Hey friends! Thanks for taking the time to read about my spiritual journey. This is something that’s deeply personal to me and has shaped so much of my life and my outlook on the world both physical and beyond the veil.
Growing Up Christian
You may have noticed while exploring bits of my website that there are many aspects that may have given you the impression I’m a Christian, so it may come to your surprise to learn that I am not, nor do I ever have the intention to explore that path again. I hold no ill will against Christians and their beliefs. I’ve just been down that path growing up and realized it really is not the path for me. But that is where my journey in spirituality ultimately began, was in Christianity.
I grew up in a very religious household. I went to church every Sunday, sang the songs, gave my weekly offerings, went through the routines but the entirety of my childhood, the religion never resonated with my soul. I never felt connected to what I was doing or had contact with God in a way that was really transformative or evolved me in any way. What religion taught me was a lot of negative things that took me a lot of time to heal from, such as feelings of unworthiness, never feeling like enough, having to live an inauthentic life of walking on egg shells because if I wasn’t living a Christian life, God wouldn’t accept me. And these messages are often promoted in worship music and teachings which really degraded my sense of self worth over time. I was taught that God was an all unconditional loving God, but I saw the contradictions in the Bible that showed otherwise, such as sending anyone to hell whom didn’t believe or simply wanted to live their own lives outside of religion. That’s not unconditional love. The idea of a God that would punish those he considered “his children” in such a cruel way for simply not being a Christian never sat right with me. That was never the kind of God I felt a desire to follow or love, because that kind of love isn’t real love. But for a long time growing up in the religion, I never questioned any of it, because I was taught to never question it. I was taught to just accept that that’s how things were, whether it made logical sense or not, and that there were just some things in the religion we needed to accept and not understand. Don’t question, have blind faith, and just do, or else.
I had some experiences growing up that I’d consider to be paranormal, and given my upbringing I was taught that every experience that didn’t align with a light, heavenly experience was demonic, and so I became to be very scared of my experiences and closed myself off to a lot of spirituality. Like a lot of children, I was sensitive to seeing and hearing things that do not reside in our physical plane of existence. Between the ages of 13-14, I would occasionally hear disembodied voices. I once woke up to a male voice saying my name next to me, with the sound of radio static. I didn’t have any radio or electronics on, I even got up to check to make sure, so that experience baffled me. As an adult, as I’ve explored my psychic abilities a bit more, I’ve come to discover that during deep states of relaxation, our mind can tap into frequencies that we normally can not interact with when we are fully awake. In a way, we are like a radio in which can be tuned to hear different channels that other beings reside on. But I digress, I had no idea about any of this as a child, and I did not grow up in an environment that cultivated understanding of these things that weren’t inherently evil.
When I was around the age of 15 or 16, I had a really restless night. Every time I was about to fall asleep, I would be awoken by a loud inner noise. Once it sounded like a door slamming shut, and a dog barking. When you get into the state of being awoken by loud sounds that are not happening in physical reality, this is known as hypnagogia, and this is the state where some people might enter sleep paralysis. Anyways, the third time I was awoken, I opened my eyes, and at my bedside was a tall dark mist. I didn’t feel fear. I honestly think I was too shocked and confused to feel fear as I had no idea what on earth I was looking at. We stared at each other for several seconds, and then I watched it float up from my bedside, go through the ceiling and into the attic, which was directly above my bedroom. The next day, I had my parents pray over my room and anoint it with oil as it was presumed to be a demonic presence. Today, I don’t believe it was demonic at all. It did not seem to want to hurt or scare me, it simply wanted to get my attention, and it did. But back then, I believed the experience to be inherently demonic, and for a long time after that day I slept with my head under my blankets and prayed I wouldn’t have any more experiences like that. I repeated that prayer every night as a ritual to ensure I would be protected from those experiences, and for a very long time, I was. I built up quite the wall and nothing approached me again until I was ready to understand it. I left the church around the age of 15 or 16 as well. It was around this time that I was tired of religion and being forced to participate in something I really didn’t resonate with. Despite leaving the religion, I never stopped praying at night. That part became ritual for me, because it was the only thing I was taught to protect me from things I didn’t understand.
