I have been pondering the spiritual recently — more particularly, where does it relate in my life now. Let’s just say that each of these parts of my history could each take up many articles independently, and perhaps they will.
I always had a sense of the “other” from poking around in the river that ran by our house to the mystery of the hidden creatures in the wood over the other side of the field and, of course, the ever-present lore of growing up in Ireland, rich in myth and folk stories. These were a part of life, including Irish children tv; indeed, when Eddie Lenihan appeared on National Television in 1986, telling stories of the Fianna and the Faeries, I was completely enthralled. However, this was tempered by being brought up in the minority Protestant church and its predictable presumptions. However, I spent my early teens exploring myths and legends, encouraged by a weekly magazine called the “Unexplained”. UFOs, ghost, fairies and (my favourite) the cryptids!
For as long as I can remember, I have sought the ‘truth’ and reality, and perhaps you could say the “magic” of life. For me, as someone who was a bit of an outsider, needing one to one emotional connection and finding none, except with the animals, my next spiritual journey was no surprise in retrospect. I found my way in my early 20’s into a Christian cult of sorts. Enticed in with theories about long lost tribes and prophecy, the Worldwide Church of God offered a place of community and acceptance I had never known before. I don’t know what my parents made of it (perhaps it was part of my rebellion), but I was enabled to take the car to their meetings on a Saturday and only had a few raised eyebrows when I went to their festivals in the autumn. I think the most difficult for them was not wanting to celebrate Christmas for a couple of years!
I made some great connections there and am friends still with many to this day. Not least because I joined at an interesting time. As with all cults, you are only in if you agree with the teachings of the religion, but what happens when the leader dies, and then a new leader comes in and starts to throw out the nonsense and align more with the mainstream? Often they die, but one thing positive about it was that we were encouraged to search for ourselves from the beginning. I met the new leader, Joeseph Tkach, when I was studying at their college, though I dropped out and drove across America after a couple of months. But that’s another story.
Great debates were had, and sides were taken in a friendly way (mostly). Eventually, there were break off groups that wanted to keep to a certain point in time, and the main part aligned itself with mainstream Christianity. I was able to deconstruct quite readily, after a relatively short period of time of reeling from the consequences of it all, as I hadn’t been ‘in’ it for so long. I met up with the good friends down the country on one Saturday and met up with other Christian singles the next. Actually, I was part of a great group of people and, probably for the first time in my life, I went on walks, to meals and the cinema with lots of different (Christian) beliefs. Evangelical, Presbyterian, Catholic all talked and shared experiences. Alongside all of this was the love of a good faerie tale and the ghost stories that are embedded in the cracks and crevices of being Irish. But I didn’t bring that in the mix!
When I moved to England, I did it for what I knew was love to a soil not so steeped in the folklore that resonates with my soul. There was a shared religion for us and a Saturday meeting church, met a spiritual bridge for a couple of years for me, and that was where we married. However, there wasn’t a real sense of belonging there for either of us, and the ‘spiritual journey took us onward. We also attended a liberal Christian festival called Greenbelt, where I was challenged and opened to some very graceful speakers, such as John O’Donohue. Church journeys took us through one of the biggest churches in Bristol, an alternative worship group and then eventually to a small local Anglican church. Although having community and some really good people, I couldn’t square the whole system and its rules, and it was there I had a breakdown.
It wasn’t only the religion; however, that did it; it was a crunch of meeting true acceptance on my counselling course, pulling apart the difference between spirit, soul, mind and body and a total dissonance of everything in my life. I knew that my search for the ‘real’ was only beginning. Especially when as a therapist, I looked deep into the eyes of a sure atheist and saw more of eternity in there than in most religious people, that confirmed truth is not held by any single system. Counselling was, for me, the closest thing I had come to magic in this reality. Holding someone’s pain and conflict as a sacred experience, not telling them the answer, but pointing to the truth in themselves. Then to see that manifest in a glorious explosion of self actuation and real change in the person’s life. Wow! In those that were willing and able anyway, to move through the stages of loss and frustration, turning to realisation and returning to wholeness.
Through other encounters, I met a teacher from the traditions of Maronite Catholicism, who studied under Joseph Campbell, the professor who put forward the one great myth hypothesis (referring to the idea that sees all mythic narratives as variations of a single great human story) and the hero’s journey. Alexander Shaia has brought his theory of Quadratos which equates the four gospels, to the four-stage journey of human existence I had witnessed in the counselling room. Having been entranced by Campbell in earlier years, this echoed deeply and made so much sense. Other soul wanderers came into view as well through podcasts, pointing me to a wholeness of the other that is infinitely bigger and more inclusive than any faith system has managed to point to yet.
Where does all that leave me now? I can honestly say I don’t know, and I apologise if you want a clear answer from me, you aren’t having it. No religion holds attraction for me, trying to mould the divine into their own, safe image. I feel the energy and danger of the soul in the natural world and people. A reflection of the ‘ground of all being’, to quote Paul Tillich, in all those that are striving to be better than they are. I feel that there is a greater emergence coming between faith, nature, being human, and the other plain's magic. Maybe the removal of barriers or a shift in consciousness? Perhaps. David Gerken’s Article on Eckhart Tolle’s theory would seem to indicate so.
Ask me in another five years what I believe!
All I know now is the illusion of certainty cannot be clung to, and there is more than what is seen. I will keep seeking and wondering.
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