If You Ask Me About Spirituality, I Am Leaving The Room.

Transformational change doesn't have a boring label.

2 spiritual people walk into a room. What happens?

They stare at each other without saying a word, and then they leave. Or they talk about the weather.

How can you open a conversation on a topic that is so broad? I tried asking what form of spirituality they practice. That made them leave the room faster. To them, there is only one type of spirituality to practice. Theirs.

Spirituality doesn’t describe the weird world

I am not a spiritual person.

I am a person who loves the weirdness of our world.

I am also insatiable curious.

It started with Bigfoot when I was seven. My dad and I watched ‘In Search of…’ with Leonard Nimoy in the 1970s.

Then it came to aliens and strange stone circles people couldn’t explain.

I have done ghost hunting to being an obsessive tarot card reader for myself.

This is metaphysics, not spirituality.

Starting young with the first transformation

I snubbed my nose at my religious upbringing. A typical act of childhood rebellion. The place where we test out ideas different from our parents.

But it went wrong. I got involved with witches through a childhood friend. They were not real witches, just a bunch of nasty people.

It ended up being a type of mini-cult. I was in way over my head. I needed to get out. I was losing myself.

Like all cults, they don't want to let go. They bully you to stay. But I wasn't staying.

To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else - means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.

-e. e. cummings

You reach a point where you fight back because not doing so feels like you have lost your soul otherwise.

I gathered everything in myself and made the break. Their last act was to use a Ouija board to try to control me. I was threatened with all sorts of evil things.

Photo by James Frid: https://www.pexels.com/photo/a-grayscale-of-a-ouija-board-13011928/

I still made the break. But I felt hunted. Evil things were now following me. So, I turned to my childhood religion.

This didn't help. I felt God and Jesus turned their backs on me. I wasn’t worthy of being noticed. I was flawed. I wasn't worthy of protection.

Never see transformations coming

This isn't spirituality. This is transformation. I didn't know it at the time, but this was the beginning of several rebirths.

We seek knowledge and find that we are tested. and it is only after we have pushed ourselves and gained more understanding that we discover something new about the world and ourselves. And hence our new ‘normal’ state is that of more enlightened person-and so the cycle continues.

-Rob Parnell

At 13, I learned to use a pendulum after the Ouija board thing. My first pendulum was a racket ball racket with a string. I can’t even remember the early stuff we talked about.

There was someone or something on the other end that answered my questions and comforted me.

Since it didn’t tell me to do bad things I stayed with it. Whatever was on the end of the pendulum, cared about me.

I found Wicca, or witchcraft, when I was 19—Goddess worship. The earth is alive and loves us all even though we don’t treat her respectfully.

I practiced by myself. I didn’t jump into a witch coven until I was 35. By then, we had moved to the small town where I currently live.

My biggest transformation was on the way

I met my shields teacher. I call it a star shields path. It is based somewhat on how Native Americans make shields, but the rest is common to all cultures.

Each shield is based upon a direction representing a part of us and an element.

Shields:

-South is fire and spirit and child

-West is water and emotions and shadow

-East is air and mental

-North is earth and physical

-Above is stars and father

-Below is earth and mother

-Within is me and my center

My shields teacher was as flaky as most other ‘spiritual’ people I met. She left me when I needed her the most.

She left me in the West. All my emotions and shadow came out. Talk about riding the crazy train that was in a permanent tunnel. I didn’t think I was ever going to see daylight again.

However, I never looked back once I started to see how much healing was available.

Without a physical mentor or guide, I was on my own. I tried all the tools. Some I discarded, and others I used until they didn’t work anymore and found new ones. But I never stopped.

I have explored every type of thing you can imagine from Buddhism to paganism to mindset.

Somewhere along the line we discover who we really are, and then make our real decisions for which we are responsible. Make that decision primarily, for yourself because you can never really live anyone else’s life.”

-Eleanor Roosevelt

I have been doing this for 25 years and am still doing it. The more I dig into myself, the more I find. This is going to be a lifelong path.

No word to describe the experience

I have used every term I can think of to describe the experience and what I got out of it. There isn’t a term.

Self-improvement didn’t work. I wasn’t improving myself. I was healing trauma and the fractures that resulted from my past. I was dying to everything that I thought I knew about myself.

I hemmed and hawed over the word spiritual. That was a 10-cent word over a life-changing transformation. That really wasn’t it.

Spirituality limitations

Spirituality is a broad topic. How do you write or talk about something so broad? You don’t. Instead of trying to tackle it, you run from it, which is why spiritual people leave the room instead of talking.

But I want these conversations. I want to hear your story, your passion, and what you know about yourself.

From all of my experience, it is knowing about yourself.

That is what shields taught me. I dug into every dark hole I could find in myself. I learned that hell is the dark cavern in your skull.

I learned that if you want to change the world, you change yourself.

Spirituality seems like a tame label we hide behind. There is no other word to describe the struggle to know ourselves, our universe, and our place in it.

Transformation comes closer. It is more of an active word. Change is the only thing you can count on.

So if you want to come into the room and talk transformation. I am all ears. It doesn’t have to be a transformation about yourself. You can talk about how you transformed your backyard into a thriving garden. Tell me your story. Tell me who you are.

If you want to talk about our weird world, I’ll even buy you whatever drink you want. Because the world is weird. It’s a wonderous place to be.

Picture by Photo by Ketut Subiyanto: https://www.pexels.com/photo/person-holding-clear-drinking-glass-of-beer-5054697/.