There are a few ways I connect with God...with Love, and they are usually the simplest, most quiet moments. When I stare into my fur babies' eyes, I see God there. When I hug someone I love, I sense God there. When I lose myself to the sounds of the waves crashing in the ocean, hear the birds singing while sipping coffee in my courtyard, walking in nature and as glimpses of the sun peek through the trees, the wind rustling the leaves, my heart expands, and I feel God there. When I wake up in the morning, just before I open my eyes, if I take a second there to just feel, to be, a smile breaks through my lips, as I instinctually say "Thank You", and I know it is God I am being grateful to.
It is also when I am preparing the space to treat a client that I sense it so tangibly, that undeniable feeling of love. It is through the process of choosing what crystals I want to lay out, which essential oil I want to diffuse, the music I feel called to play, how many candles I should light…All the while thinking and praying for this beautiful soul who is trusting me with something this sacred. Trusting me with creating a space for her to let go and let God.
It is through cleansing the space, energetically or with sage or palo santo, clearing myself, letting go of my ego, of any agenda, of any attachment to an outcome, that I feel Love. Sometimes it's so expansive and beautiful, it makes me emotional. This is where love lives. Where God lives. It's there beneath our belief systems, our judgments, our egos, our traumas, our insecurities. It's the reason why working through all of this is so crucial. It is through this unfolding that we come back to ourselves, to our essence, to our spirit, our truth - we come back to love. Come back to what has always been there. Underneath and through it all.
Admittedly, my relationship with God was not always like this, it has been a rocky one at best. I was raised in a traditional Catholic family - de esos Católicos que van a misa los domingos y ya - slowly making my way up the ladder of the 7 sacraments, and it was fine. It was all I knew. During that time I also had this fascination for "black magic", because of course, anything spiritual outside of religious norms is typically labeled as dark. Scary. Sinful. I used to borrow my mom's silk night robes and light candles, practicing séances, playing around with the Ouija board, I could see and hear things around that time as well. The exploration didn't last very long, it was shamed out of me after a while. Stories of soul condemnation and such.
Soon after, I started attending Catholic school, and that's when things became a problem for me. The indoctrination and blind faith stuff just didn't sit well for me. The fact that there wasn't an open dialogue, a safe place where we could be inquisitive, where debating was encouraged, started to make this whole God thing very much about control and not so much about love.
The final straw was when my mom left the Catholic church and joined another faith, Christian/Evangelical, I guess. I had no issue with her leaving Catholicism, for obvious reasons, but also because I had already acquired this understanding that as long as what you believed in was all about making yourself a better person, and being kinder to others (animals and planet included), my only business was supporting that. Not judging it. Her family though…just WOW. The things that were said to her, the way she was treated because of that decision...their definition and view of "God" was so distorted (yet again) to what I felt God was that it just drove me further away from anything spiritual. To make things worse, the church she joined was brainwashing her and using her for money. My dad and I could see it so clearly but it took her years...and during those years "God" also drew a wedge between her and me.
Needless to say, I was pretty done with "him".
Once I got married and moved to Texas, far away from my family, I had a safe space to explore my beliefs. MINE. What I thought. Felt. Knew to be true for ME. After reading a ton of books, having countless conversations with others, I finally understood that my problem was never with God but the way he was defined and portraited by my family and by the religions I had practiced. I became very aware of the difference between spirituality and religion. I understood that Love and God were synonymous, and THAT's when everything clicked for me. When it all made sense. Love is where we came from, where we return to, it is who we are, it lives in every single cell of our bodies. So does God. It is the thread that weaves all of us together - humans, plants, animals, the planets, all of it.
Then last year I learned the most powerful lesson yet. Through my chronic illness, I came to understand that TRUE healing, not curing, but healing starts with love. If we do not love ourselves, we do not respect ourselves, if we do not respect ourselves, we don't know how to set up healthy boundaries, we slowly lose our essence, who we are. We lose sight of our needs, we become disembodied, we forget how to nourish our bodies, our souls. When we do not love ourselves, we are incapable of loving others, even if we think we do, it is not true love. We lose our connection to others, with that our purpose, we feel lost, lonely, dispaired. Healing our minds, bodies, souls...all of it starts with Self-Love.
This is the foundation of Karuna, creating a space where women feel safe, heard, supported, a space where we can learn to love ourselves, and through that process, we heal.
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