My Spiritual Awakening
Fast forward several years later when I was 23, I am now married and my husband and I moved away from my hometown so he could attend college. I was on the phone with my mother one day and we were talking about how her friend had the ability to astral project. For those who do not know, astral projection is the ability for your spirit to leave your physical body. You are still attached to your body by a cord. It is not the same as dreaming, though, you can enter into astral projection from a dream. Anyhow, this was the first time I discovered such a thing, and I was so intrigued by the concept that such a thing was actually possible. Her friend experienced a lot of sexual abuse as a child, and apparently it isn’t uncommon with children whom experience abuse to be able to leave their physical bodies and go into the astral plane as a means of escape. When she astral projected, she used to go into town and meet others whom also were astral projecting.
After that phone call, I was so intrigued by the concept of being able to leave the body and explore another dimension without being deceased. I took a nap that day and the last thought on my mind was wondering if I’d ever get to experience something like that in my lifetime. The funny thing about having a strong desire and curiosity to do something you’ve never done before, is that sometimes opportunities can come to you very randomly and seemingly be attracted to you. And that is the law of attraction, but that’s a topic to really dig into for another day. But I will say, that my state of curiosity and desire seemed to hit just the right frequency to manifest it, because during that nap, I had my first out-of-body experience. It was like I fell asleep with that thought on my mind, and then suddenly, I “woke up” but I was not present inside of my body. It is the strangest thing to describe to someone, because it was not a dream. I felt very much awake and aware in terms of consciousness, but I did not feel attached to my body, and I could not see anything. It was like I was a mere thought surrounded by complete nothingness, is I think the best way to describe it. I did not expect this was what an out-of-body experience would be like, and was thoroughly convinced that I had died. I thought about my husband, and started to get scared that he was going to come home and find me dead. And then I thought “I need to get back to my body”, and in that moment, I felt a jolt. It was like I dropped back in and I could suddenly feel the presence of my body again. My body was completely numb, and I could feel the blood rushing throughout my body, slowly bringing feeling back to every part of me, which was quite a unique experience in itself as that is not something anyone really physically perceives happening inside of them. Once feeling was fully restored to my body, I got up and went about my day, and since that point my life was forever changed. I never saw the world in the same lens as solely being physical as I did before, and for the first time in many years, I was open and filled with curiosity about the spiritual world and all the things we as humans have absolutely no idea about, and all our innate spiritual abilities that Christianity teaches us to fear and believe are evil. Humans have many gifts, we are naturally psychic beings, but we so often close ourselves off to our true nature due to fear of the unknown, or the religious belief that it’s evil, or simply because we have never had a spiritual experience and because of that we just don’t think it’s real or have the desire to explore it. Some may be more sensitive than others or more naturally gifted in different areas, but we are all built with the same parts that allow us to explore our own potential, should we be open and curious enough to learn.
The Beauty and the Beast of Spirituality
While my exploration has been filled with beautiful experiences, it has not had its challenges and if I’m honest, I really got in too deep over my head without truly knowing what I was getting into, because spirituality isn’t something fully understood or universally agreed on, I really had no idea where to go to properly learn how to spiritually and psychically develop. But despite all the challenges my journey threw at me, I don’t regret anything because I think I learned a lot of really valuable lessons, and those lessons are something I can pass on to people looking to explore their own spirituality and out of body experiences. The first lesson I learned that I would like to share with people when it comes to out-of-body experiences, is learn how to psychically protect and ground yourself. I didn’t know this was something I needed when I first explored this ability. But when you start opening your third eye and seeing/hearing beyond the veil and having more of these experiences, yes, you’ll have some really amazing and positive experiences but you’ll also likely have some negative ones, which, if you don’t know how to deal with it, will likely leave you a bit traumatized and ungrounded. Learn to protect yourself, learn to develop discernment between positive, negative, and neutral spiritual forces, and really pay attention to your frequency before entering into spiritual practices. Learn about shadow work, and work on healing yourself because your shadow absolutely will make itself known when you become spiritually aware, and if you haven’t been working through your traumas and you’ve been neglecting your own shadow, it can feel like you have a demon attached to you and it will manifest itself in some really uncomfortable ways. You’re also a lot more likely to have scary and negative experiences if you are practicing when your vibe is low. If you’re in a depression or have a lot of dark/intrusive thoughts, I really do not recommend getting into spiritual practices that can unground you further. Learn to listen to your body and understand what you need, and if you’re already a bit ungrounded from reality, focus on things that will ground you and do your shadow work before getting into anything else. What I didn’t know when first starting out, is that development of the eye and any spiritual ability requires a level of responsibility and you really need to learn these things before just jumping in head first like I did. It’s not just some fun thing to do in your free time that you can put aside whenever you want, because once you open the door, you can’t just close it if you suddenly decide it’s become too much to handle. The prep work is just as important as the work itself.
