Spirituality is like puberty

I will be honest, I signed up for this yoga retreat without knowing anything other than who was leading it. I have so much appreciation for my teacher, Twyla and she has spoken of her teacher so often and with such respect that I knew I had to meet him. So spending two weeks in India with both of them was an opportunity I could not pass up.

I am not exaggerating though when I say I didn’t know anything beyond where I needed to fly into and when. I believe that this attitude stepping into this trip allowed me to be as open as possible to what is meant to find me. And let me tell you, things are finding me!

Spirituality has been a big theme so far. Something I suppose I would have called myself before but truly had not defined. I meditate daily, do yoga and study ancient texts with Twyla. Does that make me spiritual? I’ve gotten into tarot, found space for ritual and ceremony in my life and am a lot more “woo woo” than I have ever been. Is that making me spiritual?

The short answer is, no. Prasad, the other leader of this trip said something in the first few days that I haven’t been able to stop thinking about. Im paraphrasing here but he said something to the tone of, spiritually is like puberty. It happens to us. And when it does, it changes everything. It’s not something we can force or control. We just have to be willing to meet the changes.

This one conversation spun me. Spirituality happens to me, I am not making it happen. I cannot force something that naturally occurs. They say, you can’t force a flower to bloom. I feel this in my bones.

I have changed. It has been uncomfortable and awkward so often. I haven’t understood the what and how and when and why a lot of the time. I’ve been going through spiritual puberty! I can’t write that and not giggle!

As soon as I think I’m in the phase of puberty when you’ve settled into the changes and start to get comfortable where you are, boom, another change pops up out of nowhere. It’s not always bad, but sometimes it feels abrupt.

Puberty involves some fun and not so fun changes. That resonates with me in a spiritual journey. In spiritual and yoga circles, and even more broadly in religion, the not so fun aspects can frequently be ignored. People love to discuss the bliss and liberation but not the darkness and hell that is traveled through to get there.

Again, contrast is coming up. How ideas that are seemingly opposite but actually support one another. Stability and mobility, creation and destruction, internal and external, disharmony and ease. What feels like opposite ends of the spectrum often sit right next to each other.

I am a visual learner and here is how I see it now. I used to see spectrums as a straight line. One ends contains the light and the other the dark, whatever that may be. But now I have started to see that if you start to bend those ends upward, eventually they will meet and create a circle. The point of highest contrast between the two ideas becomes where they join.

It is as if both ends are dependent on each other. Our lives are never straight lines. If they were, we would fall off the ends too often. Everything in life is a cycle. Endings create new beginnings, death creates life, destruction allows for creativity. If we met the end and had nowhere to go, life would be purposeless and chaotic.

But life feels easier when you know when you get to the end, it is only the beginning.

This cyclical life makes the spiritual journey feel a lot less rigid in my mind. We are all somewhere on the circle and we have a few options. We can either refuse to move which requires immense amounts of effort, force the circle to spin which again requires effort beyond our means, or simply allow it to move how it will. I am going to allow. Allow it all to come and go and rotate at will. The attempt to control or manipulate almost always gets us in trouble.

Lastly, I really love this analogy of spirituality being like puberty for one more reason. People often ask me how. How did I get to where I am now. And let me tell you, I have tried and tried to find a direct path. I’ve reflected on where I have been and where I’m moving towards in effort to create a map to follow. Other people don’t seem to have a problem creating a map, but for me, it never feels authentic.

Now I understand a bit better that I can’t create a map of a process I am not controlling. I can’t line everything up nice and neat when spirituality, and as a whole, life is not neat. My answer when people ask is almost always, “I don’t know”. And it’s not avoidance, it’s simply the truth. My path is mine alone, everyone has to travel their own way.

Perhaps my path will shine a light on a scary part of your path. Or at least that is what I hope. That when we are not afraid to share our messy journey and the light we have found along the way, we can serve as a small respite for others. I am not here to tell anyone else where to go or what to do, I’m simply here to walk my own path and allow others to see me standing as firmly as possible in my own truth.

India is shifting me. It’s moving me around this proverbial circle of spirituality. In ways I cannot fully grasp yet, but I will continue to allow. Allow it all to be what it is meant to be.

The ultimate letting go.