruction.
Today, the day after the wail, I felt that tickle in my stomach after having a realization—or as some call it, an awakening—which is exactly what it felt like. It felt as if a veil had been peeled away from my eyes, and I could see that every crisis I’d told Gema about on the phone finally made sense. I felt like I’d awoken from the sleep I’d been trapped in.
I came across an astrology post and read about the Pisces eclipse happening today. Every single word fit into my current life puzzle perfectly. Of course, I had pushed all of these resources away from me—I’d even gone as far as unfollowing them on Instagram to avoid seeing them—and now here I was, reading these words, feeling confirmation and understanding. As I said before, people believe in gods and higher powers to help relieve some of the burden and pain, and in my case, it worked.
I never grew up in a spiritual family. “God” was someone who decided whether you went to heaven or hell, and spirituality doubled as karma, which was only ever used to ensure you did good deeds out of fear of being punished. I know what it’s like to live not believing in anything. I’d heard about the Universe and how it “always takes care of you and protects you” since I was a teenager, but I’d never understood what it meant. Whenever I was in great pain and alone, I’d speak to the sky and beg for help and relief, but it was more of a primal instinct and last resort rather than a conscious practice.
At this moment, after throwing away my torch in the middle of the dark forest, getting on my high horse, and insisting that I didn’t need spiritual practices—feeling cringe towards them all—I can openly say that putting time and effort into my spiritual self makes me feel better, improves my life, and makes me a better person. Spirituality is something humans have practiced since the earliest days, and no, by spirituality I don’t mean religion. The two concepts tend to get mixed up, but I personally see them as completely different things.
For me, being a spiritual person means understanding that the fact I’m alive is a miracle. I exist today thanks to the union of four people: my grandparents, who gave birth to my parents, who miraculously found each other and gave birth to me and my brother. All of these webs are intertwined, and all of these people meeting, deciding to marry, and having children together is nothing short of a miracle. Not only that, the fact that I grew inside my mother’s body and depended on her for the first years of my life is also a miracle. If that weren’t enough, I live on a floating planet in the middle of a solar system, spinning and moving at speeds we can’t comprehend, in communion with nature and other living beings—from the size of atoms to gigantic sea creatures we’ll never see with our own eyes, unless we seek them out on a boat in the vast, deep, magical ocean.
I’m a human being with organs, nerves, arteries, cells, systems, a brain, neurons, blood, hair, eyes, fingers, and senses. None of these things are short of miraculous, and we take every one of them for granted—unless one of them stops working. Observing all these things with the human eye or with a microscope thanks to modern science is one thing, but “seeing” feelings is another. The fact that we’re able to love another human being is a miracle. Every emotion is a miracle: we feel anger to defend and protect ourselves, we feel shame to improve ourselves, we feel empathy to treat people as we’d like to be treated, we feel joy to enjoy our time alive, we feel gratitude to show others we appreciate them. We feel each emotion deeply, and we all know these feelings exist because they’re common to us all, but they’re something many people spend their lives trying to understand. We spend our whole lives trying to figure out this far-from-simple existence while most of the time nothing makes sense—until it does.
What I read on substack this week and really enjoyed (in order: most recently posted to latest)
Nuestras conversaciones a distancia son chats en permanente desarrollo de
Así que eres perfeccionista. Nombra una sola cosa perfecta que hayas hecho de
The complexity of saying good bye to a city by
Estar en paz de
Si no envías postales a tus amigas, cualquier momento es bueno para empezar de
Do you realize how lucky we are that all of these people are sharing their writing on Substack at this moment? The blogging and amigas era is at an all-time high; savor it and relish it. Why do all good things come to an end? (minute 9:09).
I’ve been feeling exactly like this recently! Something so special about reading a piece and each sentence feeling like a relatable warm hug 🫂 thanks for sharing!
💚🫂