Life, Religion, & Spirituality

Frustrating day today. My roaster started malfunctioning in the middle of my roast day. Had to waste a batch and then quit roasting, so I wasn't able to finish what I wanted to stay on top of this week's orders. Thankfully, my electrician is coming tomorrow morning to test the electrical to see if all is working properly. I'm praying he finds something!

I hate when this out of control stuff happens. It typically triggers the hell out of me, and then it's all I can focus on until it gets resolved. Although, I must admit, I handle these situations much better than I used to. I get less triggered/overtaken and don't let it totally ruin my day as much. But still, it sucks.

I get pretty overwhelmed with situations like this that feel so unknown and uncertain. I'm not particurlary handy or engineer-minded, so anything mechanical feels foreign and mysterious to me. It frustrates me and touches on some deep wounds because I feel inadequate and incompetent to resolve the situation on my own. Having to reach out and get help makes me feel vulnerable, needing to rely on others to come through in a timely manner. 

That's particularly hard when it comes to my business...my way of putting food on the table. Even though things always have a way of working out and soon become a distant memory, in the thick of it everything feels like slow motion. 

These scenarios feel like a test from Life. Ultimately, helping me to grow and build inner strength each time they occur. Helping to build trust and faith that Life is really for my good and for my evolution to move toward becoming my Higher Self. Thankfully, I'm able to perceive that now, where I wasn't before. My mentor has engrained that perspective into me, and it has helped me drastically. So grateful for it. 

I was just on the phone with my mentor last night, and we were discussing our former worldviews: seeing challenges as coming from the Devil. We would resist the challenges and try to make them go away quickly because we didn't recognize the treasure that was presenting itself right in front of our eyes. It's not "the Devil out to get us," it's "Life giving us opportunities to develop and transcend our triggers and patterns that are keeping us stuck and stagnant." BIG difference!

Let's talk Religion for a bit...I don't think about this former worldview much anymore. I grew up in fundamental Evangelical Christianity. I went to the small Christian school and we were every-Sunday regulars at church. I was a pretty lukewarm Christian in my younger years, as most kids are. I was a Christian because that's what I was taught to be, duh. Monkey see, monkey do.

I went through a rough patch in college where I experimented heavily with alchohol, drugs, and sex. Nearing the end of my college days, I went through a heart-wrenching breakup and starting having panic attacks. Life got dark pretty quickly after having a blast for 4.5 years as a wild and free college kid. All the sudden, I felt empty, directionless, and hopeless. 

A few months after graduating college, I was sitting in church one Sunday with my parents (still living at home) when I had a life-altering mystical experience. I felt a tangible peace and love of God come upon me like I never had before. I wept for quite a while during the service, and I'll never forget how different I felt as I walked outside: the world seemed like a brighter and better place. Everything looked more beautiful, like I was transported to another realm...one I much liked. To this day, I am convinced I was touched by God in a deeply profound way. 

After that experience, I became a devoted Christian, then in 2007 at age 22. This worked for me for about 5 years until I started questioning my faith. I started not feeling so certain about my theology and asking some of the big questions, but wasn't really finding answers that felt sufficient. Now, I'm 40 years old and am still on a spiritual journey. I've finally realized that journey won't ever end, nor should it. No one ever arrives. 

I don't really have "beliefs" like I used to. Sure, I have some thougths and loosely held beliefs, but I know less than I ever have before. I'm less concerned with knowledge and more concerned with practical wisdom. There's not much I feel certain about, especially as it relates to metaphysics. This was a hard pill to swallow...it took me a while to come to terms with uncertainty. I tried to make my new faith fit in the neat and tidy box of certainty like the one from my younger days. Didn't work.

Spirituality for me now is heavily focused on being fully invested in the human experience, while also recognizing there's much more to life than what meets the eye. I still feel deeply spiritual, but it's in a way that's even difficult to find words to describe. I guess I would say, my aim is to balance myself as Body & Spirit. This has been my path recently. Being in the world, not of the world...not being overly consumed by either world, I suppose.

I guess I would say I have developed a Grounded Spirituality, if that means anything to you. To best summarize, I recently heard an older gentleman say, "Before you can become spiritually enlightened, you need to learn how to be a man." That hits a sweet spot for me. I'll end there. Peace.