I’m afraid to write.

Because once I start, I know I won’t stop. This venture into sharing again feels like both the end and beginning of something. A version of myself I’m leaving behind as I walk toward the person emerging from this spiritual awakening.

My path of spiritual seeking hasn’t felt like a choice. The parts of me who hold the doubt, and the fear, and the atheist conditioning have been kicking and screaming every step of the way. You’re falling for something. You’re being duped. You’re losing your mind. And yet, I’m carried. Seemingly against my will. Carried by Life and Love itself, into a process I must have asked for.

I’ve been bringing my spiritual side out into the world slowly. And within the circles who understand, I’m the most normal person in the world. Wise, even. Someone worth learning from. But I have not yet walked fully into my newfound sense of authenticity in circles that may matter most. I’ve not brought this to the ones from whom I fear judgment.

I’ve reached a point in my lonely path of seeking, where the call to emerge is now stronger than the fear of staying hidden. It no longer feels possible to carry this part of myself behind a shield of conformity and intellect. Not when I have been shown at the deepest levels of my being, that intellect is a step behind Knowing. That science fails us when it comes to understanding life through a conscious, ineffable, all-knowing, felt experience. How is one to deny the Truth of that in favor of science and what can only be studied within the illusion?

I’m being called to talk. To write. To live freely and fully. To emerge. Not because anyone needs to listen. But because it’s my next step in owning this path I’ve been walking. It’s the next step in fully embracing who and what I am, and who and what I think I’ve always been.

I think those who’ve known me longest know I’ve been carrying a torment. A melancholy. I’ve been lost and immersed in my own dark night of the soul since childhood. This world never made sense to me. I walked through it quietly. Curiously. Painfully. Trying desperately to understand. To make sense of what all felt so completely nonsensical. So completely pointless.

It’s easy to point the finger at mental health. To blame depression. It runs in the family after all. But when the sleep studies, and doctors, and psychiatrists, and medications all lead you to a numbness that removes not only the darkness, but all of the light… you’re asked to face the questions that open the doorway to all spiritual seeking. What’s the point? This can’t be it… There has to be another way.

I’ve been consuming all there is to consume in the world of self-help, philosophy, theology, mysticism, and spirituality for about a decade now. And once that path began, it was as if a trail of breadcrumbs emerged before me. One after the other, I followed each of them. To this. To that. And with each new person, writer, guru, teacher, friend, colleague, stranger… I experienced another level of opening. A simultaneous shedding of something I no longer needed, replaced by a ray of light.

Every step was resonant. This was what I could not ignore. When I turn toward my Catholic upbringing, there’s no harmony in my system. When I turn toward science and atheism, I’m faced with the same discord. Like an out of tune instrument. This isn’t it… my insides would say.

But as I ventured down this new path, I felt the harmony. I was following the tuning of my inner instrument, and it was guiding me so purposefully. It’s the only reason I was brave enough to stay the course. The harmony and resonance in my system was undeniable. A truly divine buzzing. An intuitive yes. A peace. A knowing. A most truthiest truth.

So here I am now. After being immersed in spiritual texts for the past decade and plant medicine for the past few years… Unable to deny myself any longer. Let them judge. Let them see you as crazy. Losing it. Gone mad. I must let them judge now. Turning back is not an option.

And when I am able to rest in conscious awareness at the highest level, I am also able to see with perfect clarity how living wild, and raw, and ripped open is far less crazy than the madness that is this stifled world. I have glimpsed the Truth. I’ve felt it at the deepest level. And now I’m choosing to live it.

A little more bravely.

A little more loudly.