How I Learned to Chart My Own Spiritual Path

You already have the authority you’ve been seeking.

I used to be a seeker, and I thought that was a good thing.

I thought being a seeker meant that I was curious, eager for knowledge, and willing to put in the effort to find it. I felt like Indiana Jones on a mission to find the Holy Grail, except I was searching in all the wrong places. Not unlike the poet, Emily Dickinson,

"I am out with lanterns, looking for myself."

My parents raised me in the Christian faith, but they and the other adults in my world offered poor examples of what living as a Christian looked like. I drifted away from the faith, and then dove back in by joining a cult-adjacent congregation.

I knew what I was searching for. I wasn't finding it, so I walked away.

When I found New Thought and first heard the idea that the God of my understanding was not outside of me, it was not pointing its disapproving finger at me, nor was it an old, white man in the sky with a beard. (Thanks, Michelangelo, for that visual.) What I discovered is that God is within me, and it is expressing itself through me, as me. That simple shift in POV transformed my worldview forever.

Becoming a student of A Course in Miracles is when I learned that being a seeker is nothing more than a distraction. It reminds me of how my siblings and I would giggle when our grandmother would be looking all around for her reading glasses when they were perched on top of her head.

You may have heard the famous quote from Rumi, "What you are seeking is also seeking you." I learned while researching this post that the quote has been mistranslated. What the poet said was, "You are what you seek," which makes this line even more appropriate for my purposes.

You see, we are obsessed with meaning making, and the search, quest, the Hero's Journey, seem central to what it means to be human. Organized religion plays into that natural, human desire for seeking and finding. It creates a framework and makes it seem like you're doomed to eternal damnation if you reject it. Our creator created us with a God-sized void within, along with free will. So, we're free to recognize the God of our understanding, or ignore it because we are sovereign beings.

One thing about organized religion is that it's super convenient. Religious leaders make sure you never have to think for yourself. You trust and obey and move through life as if you have never had an original thought. If your family is also involved, then you become an outcast when you decide it's time for you to branch out on your own.

If you want to chart your own spiritual path, then you must first step away from the one that's no longer serving you.