finding your way through
A spiritual life begins the moment you dare to ask your own questions.
“The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are.” - Carl Jung
If you were born in another land, another family, another faith, you would almost certainly believe what you were taught there. Religion, like language, comes with birth. But spirit belongs to no one. It waits for each of us to find it for ourselves.
I was raised in the box of my family’s faith: the rules, the rituals, the certainty. It gave me community, but it also taught me not to question. Then, one night at junior prom, everything shifted. I was in my white prom suit, trying to feel like a man. At the dance, a woman offered angel readings (Yes, I don’t think the school principal understood what angel readings really meant.) She spent longer with me than anyone else. She told me of spears in my back: old wounds from many lives before. She then did something that looking back, I realize took a sincere effort on her part, both in time and money. She mailed me a CD by Brian Weiss.
That’s where my journeys began. Alone in my room, Discman headphones on, I journeyed into past lives, into places the church never spoke of.
I tasted a freedom I had never known. A door opened inside me. My questions grew larger than the answers I’d been given. I stepped beyond dogma into the vast mystery of soul. It changed how I saw God, myself, and the world. It healed parts of me I didn’t know were broken.
Choosing a spiritual path of your own will unsettle the box you were born into. It may confuse or anger those who loved you first. But spirit asks for your honesty, not your blind loyalty. Sometimes, all it takes is one moment, one reading, one teacher, one friend, to show you another way. And once you see it, you cannot unsee it.
A father’s wish is not that our children follow his beliefs, but that they follow their own deepest truth. Seek what is real for you. Let love and wonder be your compass. Expect the same from your children. And trust that spirit is big enough to hold all the big questions.
Conversation Starters
What is the first moment you remember questioning what you were taught about life or God?
How would your beliefs be different if you were born in another culture?
Expedition
• Today, find a quiet place. Ask yourself: “What do I believe about the unseen?” Write whatever comes without judgment. Let your curiosity, not fear, guide you.