So much has changed, shifted over the past several months. My old journal simply didn't fit any longer so here I am starting fresh. Sometimes a person simply outgrows what was. Whether it's their clothes for size or style, their choice of career, or their spiritual journey; a person knows when it's time to step out of the old and embrace the new. It can be scary. The old is comfortable, familiar, safe. The new is unknown, uncharted, and we wonder if it's even dangerous. Will we be okay or will we fall? What will others say? Will we be undone inside by disapproval or are we as internally strong as we hope or think that we can live out loud regardless of the acceptance, or lack of it, from others? Do we risk it or do we risk the stagnation the safe road could bring? All these questions and so many more have been at war within me up until the very moment of typing these words.
What can you expect as you read this journal? Fair question. I am done pretending. I am done pretending to be spiritually together during those times when I'm actually a mess for fear of not looking "spiritual enough" to others. I'm done pretending to not know the answer for myself when I actually do for fear of the disapproval of the masses who may not resonate with my truth and express their disapproval in no uncertain terms. I done saying "the spiritual thing" when it's not what I -really- think inside myself. It is time. It is time to be honest. Honest with myself. Honest with anyone who decides to read this. What you can expect is a wild teeter-totter ride where at times I seem to one person and at other times someone else. You will be invited in where there will be no pretense. There will be times when I am so put together I'm joyful, understanding, loving, peaceful, and others when I seem to have lost all ground and am wallowing in the lowest possible emotions of fear, anger, pettiness, and judgment.
Why am I doing this? Isn't going to be intensely personal? I'm doing this because so many in the spiritual community, regardless of their chosen spiritual path, do not show their trials, their failures, their struggles -as they happen- but might talk about them once they have a nice tidy resolution. Most spiritual people, usually out of shame or fear, will not bare their ongoing struggles while they occur. What is the result of this? The result is a facade. The result is that others who have the same struggles think they are alone or compare themselves to everyone else who always seem to have it all together all the time. I know I did. Once in a while I still catch myself doing it but am able to recognize it and redirect my thoughts to those which are self-loving rather than self-condemning...at least usually. Having come this far, with so much further to go (because we never really arrive), I thought maybe I could share my journey in an attempt to not only have a journal for my own satisfaction but so that anyone reading it can know they are not the only ones who have asked those questions, struggled with those doubts, felt that joy and so on. To answer that second question, yes. This will be intensely personal, scarily so for me. How can it not be and still remain honest, real, and transparent?
What this journal is not: This is not an attempt to sway anyone from their own spiritual path, to tell someone who has a different perspective that they are wrong and I am right. It is not a forum for disparaging those who have different beliefs than myself.
