It is no exaggeration to say that spirituality is of paramount importance to my life. Even as a child, I have described myself as spiritual rather than religious and this has only grown as I have gotten older. Spirituality has always been a part of me, and it will always be.
I have often written how having had cancer was a defining moment in my spirituality. That I found it an intensely spiritual period of time, when I felt closest to the Divine, to spirit. I have always believed in ‘ghosts’, in spirits, and I have always believed in life after death. I could never reconcile with myself that the wonder that is someone’s innate selves just…goes…at death, that the love we feel for people just disappears when we die. It all seemed so pointless. So, I have always had a strong faith in there being life after death, that we return to energy and that the love we feel never dies, we just become a greater part of it.
There have been things I have experienced, things I know others have experienced that seem to make no earthly sense. How things have just fallen into my life, into the lives of others, seemingly as a miracle that has been prayed for and in ways that we cannot otherwise explain. How we can have a knowing about something that makes no objective sense how we know it, yet is borne out in the longer run. For me, that happens when we are in tune with the universe, when we are vibrating at its frequency so that we anticipate things that are about to happen. Perhaps we will have a dream about something apparently randomly, and then something will happen during the coming days, weeks or even months that reinforces the message in that dream. Signs and synchronicities that on the face of it make no sense whatsoever, then suddenly something will happen and it all makes sense.
I have been raised to believe that you find the Divine in nature, not in manmade buildings. I can appreciate the architecture of those manmade buildings, and do see them as an expression of the Divine because of their artistry and vision, but I do not think that ‘God’ only elects to communicate through another…usually a man…in a building rather than directly in the wonder created in the universe that is nature. And I struggle with a doctrine that makes God or the Divine separate to us when we are God or the Divine and God (or the Divine) is us. There is a connection, a golden thread, between us and the infinite intelligence that created us of that I am certain.
I also cannot reconcile myself with the fact that any higher intelligence wants us at each other’s throats over what is essentially semantics at the end of the day, an interpretation of the same message (which it all fundamentally is) that the egoic mind has latched onto as a means of eking out power over another – that is religion, not spirituality. I cannot believe that the higher intelligence wants duality. Because I have also been raised to believe that we are all connected to each other, we are all one with everything and everyone, including the Divine. And that from that perspective, there is no room for bigotry of any kind.
I know I have a soul as well as an egoic mind. I know that the two are separate yet intricately connected – one has signed up for the human ride, the other to keep the corporeal part of me alive. And that the two sometimes do not agree, and are often not aligned when the egoic mind denies the existence of the other. I struggled for a long time to hear my soul because my egoic voice was so strong, formed as it had been through childhood trauma. Over the course of my spiritual journey, however, I have learned to hear my spiritual self and to connect with the Divine. Usually this is through meditation and/or journaling which I now use as a means of problem solving and it has brought a huge amount of comfort, certainty, strength and resilience to me at times when I have needed it the most.
Spirituality, and the journey you can go on to understand it and who you truly are, is not always easy. It can strip everything away, leaving you feeling vulnerable and scared but in that state, it also rebuilds you. It rebuilds you in faith. In certainty. I love the saying ‘I will see it when I believe it’ because I know now that belief is crucial in our lives. A belief that things are always happening for you rather than to you. A belief that in your surrender to spirit, all will be well. That we are here to learn lessons, that even when it feels like the worst thing is happening to you, there is a lesson to be learned that can make it the best thing that can happen to you. And a belief that we are all magnificent beings, we are all loved, and that we are all powerful in our spirituality. That is where the journey takes you, and ultimately it is worth sticking with the ride because just when you are about to give up…that’s when the magic happens.
Spirituality is a defining part of me. It is of core importance to me, and has always been so. It hasn’t always been an easy journey, the spiritual journey, and there have been dark nights of the soul along the way. But the end result has been more than worth it.
Louisa Simpson 