My Spiritual Awakening

Hi everyone!

This week I really wanted to share my spiritual awakening and what that looked like for me and how it informs the art I create for y'all. I understand that every person is going to have a different experience, and a lot of that experience depends on what religion you choose over all. I am of the belief that there are an infinite number of ways to have a relationship with God and no one religion is going to be the perfect fit for every single person. With that being said, this is my experience and the path that i’ve taken. I am not and will never try to convert anyone to seeing the world the same way I do. 

Now that that’s out of the way, heres my spiritual awakening journey!

I “woke up” so to speak in 2017, but it was the kind of waking up where you are still really groggy and tired after, but I read the book “The Four Agreements” by Don Miguel Ruiz and this book changed the way I looked at the world. It gave me the courage to begin exploring spirituality outside of Christianity, to end a relationship that wasn’t working for me, and to seek therapy to really get started on creating a future where my children wont have to go through what I went through. At this point in time I was really focused on the idea of breaking the cycles of abuse. 

I grew up kind of adjacent to the church. My family is Episcopal and TBH it’s a great denomination for those who are interested in Christianity without all of the toxic rhetoric. But as a kid, I never felt connected. My family moved around a lot and we tried a lot of Episcopal churches and a lot of non denomination churches and I never really could relate to the kids who would fall down crying over Jesus, I honestly thought it was all an act. I truly just never understood the connection, and honestly I still don’t but to each their own. 

My relationship with Christianity went toxic when my family moved to the bible belt. The town we lived in was run by a mega church/university and it was really toxic. I was bullied heavily for being more masculine presenting and the toxic rhetoric of the contemporary church was running rampant. Pushing away anyone who wasn’t willing to blindly follow. I spent most of my teen years knowing I didn’t resonate with Christianity, but I didn’t really know there was anything else out there so I just thought I was an Atheist. That was until I turned 20 and had my awakening.

So fast forward, I am starting to see that there is a world of spirituality beyond Christianity. It’s a big and overwhelming world, and I had so much unresolved trauma that I didn’t care about the spirituality component, but I just knew that I had to go to therapy to do whatever it takes to not have a family like the one that raised me. I decided that I will not traumatize my children with alcoholism or codependency so that’s where I started. It's funny looking back on this, because while I wasn't focusing on spirituality at this point in my journey, doing this family work would get spiritual very fast.

I had to learn how to identify emotions, and how to not feel guilty for having them. I had to learn how to set boundaries. I’m still working on my avoidant attachment style, it’s something that prevented me from making real long lasting friendships in college and it’s something that prevents me from soaring in my business and relationships now. I had to learn how to accept that I was emotionally neglected as a child and learn how to reparent myself as a result. 

I began seeing an EMDR therapist at the end of 2018 and that is really what launched my spiritual awakening. EMDR uses bilateral stimulation and memory work to restructure the way that traumatic events are stored in the brain. It is very very powerful, but very very hard work. When I found a huge core wound I was depressed for like a month after. I’m not talking a little sad, i’m talking, I felt like I was ripped out of my body, pressure washed, and put back. There was a lot of healing that had to be done after major sessions. During one of our sessions, I consciously heard one of my spirit guides for the first time. It was a voice that was so encouraging, something that I know I wasn’t controlling, and I knew it wasn’t me because the voice was so nice. I never would have said something so nice to myself at that point in time. It began to crack my shell. I felt a sense of love and being that I had never felt before. I think in some religions they call it Holy spirit, but the idea of spirit is something that has been around since the witches and the warlocks way before Christ sooo...

The complete activation of my spiritual awakening happened in 2019. I moved into my very first house all by myself, and one day when I was cleaning up, I found a baby snake in my kitchen. Never in my life have I found a baby snake IN my house, but I killed it (I didn’t know if it was poisonous and something that would hurt my cat) and moved on. I then had a wild dream that I was being attacked by a snake and the only thing that could save me was the holy spirit. It was very confusing for my non christian brain, and I still don’t know what It means exactly, but the next day I found ANOTHER baby snake in my house and It felt like a synchronicity that activated something in my soul because from that moment on I was launched into the woo world so hard. It was that pure love and light bliss, that I know i’m here for something bigger than to work and then die. 

That’s when a friend introduced me to the Soberish podcast by Jessa Reed and the rest is history. For the first time in my entire life I was listening to someone talk about their experiences and being able to relate and resonate on a soul level. I have since begun to study anything I can get my hands on that revolves around alternative religions and spiritual practices. I have begun to incorporate witchcraft into my life, reading more and more about consciousness and multi dimensional reality, and even Creator worship and minor deities as archetypes and how they can be used in day to day life.

It has been a wild ride full of love, but also full of shadow work. Anyone who has gone through their spiritual awakening probably knows about the dark nights of the soul and the hours of wondering what the heck is even going on. But now after nearly 4 years, I can say that I have some kind of spiritual practice and foundational practices that help me be a better person. I wont pretend like I know what the hell is going on. I personally think all of this is man made a little bit, I don’t think our tiny human brains can truly comprehend the true expansiveness that is the universe and the Creator. But it’s definitely fun to seek and to find resonance and to do what I love.

Which brings me to art. The symbols that I use in my art are the symbols that had a profound impact on my spiritual journey. The snakes, the eyeballs, the frequencies, all of it were keys that I found useful for unlocking new branches of my awakening. I feel like my artistic gift is something from the divine. I get to tap into the idea realm, that pure creative energy, and translate it into something that y’all get to enjoy. When i’m making art it feels like I am working for something larger than myself, and I truly believe that it’s part of why i’m here on this earth. I mean beyond the pure experience part.

I hope that feeling of connectivity and expansiveness is something that those who interact with my art feels, but I know that it will only resonate with those who I hold the keys for. I know the journey isn't over. The awakening seems to be something that ebbs and flows for an entire lifetime and i'm so excited to experience the journey along the way.