After my out-of-body experience, I dove head first into astral projection and trying to replicate the experience and develop more on my own. I started meditating for very long periods every day, anywhere from 2-5 hours. I was very passionate about it and very open to see more of the world beyond that I got a glimpse of. I had a lot of really meaningful dreams during this time, encounters with some helpful beings. During one attempt to astral project, I actually had help from someone on the other side. I was still trying to learn how to consciously separate from my body, and figure out how to stay conscious and which frequency of relaxation allowed me to leave my body, which I found very challenging. But one time in particular, when I reached the correct frequency, I saw the outline of a humanoid in front/above me, the outline seemed to be male. I reached my hand up, which ended up being my astral hand, and he pulled me up and out of my body so I was hovering over the bed. I had a really hard time maintaining awareness and navigating myself astrally. That’s something that takes practice as well, is maintaining awareness on this frequency so you don’t lose consciousness and drift off to sleep. Another challenge I had was seeing astrally. Things would often be very dark, or I’d see outlines of things, or things would be really distorted, and trying to adjust to being able to see I would often try to open my physical eyes to see better, but astral eyes don’t work this way and trying to open my physical eyes would often ruin the experience and my focus. I don’t recall ever seeing this helpful entity again. It’s possible it could have been one of my guides, and this was my first time “seeing” them. I’m really not sure, but it was a nice experience having someone there to help me while trying to learn.
I had another really amazing experience with a female entity one day. I had been dealing with a health issue for about a year or two at that time, coming from my liver region. I never went to the doctor for it, partially because I was scared, and also because quite frankly doctors have been really dismissive of things I’ve gone to them before in the past and have failed me, so I just left it. But I would get pain in my liver area every time I would eat most foods. Heavy meals were hard to eat and bothered me quite a bit. Anyways, around this period of time I was exploring reiki, which is a form of energy healing. One morning just before I awoke, I heard a female’s voice audibly say “feel the sacred heat energy”, and then I felt an intensely hot sensation in my hands, which then transferred and felt an intensely hot sensation in my liver region. Ever since that day, my liver has been healed. I no longer feel pain in that region when I eat. I truly believe as I’ve been attempting to teach myself these abilities, there have been spirits on the other side helping me along in my development. I think she was trying to teach me how to feel what it is like to utilize and tap into this energy for healing, though, I never quite figured out how to replicate that feeling and apply it. I would still like to learn, but it has been awhile since I’ve delved into deeper spiritual practices, and I’m about to explain why I separated from my psychic development.
