In my last post, I talked about how discovering writing had quenched that thirst for something more. That fulfilled feeling lasted for total of three seconds – okay it was a bit longer than that, but still something was missing. The interesting thing was I didn’t feel as empty, but something still wasn’t right. So, I went in search for the missing piece.
I started on a journey of self-exploration. I surmised, that I needed to explore every aspect of myself to find what would give life meaning. I basically was treating this longing feeling, the emptiness like a giant puzzle that just needed the right pieces to put together and writing was only one piece.
Looking back, I’m not even sure how it happened, but meditation became a part of who I was. My guess is it went something like this…. in my state of believing something was missing from my life, I took to the internet to find ways to “find myself” and stumbled upon mediation as a way to ease anxiety, calm my mind, and explore the depths of my being. At any rate, mediation wasn’t a hard transition for me, after all I was at one point a Quaker and we used to have quiet time which served a communion instead of wine and bread. Meditation was the first step that lead me down the rabbit hole.
I feel like it is very important to point out I didn’t feel sad, or lonely, or disappointed in the way my life was turning out. As I look back, I can honestly say I was happy, probably the happiest I had been in my life up to that point.
At any rate, I was focusing on myself to see what was missing and heal my past. It was kind of a hard concept for me, because I didn’t have the troubled past that most of these self-help gurus and people we would now call influencers had been through. I felt that I had a very normal upbringing and experiences, but none the less I was going to heal myself from them and wipe out the childhood “brainwashing” (otherwise known as a religious upbringing) I had received.
Somehow in my search, I started looking into religions. I’m not really sure why I even started looking into religions, (I have some theories now, but I’ll circle back to that in a later post) but at the time I thought it would be interesting to educate myself on religions other than Judeo-Christian. I had never really been exposed to anything other than that and in my self-discovery journey I thought it appropriate explore the unknown.
I surfed the web to read a bit about different religions, then ended up buying books on Paganism earth-centered religions, Buddhism, and meditation for beginners. I quickly abandoned the Paganism book, but read through the meditation and Buddhism books and ended up purchasing more.
I think the meditation and Buddhism stuck with me because it was familiar in a sense, and yet completely different than anything I had know before. I liked the illusion that I was in control of my life and that everything existed in a balance. At the time, balance was extremely important to me and I was constantly seeking to balance work with home life, responsibility with play. So, the idea of everything being connected drew me in like a fly to the flame. The idea that everyone suffers and the cause of this suffering was our desire, a desire for something we didn’t have and to stop the suffering we had to become one with our surroundings and following the eightfold path was how to achieve. oneness. And meditation was the vehicle to get there. (Or at least the way I interpreted it)
I thought I had found all the answers. Buddhism and meditation perfectly explained why I had these longing feelings and a thirst for something. It only felt natural to pursue knowledge on the subject and practice meditation. So, further down the rabbit hole I went.
And yet, something wasn’t quite right…
A Mother's Special Calling 