Security and Spirituality
Learning to trust fall into life.
In my personal spiritual journey, security has been a major theme.
If I’d been asked, back when I identified as a Christian, if I had complete faith, I would have said absolutely yes, of course. I wouldn’t have hesitated or questioned my resolve.
I thought I knew what it meant to trust in something larger than myself to carry me, keep me, and protect me, but it was just conceptual at the time.
After the rollercoaster of the past three years, I can say, with confidence, that I had no idea what it meant to have unwavering faith. My faith today is ten times stronger than it was then because it’s been severely tested.
Security and Spirituality
Okay, so I’m throwing around some big words, here. Faith. Trust. You might be asking what those things have to do with security. Well, what does it mean to be secure?
We feel secure when we’re safe in the knowledge that should anything go wrong, we will be okay.
Of course, many things in our lives can create a feeling of security. A supportive family is one. Maybe a solid partnership, be it in business or romance. An established career that provides us enough money to save, donate, and go on vacation.
Security is found, for the most part, when we feel in control of our lives, when we can plan and when things go to plan.
But when we begin a spiritual journey we learn very quickly that the thing we always thought was in the driver’s seat (us, our ego) is actually hijacking the car. Our soul sits quietly and attentively in the passenger seat waiting for the ego to let go of the wheel.
Our ego and all of its creations have been running the show for so long that we’re incredibly disconnected from the truth of what we are. The process of letting go of control requires us to trust our intuition, our soul’s guidance. And getting reconnected requires that we have faith in what’s beyond the capacity of the ego-mind to comprehend.
Security and Faith of the Mind
Though I have my perspective about the ways organized religion has been weaponized to cause unfathomable harm, this isn’t about denigrating religiosity, or even Christianity. This is my own experience which I’m sharing as a reference point for what I imagined faith to be before my spiritual awakening journey began to unfold.
I’d been taught that faith was believing in God — specifically, the God of Christianity — all-powerful, omniscient, jealous and vengeful, yet gracious and good, above all things.
This was a God I could know, a God I could capture in language, in ideology. There was comfort in that, security in that.
That God provided rules in the form of the Ten Commandments. There was safety in knowing that if I was righteous, as dictated by those rules, I’d go to heaven.
My faith in this God was expressed through prayer, praise and worship, testimony, fellowship, and charity. Again, there was security in having these concrete ways that I could be a faithful Christian. There was also ease of routine.
I had a passing familiarity with tests of faith from bible stories like Jonah and the Whale, but I’d yet to have my own. On the whole, I’d say my trust in God was superficial. It was genuine, in that my intention was pure, but it was learned, rote and academic.
It was very comfortable for my ego-mind, this kind of faith.
Insecurity and the Spiritual Journey
In contrast, my faith today is visceral and grounded, but a constant challenge to my ego. I’ve had to remind myself that life has my back again and again. I’ve had to shore up my faith by trusting things will be okay even when, especially when it looks as if my whole life is falling to pieces.
Paradoxically, to learn trust completely, to feel secure no matter what is happening in my external life, I was catapulted into situations where I’d experience deep insecurity.
If you’re on a spiritual journey of your own, you’re likely to be familiar with this paradox. Eckhart Tolle, for example, was transitory and jobless for years after his awakening experience. Adyashanti had multiple bouts of long-term illness, during which he was bed-ridden.
There’s a reason monks live in monasteries. The path of spiritual awakening can leave our material world in shambles as our previous lives break down to make room for expansion, as we learn to live from someplace deeper.
It’s common enough to leave a previous job once we’ve begun unraveling the ego because whatever pursuits we had before were ego-driven. Now, after awakening, there is a void where the ego is loosening its grip, and, likely, the things that used to motivate us or drive our ambition are no longer in alignment for us.
We might lose relationships with family and friends, move from one place to another, or leave communities that we’d previously been part of for years.
In my case, all of this was true.
Learning to Trust
The first piece to go was my apartment. Hand in hand with my community at the time and my identity as a “helper” to my family, which had made me feel secure in who I was for pretty much my whole life. I left New York for London in the fall of 2019 without a job or solid prospects, following only an intuitive nudge that I had to go explore a connection I could not get past. (You can read more about that here if you like.) I ended up back stateside, but my first lesson in trust was learned as I navigated a new country all on my own.
Then came religion. I began questioning my beliefs at a pretty young age and my adherence to the dogma of Christianity was all but gone by the time I had my awakening, but my identity as a Christian — which had given me some sense of belonging — didn’t dissolve until my whole identity structure, as I’d known it to be, did the same. This was in the spring of 2020.
Gone, then, was the safety of a known God and a prescripted path to heaven.
After my awakening experience, I was pretty much unmoored. I was moving through a profound transformation that completely upended my entire conception of reality and life itself. All of the things I’d believed in, all of the things I thought myself to be, that made me so secure in who I was, dissolved like sand to a windstorm. Gone.
In February 2021, I left my job — again, intuitively — and so began a period of financial insecurity, which I have never experienced to the extent I have for the past year.
This has required that I consciously surrender my ego (my desire for control, safety, a plan, and a clear path to follow) and instead have faith in the divine unfolding.
After years of independence, I felt intuitively guided to collaborative work as part of my purpose, and yet the person I felt drawn toward was nowhere to be seen. While waiting for this person to appear I was pretty constantly anxious about money, whether I’d have enough, whether I was being irresponsible, whether I could even trust the intuitive message that I had this work, or if I should just go get another job.
Whenever I doubted I would have what I needed to eat, pay my bills, or pay rent, I was asked to simply trust that I was supported. Like…what?
I realized going for any random job would be a fear-based decision. It didn’t stop me from questioning myself daily.
It went on for months, this back and forth, this fight between fear, doubt, my rational mind, and my soul that told me you already know this is your path, even though you can’t see beyond the next step in front of you.
I had to learn how to take the next step and look no further, to quiet the screaming anxiety in my mind. I had to trust fall into life.
And every time things got down to the wire, without fail, I’ve had what I needed. It may not look how my ego-mind wants it to look, but I’m not homeless on the street. I’m not hungry.
I have everything I need, and more than that, I now know that no circumstance can truly make me feel insecure and fearful without my consent. There is no power greater than my complete faith.
Trusting so much creates the energetic environment for life to simply bring in whatever I need when I need it. Therein lies the magic of co-creation (or manifestation) with The Universe. And that’s where the real fun begins!
❤
If you’d like to talk more about awakening, feel free to drop a comment! I love chatting down there. And if you’re interested in catching other things I write, you can become a Medium member here. XO