As I said in the beginning of this section, psychic development comes with a lot of responsibility, and I wasn’t at all prepared for the more negative challenges it would bring. While I’ve had many beautiful encounters and experiences, I’ve also had some frightening ones. There were moments my head felt fuzzy and it felt like I was battling with something for my consciousness. During this point in my journey, I was going through a very difficult time emotionally and my vibe was very low, and I think I was susceptible to a lot of lower frequency energies. I started experiencing horrible intrusive thoughts that weren’t my own. I was deeply depressed and in a dark place, because my husband went to school during the day and in the evenings he worked. For months, I was alone and we pretty well just shared a bed together at the end of the day, and that was the majority of our time together for a long time. I had no friends, no family where we lived, I never felt more isolated in my life. Not knowing how to psychically protect myself, ground myself, and being in such a dark lonely place really brought a lot of challenges to my spiritual development. Aside from the dark experiences previously mentioned, I also had a very scary out-of-body experience where I was being chased by a creepy entity. I would also have creepy out-of-body experiences where I was walking in darkness, and it was like there were a bunch of broken lights flickering around me. That particular experience happened on more than one occasion. What was previously a very enlightening and positive journey turned very dark and heavy, due to what I was going through at the time. This caused me to make the decision to discontinue my psychic development. I learned some techniques since then to protect and ground myself, and I continued my prayers, but it took a very long time for me to get out of that dark place I was in and balance out. Approximately a year, I’d guestimate, that it took me to return to a lighter, balanced place. When you distance yourself from your practice, however, the abilities you developed don’t just go away. Early on in my journey, during certain frequencies of relaxation, I developed clairaudience, which is the ability to audibly hear what’s beyond the veil. I regularly heard the conversations of beings just before falling asleep. There was one spirit in particular that followed me from house to house. I know this because I heard her laugh on multiple occasions and recognized it. Sometimes I wonder if I ever developed my eye more to see clearly into the astral, just how big the group of people or entities are that are around on a daily basis. Slowly over the years as I had separated from my practice, I began to hear their voices less and less, and now it is a very rare occurrence that I hear them. Psychic development, like anything else, are skills and as the saying goes, if you don’t use it you lose it. Every now and again though, I still have really meaningful dreams that I believe I am lovingly guided through that help me subconsciously develop, so I don’t feel totally cut off from that world.
Shadow Work
We moved back to my hometown last year, and something that made itself very known when we got back was my shadow. I didn’t realize how much moving back here would affect me, but somewhere deep within me, my shadow became very prominent and I had a very hard time processing being back here. The point my shadow really made itself known to me, that I started realizing what my shadow even was, was through a dream – which I believe was guided to grant me the ability to actually perceive my shadow. I dreamt I was walking through a retail store looking at clothing, and the sales associate came over and started talking to me. Out of the blue, she addressed me by name and said “do you want to be blessed”? I was confused by her question but agreed, “yes, I would like to be blessed”. Then, she took hold of me and tilted me back, and suddenly it was like my entire perception shifted inwards, and I could see and feel this dark energy within me and it was like this energy was trapped inside my body and I could hear myself screaming on the outside. I thought I was being exorcised. That was one of the most uncomfortable things I’ve felt from a dream, and the funny thing is, I woke up from that dream and from that point on I could feel the dark energy inside me on a physical level when I was awake and I could actually perceive and feel exactly which area in the body it was trapped in. It resided in my throat as well as my liver region, which is quite interesting when you think about it, because the liver region, as I previously mentioned, was an area I was experiencing physical health issues in before. My throat, is another issue I’ve been experiencing physical health issues with as I was diagnosed with chronic sinusitis a few years ago while we were living away, which affected my respiratory system – both in which correspond with the throat chakra.
A lot of things started surfacing for me last year with my shadow, a lot of religious trauma and a lot of resentment, primarily towards my father for things I held against him with my upbringing. Religious trauma is a very real thing, and there were a lot of things my dad did in the name of religion that deeply hurt me. Like I said earlier, when the shadow makes itself known it feels like a demon and manifests itself in some pretty intense ways. I started exploring shadow work around this time and found an amazing Facebook group which helped me understand what I was going through and how to work with it. I also went to a local reiki practitioner in my local area. I only ended up going to see her once, because there were certain ways she made me feel in conversation that felt dismissive and I didn’t like that. Though, she was definitely gifted in reiki and I could feel on a very physical level that heat energy that I was taught to feel years ago. I felt that heat transfer throughout my whole body and this did provide some emotional release. She also provided some really helpful insight for me to reflect on.
