Cleaning the Cup

Let's face it. I have no clue what I'm talking about a lot of the time when it comes to spirituality. Or so I'd like to make myself believe.

The funny thing is: Most people whom I consider to be deeply spiritual would probably say the same. I think there are a couple of reasons for this.

First, what I'm coming to learn is that, when it comes to spirituality, there is no "one way." I mean, there's a reason why some of the world's dominant religions are, while based on pretty similar ideas, and in large parts the same people, still fervently proclaimed to be vastly different by their followers. And even within those religions their sects are claiming to have a better truth than the other guys, as I've been able to (only mildly judgmentally) observe visiting services of both the Catholic and Lutheran denominations in the small churches of my current immediate neighborhood.

Thankfully, there seems to be a growing understanding - at least that's what I'm perceiving from within my spiritual bubble (some may call us new-age hippies, others spiritual by-passers, or airy-fairies, but then there's also some pretty heavy-duty shadow work that's happening... Generation TMI, perhaps?) - that really, we're all onto the same thing, and just finding different ways to get to it.

All that is to say: Maybe nobody knows what they're talking about when it comes to spirituality. Or rather: Everyone does.

So on this journey that I've been finding myself on lately, I often feel quite lost. Thankfully, I have some pretty epic teachers in my life who are helping me light the path ahead - whether or not I follow it is, of course, completely up to me.

What I've realized today is that, since stepping onto the spiritual path with little more than just a "Oh sure, I'll try that!" in early 2019, I've basically been in the spiritual equivalent of psychotherapy, to varying degrees of active engagement on my part, and hence, intensity. (I think the intensity is always around, it just depends on my level of dissociation whether I feel it, and can relate to what's happening, or not). After leaving Yasodhara Ashram in Canada where I lived for 3.5 years (I never said I didn't go IN when I'm going in, whether I actually realize it or not) in the spring of 2022 to go back to the "real world" for a while - to save some money, and see if I was actually still able to survive out there (jury's still out on that one), I have been in what feels like an acceleration of this process: Mexico, TVM trainings, Shadow-Work and community boot camp in Guatemala - and then back to live in Germany, my home country, for the first time in nine years. With a long-term injury, a pretty naïve idea of all the mother wound and other kinds of healing I would be doing in what time frame, and how. It's been a year and a half now that I've been back, and the therapy session has not stopped - including an actual stint in a psychosomatic clinic last summer, which was an interesting foray back into the realm of classical psychotherapy. And opened up aspects of my life in ways that I don't think I fully anticipated.

- - -

I recently pulled the 9 of Pentacles of the Cosmic Tarot, which is all about enjoying the fruits of our labor, and also assessing what that labor actually is. It's also about looking back and seeing what we have sown, and are now reaping. In doing that, I realized that I have, in a lot of ways, become more whole than I've been in a very, very long time. That, while my ankle is still in its healing process, and my inner kindergarten still runs rampant (like, a lot!) at times, and it sometimes feels like I'm actually getting "worse" rather than better, I'm also learning who I am, and who I'm not. And, most importantly, I'm learning to love whoever that is at any given moment, and to accept myself no matter what. And that is something that I don't believe I would have been able to say two years ago. Not with the same feeling, anyways.

See, that onion that a lot of people talk about when speaking about the spiritual journey, is a beautiful metaphor. Because it allows for the process that we're all constantly in. Swami Sukhananda of said ashram in Canada I used to live at recently described it as not being a linear process, either, the peeling of that onion: That it depends on what kind of knife one uses (i.e., the "tools," or teachings, or practices), and from what angle you approach the onion, which likely depends on your current life circumstances, as well as your nervous system capacity to process any of those - usually in some way upsetting (in the most neutral sense of the word, i.e. stirring up the "routine") - challenges, or changes that lead to another attack on those more and more translucent layers.

So while I may have said: "Oh no, I do love myself!" two years ago, I say so with more fervor, and honesty now, and more often with a hand on my heart, and to myself, rather than outward. Not that there's anything wrong with any of those things - that's been my learning: NOTHING is wrong, ever. All of me is welcome here, truly. Or, it's becoming so.

And that, I'm learning, is one of the paths to intuition. My beautiful friend and medical intuitive I got the chance to work with last year, Pam Oliver (you should check her out, she's one of a kind and very, very special!) told it "cleaning the cup": Finding whatever practices, methods, things work for you to clear the path to that inner knowing. Like when to pause, when to move forward, when to retreat and hibernate for a while, and when to put yourself in situations where you'll be pushed. - And here's a question for you: Looking back at your life, can you see how all of these things happen anyway, whether you enter into them willingly or not?

Those of you who have been "in the field" for a while will know: It's not always easy to find the right tools, or the path, even. Because of the things we've experienced - all designed by our beautiful bodies, and minds, to protect our most vulnerable parts and, more often than not, born from trauma. And for that reason, these protective layers and mechanisms tend to stick around, even when the traumatic situation is no longer at hand. "Just in case" seems to be the nervous system's MO - and again: For good reason! Protecting us is, after all, its one and only job.

Thankfully, there are some pretty amazing techniques (like TVM, for example) and teachers out there to help us clean that cup. Check out the Mycelium for some of those teachers. And no matter what, if you haven't heard it today: Know that you are exactly right the way you are, right now. There's nothing wrong with you, nothing you need to fix. Maybe all you need is a little reminder of who you really are. I'm here for that. Are you?