ABANDONING MYSELF AND CALLING IT SURRENDER

on shifting spirituality & using spiritual practices to hide from ourselves

When I deconstructed Christianity and found spirituality after a void had been there for some time, I thought spirituality equaled specific traditions and sets of practices. I was still thinking of spirituality with a brain oriented towards religion - still in terms of identities to take on and boxes to check.

Last month, I wrote about letting ourselves change and transform.

My journey with spirituality has required much of the same (and, letting myself change and transform is part of the spiritual practice itself).

If you asked me 3 years ago what my spiritual practices are, I might have said: tarot, Reiki, breathwork, meditation, yoga, ritual, witchcraft.

If you ask me today, I’ll say my spiritual practices are looking at the sunset, stargazing, laughing, watching the leaves fall, slowing down, touching flowers, watching the clouds, kissing, moving towards generative conflict, swimming in the ocean, having sex, telling the truth, doing intuitive rituals on nonlinear timelines, writing poetry, dedicating myself to creative practice, messy vulnerable intimacy, giving my presence to the dreamworld, opening my heart, loving really big, care work, noticing my patterns, acceptance, cultivating compassion in myself and others, taking responsibility for my feelings and needs, cooking, being present, becoming more of myself, having fun, continually checking the meaning I’m making of the things other people (especially ones I love) say and do, asking for what I need, coming alive, and many more.

My spiritual practices are anything and everything that helps me become more of myself, move towards aliveness, and experience what I want to experience in this human body on this planet.

Those tools and practices like tarot, Reiki, breathwork all can support those experiences. I still love some of them. But for me they’re not spirituality themselves. They’re not the end goal. I don’t do breathwork to do breathwork, I do breathwork to touch more of myself, to get more clear on what my needs and feelings are so I can communicate them and cultivate more loving, honest relationships, so I can release what isn’t me to understand what is.

I think those things - the practices themselves - can be part 1 but I have often found myself ending the conversation there or getting stuck there in an endless loop of more practices. More information to take in. More things to learn. More tools to understand.

I believe there is a part 2 about integration, about using what we’ve learned, felt, and experienced to change ourselves and our lives. There’s a part 2 about using our practices and tools to make us brave and grounded enough to change and transform, to tell the truth about who we are and what we want and need, to burn it all down and plant fresh seeds that support the selves we actually are and desire to move towards. And all of this as an ever-moving, cyclical process.

I truly hit a tipping point almost 2 years ago when I finally realized I was using spiritual practices to continue endlessly seeking and avoid actually doing. I was hiding behind my practices as a way to avoid leaving a relationship that wasn’t working, creating a brave full life, embodying my queerness, showing up for myself.

I was terrified of being abandoned but I was abandoning myself and calling it spirituality, abandoning myself and calling it surrendering, abandoning myself and calling it good.

Spiritual practices are like most other things: we can use them for whatever means we decide. Just like ancestor work isn’t inherently anti-racist, spiritual practices are not inherently liberatory, life changing.

We can use them to keep us small.

To affirm staying the same.

To tell us we are in the right place and just need to keep being with what’s here.

To stay stuck.

To avoid what is true.

To avoid taking responsibility for our lives and our joy.

We can also use them to expand us into more of our bigness and aliveness.

To tell us we can be with what’s here and also that we are abandoning ourselves and we are hurting and something needs to change.

We can use them to understand that loving ourselves could look like falling apart, could look like destroying everything and seeing what remains and making something of all the wreckage that couldn’t be made before.

Sometimes the glass must shatter before we can see clearly, before we can know who we are, before we can really see what we’re made of and trust that we are brave and strong enough to fall apart, to shed old identities and selves that used to be us (or maybe we just thought they were).

When it came down to it, I didn’t need to consume anything else spiritually.

(We have managed to create an industry around spirituality that demands consumption, like everything else under capitalism.)

I didn’t need to pull more cards. I needed to move into what felt unsafe. I needed to move into the discomfort of honesty and change. I needed to move towards my fear. I needed to integrate all that I had learned and experienced and felt and knew in a deep embodied way and just DO. It was time to light the matches.

I wrote a poem years ago in the midst of my relationship with my ex that said “I already know years from now I’ll be asking why I stayed so long” and I was right. But I also know: I used my spiritual practices to enable me and to hide from myself. I have so much compassion and care for the self that did that. I just needed to feel safe when healing from a lot of trauma and I let myself get stuck in that feeling of absolute safety when really I needed to move through un-safety to heal and break free.

I think it’s a dance of both: it’s not either we cling to 100% control or we are abandoning ourselves. Only I knew what I was doing. Probably only you know what you’re doing. From the outside, who can say?

Now, I aim for a balance that feels really good to me that goes something like this:

I try to be present with whatever is here and feel the feelings that come along with that presence - pleasure, grief, love, fear, anxiety, awe, excitement, disappointment, etc.

I try to take responsibility for creating relationships and a life that feels good to me and I root into my power to do so.

I understand that I cannot control everything and trying to will cut me off from so much magic — as well as make me feel absolutely chaotic in a way I do not enjoy.

My spiritual practices I shared above (and some tools like breathwork and tarot) help me strike the balance, help me stay with myself, help me be brave, help me make a life that feels worth living and worth fighting for.

Because I heal by showing up for the greatest invitations of my life - to transform, to soften, to feel, to open, to be brave. By paying attention, by noticing, by coming alive through deeper connection to self, to others, to earth, to what is right here.

I heal to become more alive, to root deeper into this human experience on Earth – to taste the oranges, to see the colors, to feel the soft fluffy spring leaves in my hands, to hold the tender feelings of the person in front of me, to grieve, to laugh.

I don't want to miss any of it. I was asleep for so long and now I’m awake, and I want to experience everything that’s here - even when it’s uncomfortable.

And that’s what spirituality is to me, right now.

What is it to you?

I would love to hear about your relationship to spirituality, spiritual practices and tools, and self-abandonment in the comments below.

With care,

Eryn

P.S. If you’re an ex-religious person wanting to heal and come into new relationship with spirituality through the sharing of stories and community connection (with a little bit of breathwork, meditation, and journaling, too) - HOLY: a reclamation circle for ex-religious folks is open for registration for the first and only time this year.

Folks have experienced all kinds of things through these groups — showing up to relationships differently, figuring out they’re queer, feeling more able to express themselves, making friends, exploring new ways of relating to spirituality, and more. Everyone’s experience is different, but I hold the intention for the group to support you in becoming more of who you are getting what you need. You can learn more and join us here.