The real progress with my shadow was when I took time to really just sit with it, acknowledge it, love on it and my inner child. Be the loving and supportive parental type figure to the part of myself that I never felt I had growing up in religion. It’s a very interesting thing, when you perceive these different aspects of yourself, because they can really feel like totally different entities, but ultimately, they’re just parts of you that you distanced yourself from in order to protect yourself. They are not demons, and they shouldn’t be treated like demons or outcasts. They are the deep parts of you that never healed, and the only way to heal them is to acknowledge them, be willing to get uncomfortable and sit with them, let them come out and express themselves as they need to come out. This was a period of deep emotional purging for me. I went out with my mother one day and talked to her about some of this. There was one memory I had as a child that always stuck with me about my dad. When I was little, my aunt gave me a furby for my birthday and it was my favorite toy. My dad didn’t like the furby, not for any particular reason, it just gave him bad vibes. Because of that, he decided I couldn’t have it and threw my furby in the garbage. I never forgot that, and it was something from my childhood that deeply, deeply hurt me, and there were many other similar instances like this during my upbringing. My dad has always been good at wearing a mask for his church, being the perfect image of a Christian to friends in public, but at home behind closed doors he could be very cruel. Not physically abusive at all, but like I said, religious trauma is very real and religious mindsets can become very abusive in their own right, especially emotionally and mentally. Talking to my mom about this really stirred the emotions in my inner child and my shadow, and on the drive home alone in my car I cried and sobbed like I never have before. I never felt so much emotion and pain come out, it was something that I had held inside for so many years and never properly dealt with or addressed until this point.
I spent a lot of time last year doing shadow work and working with my shadow, and I think if I am ever to become active again in developing my psychic practices, I’d be in a much better place now to do that as I am a lot more aware of the responsibility in developing the third eye, and how important it is to heal and work with the shadow, and deal with things head on verses suppressing them. If you don’t do that, it really makes psychic development harder and more traumatizing.
This past January, I feel was the end of the chapter to healing my shadow in this area. Since starting my spiritual journey, dreams and symbolism have become very sacred to me and I’ve come to rely on them as amazing teachers, allowing me to perceive the inner workings of myself and translate them in a way I am consciously aware of and understand. The beginning of this year, I had a dream I was exploring out in nature in big beautiful fields of grass. The sun was shining, and I noticed a beautiful red butterfly started following me around. It would land on me, and I befriended it. It would sometimes wander off on its own, but it never wandered too far and always stayed close to me, and would come back to me. In this dream, I was so excited about this butterfly, I wanted to show it to my parents, how beautiful the butterfly was. I showed it to my mom and she acknowledged it. My did acknowledged it briefly and then looked away seemingly distracted, and then he grabbed it in his hand and crushed it, killing the butterfly. What was interesting about this part of the dream, is that I recognized he was not paying attention when he did this. I’m feel a bit emotional writing this because I truly do understand what it means. In the dream I got so angry at him, and absolutely hated him for crushing the butterfly. Then my dream ended. I think it’s pretty obvious what the dream means, but I’ll explain it here anyways for those who might not understand the symbolism. The butterfly represented my spirit, discovering the world as a child, being curious, seeing beauty and exploring everything for the first time, all the wondering and awe of what it’s like to be a child. My mom has always been more receptive to me and more lenient although she was quite religious as well for a time, and I think that’s why in the dream, she acknowledged the butterfly. My dad, in the dream turned away and crushed the butterfly, but was unaware of doing so, represented that it was never his intention to hurt me. His religion blinded him from being able to see how his actions affected me and how deeply they hurt me growing up. And I resented him so much for it over the years, how much of my childhood I felt was robbed from me because of it.
