So what’s the spiritual path all about? Where is it going and what is the end goal?
For me, I ended up on the spiritual path not by intention but through the door of healing.
I wanted to find healing from depression and negative states but also couldn’t understand why the world is as it is. What was the point to it all?
From an early age I had had mystical experiences (through drug-induced consciousness, however), but I felt that there was something more to it all. I wanted to be connected to something bigger than myself and also something that was beyond the taking of the drugs. Up and down I went attempting to escape the mundane world of teenage life “Not consciously”.
I wanted to change and Reiki came across my path in my search for healing. Many wonderful and weird experiences later, the spiritual journey became about being aware, about learning about my conditioned patterns and how to make changes in my perception of who I am and how to choose to respond instead of reacting to situations in life.
The more I learnt about myself, the more I understood other people too. We all operate in the same ways, we just go about things differently. This process led to becoming more aware of my inner and outer worlds, just through the process of looking and enquiring into what happens within me.
I loved to learn and read many spiritual books about self-realisation. I was hooked, I was connected to the world beyond the mundane. This was it! I felt I had found my path so to speak. I continued on my journey practising advanced Reiki techniques, meditation and Kabbalah and over time I realised that I had changed so much from who I was a few years before.
Activities like drinking, smoking, gossiping and small talk became uninteresting to me. My list of friends shrunk and I realised that the spiritual path can be a lonely place. However, I continued with life, work and kept in touch with people who were on the same wavelength.
After heartbreak from a relationship, I realised that this journey wasn’t about ‘me’ or that I was doing it. The control I thought was mine, really wasn’t an ‘I’ wasn’t doing it and there was ‘no thing’ in it for ‘me,’ my ego. I was devastated and it I just felt “what is the point?” It was like I’ve been doing all this ‘spiritual work’ and there’s nothing in it. There comes a point where the spiritual path isn’t about you and when that is recognised the ego isn’t interested in it anymore.An emptiness deep inside became apparent. At
An emptiness deep inside became apparent. At first, I thought I was depressed but I could get up in the morning, go to work and do what I needed to do, this wasn’t depression or what I knew depression to be because I had already experienced that.
Everything I learnt about healing and personal development gave me the skills and the capacity to keep going. Now, four years on, the emptiness is still there but I am now used to it and on some level have accepted it. The point of no return came and went many years ago, now it is about facing the unknown.
As many spiritual teachers have said, the spiritual path is destructive, it will destroy what isn’t really you (those ego drives and conditioned patterns that run havoc in our lives). When these are brought into the light, a battle begins. One has to allow these patterns, thoughts, feelings and desires to be and not get sucked in by them while also observing and enquiring into the truth of them.
While sometimes I can do that and at other times I can get sucked it, this is my journey right now. I accept it and while it is not easy in time my hope is that my capacity to let go will increase. In the end, it’s all about letting go.
Thanks for reading
Many Blessings
Marcus Abraham
