An Intimate Experience of Spiritual Growth

Beliefs and black holes

Young slim woman lying in silent reservoirPhoto byPhoto by Klaudia Ekert

I recently went through an inner crisis, one that happened due to my not feeling good enough to keep writing publicly, and it kind of slowed me down in my trajectory.

At the time of the crisis, the rational mind tried justifying what was happening through reasons such as, “You know, I’ve been writing regularly for the last six months, I need a break.” Okay? But as I listened, more and more reasons kept popping up, “It’s not worth it. Others are better at this. I should just go back to my cocoon and do my wizardry behind the scenes. That’s where I’m most comfortable.”

Eventually, I was “convinced” so I decided to stop. But a part of me wasn’t happy about it. Was I being honest with myself, or was I trying to avoid a “painful” situation — one that’d definitely happen if I kept stretching myself beyond the boundaries I’ve been calling “my life” up to this time?

It’s true that I needed a break, at least some days to rest mentally, because whatever I decide to do — I’m 100% committed to it. And whether I do it or not — because of my “unconscious” commitment to it — I keep thinking about it in the background of my mind.

But I love writing. And I especially love sharing those crazy insights with people as crazy as I myself that would be crazy enough to read such crazy pieces.

So after two days, here I was, staring at the blank page — standing between my subconscious anxiety that I haven’t yet understood, and my burning desire to write.

If you’re reading this now, you know what happened next.

As I often write about, our parents weren’t perfect because theirs weren’t perfect too. The world as we know it isn’t perfect because those that govern it had similar parents, grandparents, and so on.

We’re all hurt. We’re hurt because of childhood experiences, because of teachers, because of challenging experiences. The list is endless. But the fact is concrete — we’re in pain because we carry unprocessed experiences from our past.

When we were younger, we didn’t have as much wisdom and understanding as we often do after a few years — even though most so-called “adults” aren’t that great as examples.

Anyhow, because we’ve accepted anything that was said to us as being the “ultimate truth,” we’ve “imprisoned” different emotions such as pain, anger, frustration, disappointment, feelings of abandonment, hopelessness, despair, guilt, and so on into the fabric of our psyche.

For the nerds: From birth to around age seven, our brainwaves are slower, we’re almost “hypnotized” and therefore everything jumps directly into the subconscious — where the “me” resides.

From behind the “curtains” of our mind, those emotions we’ve stored distort our logic.

While I was tired and thought it was the only reason I’d stop writing, the anxious/insecure background made it clear that something else was going on, and the mind was desperately trying to avoid dealing with the stuff in the background.

It reminds me of Elliot in Mr. Robot, and how his subconscious hid the truth from him to the point where he confused “real” and illusory, simply to avoid his traumatizing experience.

So I took a step back and told myself I’d figure out what was really happening here.

When you go out of your home, and step into the unknown world we live in, what do you feel? You may greet your neighbor, put on your earphones and pretend you’re texting someone — but what’s happening in the background of your mind — do you feel unusually alert? Do you avoid eye contact? Do you avoid speaking to strangers, as mom and dad told you to?

Most people believe healing subconscious patterns is an impossible task. But the truth is, it’s easy — you simply have to notice the ocean of your mind, the background — on which “normal” thoughts float.

If our parents told us not to speak to strangers, if the news they put on the TV while we ate together kept repeating the world was coming to an end, if some fool in our place is put in jail for having stolen someone’s wallet — as a child, the obvious conclusion would be “the world is a dangerous place to be in.”

And from that “conclusion,” a belief is formed — and that belief is the subconscious background, the anxiety while we walk, the high sense of alertness, the stress, the cortisol, the illnesses. And so on.

A belief acts like a “black hole,” which means the information we take in from the world is always pulled in by our beliefs — we interpret, process, translate, filter information through our beliefs — those beliefs that form our outlook on life, those beliefs we’ve accepted as being the “ultimate truth” to life in our moments of innocence.

How we perceive reality is therefore entirely dependent on our beliefs. The stronger and more identified we are to our beliefs, the more powerful the “black hole” is, which means everything becomes a reason why we were so “right” about everything.

Arrogance is born. Humbleness becomes weakness. And it’s all about “survival of the fittest.” Damn.

The subconscious “orders” the conscious to justify/blame others/events in order to avoid dealing with the suffering we’ve stored. It has good intentions, but at some point, we have to stop limiting ourselves because of our fear of pain — and look at it dead in the eyes.

As we discard all thoughts of blame and justifications, and as we refuse to escape our situation through distractions such as sex, movies, video games, reading and so on — all we’re left with is the stored suffering, which begs to be freed.

How beliefs are healed:

Accepting the feeling, embracing it, processing it — which means realizing you were once innocent, and that you repressed those feelings because you didn’t know what else to do with them, and then “taking” your own “hand,” and walking yourself through this situation by being compassionate with yourself, forgiving with others, and responsible about your state of evolution at that time — if you do this correctly, you “heal.”

I don’t like to speak about myself, I may have some unpleasant experiences relating to this into the subconscious. I’ll definitely check it out. Or maybe it’s just how I am. Yet, I chose to do it today to stretch myself out of my usual boundaries.

It’s how we connect with each other after all.

In the past, I would’ve listened to my fears and insecurities as it happened many times, which would’ve stopped me in my trajectory and make me miss the beautiful feedbacks, sharing of experiences and people I meet through sharing writings I once thought were too horrible/unrelatable.

But not anymore.

The world is what it is. People are what they are. We’re all born feeling vulnerable, and we all have to learn along the way. Blaming people or situation for my hurt is irresponsible. My pain, my dealing with it.

We literally confine ourselves to the existence we’re so desperate to escape from. These “black holes,” that are our limiting beliefs, make us perceive and filter reality in a way that gives us our unpleasant experience of it. The more credit we give to our beliefs, the more trapped we feel. It’s why we feel “stuck” in the same loops of routines, pleasure and pain, highs and lows. Et cetera.

Living the life you truly want isn’t going to be something you’re familiar with. It’ll be new, fresh, unknown, and even a bit scary because you’ve never experienced it before. But that’s how growth happens.

And you can always grow, no matter where you are and no matter how confused you may feel — you have the power to shine like the Sun, and be grounded like the Earth.

To you, whoever you are and wherever you are, I say thank you, for having taught me so much. We are all part of the same and one beautiful life. Love.

As a final note.

If you’ve been meditating, using affirmations and thinking positively for a while now, without necessarily integrating spiritual truths at a soul level even though you understand them intellectually — I’ve written a book to help you understand the main blocks to true spiritual growth, and how to overcome them. I'm sure you're tired of "knowing" about God because you can't wait to experience God. That's what we explore in Spiritual Transition. Give the book a look here.