After this dream, I decided to perform a ritual. I wanted to finally lay this part of my life to rest and release it. So I drew a picture of a red butterfly that represented the one in my dream, cut it out, and wrote a bunch of words on it that coincided with the crushed aspects of my spirit. I took this butterfly and burned it, turning it to ash, and as I was burning it, I spoke to my shadow and inner child that these were the things we were releasing together today, and that I forgave my father for all the pain that he unintentionally caused growing up that he was not able to see. I took the ashes of the butterfly, and I buried them outside of my parent’s house, for a few reasons. The first being that it be buried by the source of the pain, the second that it is outside of the home and not inside anymore (or within me anymore), the third reason is that it is buried and laid to rest in peace, and the last reason being that when we close this chapter of our lives living here and move, that it will also be a physical separation from this space. I went back inside, and drew a new butterfly. A bigger, blue butterfly, and I wrote a bunch of words on this new one as well to represent a new chapter of my life for my spirit, healing, and moving forward from the past. It represents a new beginning for my spirit.
My father and I still don’t really have a relationship, and there are moments I wish we did, but I truly do feel at peace with the past and don’t hold resentment against him for my upbringing anymore. This is why healing the shadow is so important, because if you don’t find that healing and don’t forgive your past, the trauma resurfaces. It always resurfaces. This is why people so often refer to their own darkness as inner demons, because they truly do feel like a dark entity has taken hold inside you at times, but it’s not. It’s just the dark aspects of you that never healed, and the longer they’re left suppressed and neglected, the louder they scream. I still have more shadow work to do yet, because I also recognize a lot of anger within myself and I’m not quite sure how to release and heal it yet, but when the time is right, the circumstances will come for me to learn the lesson.
Conclusion
This has been my spiritual journey to date. I consider myself to be very spiritual, but I will never be religious again. Spirituality and following my own path in this organic way has brought me closer to God than I ever could have been as a Christian. I no longer perceive God as a grumpy man in the sky who acts as a dictator over humanity, shunning people to hell for not believing in him. Jesus said “The Kingdom Of God Is Within You”, and for the first time, I truly know what that means. I believe heaven is the inward transformation we make within ourselves, where we come to really know ourselves, find love, find peace and healing, and be transformed in incredible ways. Heaven within you is cultivated. And I think if there is a hell, the reality of it is the hell of our own making – it too is cultivated. Hell is the trauma we hold within ourselves that we never heal, that manifests itself in various ways. Hell is what we cultivate within ourselves, when we do not take the time or put in the effort to heal, to know ourselves, to find forgiveness and love, and truly be at peace. I think the reality of both heaven and hell are fully inward experiences, not a physical place we get damned to and punished for all of eternity, or rewarded for our good behavior.
My favorite quote is by Ghandi, whom I believe really understood the inward journey. He said:
“We but mirror the world. All the tendencies present in the outer world are to be found in the world of our body. If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him. This is the divine mystery supreme. A wonderful thing it is and the source of our happiness. We need not wait to see what others do.”
I think as we take on this spiritual journey, in essence, we are working to create heaven on earth. If every single person did their inner work, healed their inner child and demons, I think we’d be living in a very different world today. I’ve still got a very long way to go I think, because I’m no where near where I want to be, and I am very aware of my many flaws. I don’t think I’ll ever achieve perfection, but I’m so incredibly thankful and happy to have discovered this path and all the guided events that have progressed me along in different ways, both positive and negative, because I feel like so much has made its way full circle and allowed me to understand myself better, understand the unseen world better, and even understand the seen world better. I think real, lasting change in our world starts from the inside out, not the other way around trying to force the world to align with us. Life is very much a school, and I think when we really seek to understand our inward processes and who we truly are, a deep magick happens. This is when we start stepping into our power and start really becoming the change we want to see in the world.
Thanks for taking the time to read about my spiritual journey! This is obviously very personal for me, but I hope my experiences might inspire someone to start exploring their own spirituality and inner world. It is a journey truly like no other, and I have yet to find anything more rewarding and transformative. You do not need to be religious or identify yourself with any path. My own spirituality has no labels. I considered myself a witch for awhile, and a starseed, because those were the closest words that described the journey I was on, though neither of those words really accurately describe the path I’m on. In the end, I think labels just keep us confined to a box, and I have no box. I guess the best way to describe this path is just being a seeker. As you seek out discovering yourself, your potential and your own inner world, the answers will come on their own and in their own time, when you’re ready for them.
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