Crown - ONENESS/INTEGRATION - In what ways do you recognize and honor your own divinity? How do you practice bringing spirituality into your life in a way that enhances your connection to the universe?
I was raised in the Catholic church. Every Sunday we went to church and worshiped an invisible cloud-being and his poor executed son who looked down on us with stakes in his hands and blood dripping down his body every morning (more gory than any movie I was allowed to watch at that age). We confessed our sins, did penance, listened to sermons that warned us to avoid “bad” things, to be led not into temptation, because we were sinners and our only chance at not burning for all of eternity was to pray to the almighty god on high and beg for forgiveness for anything that wasn’t permitted by the bible. The part of the service where we were asked to repeat things back to the priest, I would only mouth the words “it is right to give thanks and praise,” because deep down they made me feel so icky. In my confirmation class, a visiting Bishop warned us that if our parents were unmarried when we were born, that we were bastards and going to hell; I’ll never forget it, because there was a girl named Rachel in my class who had a single mom and I’m pretty sure I watched the trauma roll over her in real time that day.
I look back now with a bit of amusement (alongside the trauma of course), because while my parents were forcing us all into the minivan every Sunday morning to go pretend to be good Christians, I was spending my allowance money on books about witchcraft and Wicca, burning incense and candles, using a pendulum and a Ouija board, and collecting amethyst and quartz crystals. I started reading tarot in high school, took my first yoga class when I was seventeen, and was obsessed with all things pagan.
Needless to say, I left the church as soon as I was old enough to decide for myself, and aside from a few moments of guilt in my early twenties, I have not gone back. I have no regrets. But that is not to say that I am not spiritual. I’ll even have the audacity to say that I practice my spirituality way more often than any Christian I’ve ever met. I found Buddhism about ten years ago, and began attending retreats, Dharma talks, meditation halls, and pagodas whenever I had the time. The more I read and learned, the more everything made sense to me. Buddhist theory eased my anxiety, gave me greater understanding, changed how I viewed myself and the world. Unlike Christianity, which offered guilt, fear, and judgment, Buddhism offered peace, understanding, and acceptance; it was a no-brainer. I added Buddhism like a layer of frosting on top of my cake of nature worship and atheism.
There's a great quote I saw on the internet the other day, which said "I have the same religion as that tree over there." I chuckled to myself and thought, "yeah, that's about right." Give or take a few technicalities and complicate it with some overthinking, and I'd say that having the same religion as a tree is the perfect way to live your life. I think that Buddha would agree with that sentiment.
Nowadays, although I hate to pigeon-hole myself or others with labels, if I was forced to, I’d call myself an atheist Buddhist witch. I practice my spirituality every single day. My yoga practice has traveled well beyond the mat at this point. I meditate daily, and I set intentions, practice releasing rituals, and celebrate the change in the moons and seasons as they happen (yes, I am one of those weirdos who can tell you on any given day what phase of the moon we are in). I am more in tune to nature, my body, and my mind than I ever have been. It brings me great joy to help guide others to this place in the yoga studio, and I do feel closer to my true path now than I ever had in the past. Maybe that is the divine; being in tune to yourself, acknowledging your place in nature and the universe, understanding that you are part of a great cycle of energy, and feeling secure in the vastness of it all. I don’t believe that any god is coming to save me or punish me; I am god, and so are you. We are everything and nothing all at once.
Comments