Identity Shifts & What it means to be Spiritual

A few years back I began having immense identity crises. On a level like no other.

I thought I was used to it during my life as such is the spiritual journey.

I had to go through a phenomenal one emerging from depression which took a lot of reprogramming, challenging what I thought the world was about.

Yet, these ones in the last few years were different.

They made me question what I had rarely questioned.

My spirituality.

My belief structure of how the spiritual universe worked.

It made me question what I had held so dear for so many years

What those I looked upto and those around me were passionately sharing about, teaching, relaying.

What I had been passionately sharing, teaching, relaying…

What I was so sure about…

Suddenly these no longer resonated.

During that time I let go, gave up, had many dark knights of the soul, felt totally lost…not knowing if I would be found. Wondering how can you be lost when you are so knee deep in the spiritual path. When you’ve been doing this for so many years.

I wondered if I had lost my faith completely.

In a way I had.

Faith in what I had worshipped without question.

All the libraries of my seeming knowledge collapsed one by one.

then I began to feel it….

Liberation

I was free from my own prison of knowledge.

From my own cage of ideas and concepts of what it meant to be spiritual.

More accurately what it meant to be Me.

I was rebirthing. Or perhaps a part was birthing for the first time.

Through all of this something was being trained…

Trust.

Trust in not knowing.

Trust in not needing to know.

Trust in being me.

The real me without the masks.

Without the spiritual identities.

Allowing myself to breathe again without the constrictive and restrictive ideas of what it means to even be spiritual.

It taught me to admit to something we rarely admit in spiritual circles.

We don’t know.

We don’t truly know how this or that works.

We don’t know what is right for us or others.

We are still learning. Exploring.

In hindsight I see the immensely clever journey that was being set up for me.

Back then I felt so alone with my questioning…Yet in hindsight it allowed me to stand alone with my spiritual beliefs.

Today as groups form and polarised identities stand so strongly together/against…I am much more comfortable with not sharing the same ideals as others – whilst also not seeing them as enemies. This doesn’t mean this has been easy. It means I am much more aware of where I am pulled and why. Much more aware of the consequences of not listening to what is really true for me.

The process of questioning had an unintended side effect of empowerment. Deeper layers of compassion.

I share all this because back then I wish I had at least some reference for what I was experiencing. Perhaps you are too…Perhaps reading this is enough to speak to a part that feels alone in wanting to think differently to the seeming polarising groups out there….

We are all undergoing a supreme initiation of the Self.

We could say the spiritual movement is evolving.

Yet it is really about each of us that is evolving.

Choosing what spirituality means to us.

I now look back at what I had been sharing, teaching, relaying and see the beauty in what was being shared. All still relevant.

Yet…I recognise that those experiences were the foundation for me to grow into someone else.

Today I am birthing into someone I don’t know.

As I walk into this new world I feel naked.

There is seemingly only me.

I have no familiarities with what I used to protect myself with.

Yet I am now committed to my own questioning.

I also finally understand something I didn’t during these past few years.

I was never alone when I was standing in this new world.

I was with you.

We are all exploring together. On our own.

And in this new world, we are meeting on the shores of new ideas,

As new people

With new stories.

I am excited to meet you and re-meet you along the journey…

…and see what happens when we allow ourselves to birth into who we really are.

Vaz Sriharan

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