I just finished reading Devotion, a memoir written by a writer I admire called Dani Shapiro. In the book, Dani writes about her quest to find God. She wants to experience God, understand religion, or find a higher power to believe in. Dani's father was a devoted observant Jew, loyal to his God. But her father's faith didn't grant her enough answers at times of uncertainty.
I have the same problem that Dani had. Growing up, I had a God to believe in, but I didn't relate to that God. I come from a Latin American country where our faith was decided by the Romans during the colonization period, and no one questioned it. My grandmother didn't question it either. She dictated the family religion, and everyone else followed. So, by default Roman Catholic was my religion too. To my grace and my family's disgrace, my father and my mother are not into Catholic practices. They don't attend mass every Sunday, and when they do, for a wedding or a funeral, they don't engage in the Catholic rituals. Still, they made my grandmother happy by sending my siblings and me to mass with her. She sat in the first row right in front of the priest. She was the first one there and the last one to leave. It was a penance for me. All I remember from those days was how hard it was to sit still, turning my head around to find some distraction.
As kids, all we can do is go along with our parents' beliefs. We have no say on what God is, which is our religion or who is our spiritual guide. At a young age, I learned that there was a mighty God who was kind and powerful, and I must fear him. I also learned that there was a devil, and I needed to worry about him too. I was taught to care about this God and his son, his disciples, and what they preached. I learned to be terrified of him and the devil at the same time.
As I grew older, I felt the need to know more about the things I believed in, the religion I practiced, and the God I relied on so much. I wanted to understand him or let him go. Accepting that I wanted to question the powerful God and my sacred religion was scary, but I needed to; my beliefs felt too limiting. It took decades. It was hard. I had to kill the good Almighty God, the most powerful creature I knew, so I could find him again on my own.
In Devotion, Dani set on her spiritual quest and experienced all kinds of religious ideas, gods, and practices. She tried anything that resembled faith and the higher power, discovering meditation and the healing energy of crystals. She aligned her chakras and her vagal tone. Sought rabbis and spirit guides. She allowed herself to wish and hope and doubt too. She made herself talk to that something she didn't understand and opened herself to that which can't be seen. A spirit? A person? A ghost? Energy? Her own hopes? Maybe it was God for all she knew.
I am on that same journey. Wishing to experience that powerful something which offers hope and illuminates the heart when it feels dark.
What am I looking for? Who am I looking for? I couldn't know. I never gave myself permission to explore. How could I? I was going straight to hell if I did. That's what I thought. But then I let go of the idea of my grandmother's God, and I found my own — radiant energy, which has no gender, or form, no rules or rituals — a pure force fueled by goodwill and love.
Now I explore instead of using religion as a measure of connection, relationship, worthiness, or assertiveness. I am free from those values imposed by society. Instead, I experienced the unknown, and let myself be amazed by my ventures. Like when I discovered a hidden mystic store and had my first tarot reading. Or when I learned about the energy of the chakras and immediately fell in love with the balance they provide. Now I use oils for peace and harmony and find stillness in the Buddhist practice of Zazen. I've created a practice of kindness, awareness, and acceptance that grants peace and strength to my spiritual journey.
My spiritual awakening happened because I decided to let go of my imposed God and the fear it produced. I freed myself to look for the otherworldly, unexplainable higher power, and only then, I began to choose the experiences that were right for me. Now I can talk with my grandmother and see the God she sees without judgment or fear.
Just like Dani created her rituals and shaped her spiritual path, people all over the world create theirs. There is beauty in the variety of minds that inhabit each religion. They create their rituals and share them with the world, and that's great for us. The more we know, the better equipped we are to choose our own spiritual paths.
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