☯️ The Pendulum of Remembering: When I Could No Longer Hold the Truth I Had Touched
There is something strange about the spiritual path:
We often imagine awakening as a journey in one direction...
A movement from darkness into light.
From confusion into clarity.
From separation into unity.
But my own journey showed me something different. It showed me that the path can move like a pendulum: From one extreme to another.
From feeling deeply connected to everything...
to feeling completely disconnected from everything.
From the realization that the Divine lives within me...
to the painful fear that I might somehow be outside of it.
For a long time, I thought these movements meant I had lost my way. That something had gone wrong or I wasn't ready. But perhaps the pendulum was not swinging because I was failing.
🌕 The First Swing: When Everything Became Sacred
There was a time when the world suddenly became alive... Not because life itself had changed. But because something inside me had opened.
Things I had seen
thousands of times before
began to reveal a completely different depth.
- A tree was no longer just a tree.
- An animal was no longer just an animal.
- A stranger was no longer just a stranger.
Everything seemed woven together
by an invisible thread.
Everything seemed to carry a presence.
A quiet intelligence. A sacredness
that had always been there.
I had heard the words before:
Everything is divine.
Everything is one.
Everything is love.
Everything is infinite.
But suddenly, it was no longer just an idea.
It became something I could feel.
The separation between "me"
and "the rest of existence"
began to soften.
The fear of death began to loosen its grip.
So did the fear of what might happen next.
So did the constant feeling
that I had to hold life together.
The wave began to remember
that it had always
belonged to the ocean.
And it was the most beautiful experience of my life.
🎭 The First Trap: When Truth Became Identity
But there is something incredibly subtle about touching something infinite:
The mind wants to understand.
It wants to hold.
It wants to create a story around something that is beyond stories.
And when something is too vast to fully comprehend...
the ego tries to translate it into something familiar.
Not because it is evil.
Not because it wants to destroy the truth.
But because it only knows the language of identity.
So a realization like: "Everything is Divine."
can quietly become:
"Perhaps I have seen something others have not yet seen." or: "Perhaps I am meant to guide others toward this truth."
Not necessarily in an arrogant way.
Not as a conscious belief that I am better than others.
It can be much more subtle.
When something touched me that deeply...
when something felt more real than anything I had ever known...
I wanted everyone else to experience it.
Not because I wanted to convince them.
But because it felt too beautiful to keep to myself.
I wanted others to see what I had seen.
I wanted them to feel what had transformed me.
But somewhere within that wish was an expectation
— that they should "arrive" at the same place,
perhaps even at the same time.
My longing had become a demand.
I had begun to cross a boundary that was not mine to cross.
And looking back, I realize how gently the focus had shifted:
From a truth itself...
to my desire for others to see that truth.
From: "The Divine lives through me."
to: "I have seen something others need to see, too."
It took me much longer to see
- how much that longing was creating a "me" and an "everyone else."
- how much I was placing myself on one side of what I believed to be true, and others on the other.
- how my ego had found a new identity through it.
A spiritual one...
But still an identity.
Still a place where separation can hide.
What I had taken for a truth to be shared
revealed, in hindsight,
how much I have to learn
about compassion, patience,
and respect for each one’s own path.
Because every being has its own rhythm.
Its own timing.
Its own way of moving through the unknown.
😶🌫️ When Humility Became Self-Erasure
Then another understanding appeared. If everything is one... then
- nobody can truly be above anyone else.
- no being is more worthy.
- no life is more sacred.
- no person is closer to the Divine than another.
At first, this felt deeply humbling. The idea of being "special" began to dissolve.
And I thought that was freedom. But without realizing it, I turned that message against myself: I started moving in the opposite direction.
I had learned not to place myself above life.
And so quietly... I had begun to place myself beneath it.
Because along the way, I began to believe that the less "I" remained... the closer I would be to truth. So I kept trying to become less.
I believed...
- that every part of me that still longed, feared, or struggled had to be overcome.
- that becoming smaller was the same as becoming humbler.
- that disappearing was the same as surrender.
- that being content meant asking for nothing.
- that wholeness meant needing no one to lean on.
It took time before I could ask myself:
Perhaps the ego was never the enemy.
Perhaps it was simply a part of me
that had been trying to protect me
in the only ways it knew how.
Sometimes clumsily.
Sometimes fearfully.
Sometimes by creating identities to help me navigate a world that often felt overwhelming.
For me, the trap was neither the ego nor the darkness.
It was the war I had declared against both.
🌑 The Second Swing: When Everything Belonged... Except Me
Perhaps this is the nature of the pendulum:
The further it swings in one direction...
the greater the movement back in the other.
The further it moves toward the light,
the more it can reveal the places
that still remain in shadow.
So the pendulum swung...
And it swung far.
I could see the Sacred everywhere.
Everything belonged.
Everything seemed held by something greater.
Everything had its place.
Everything
except...
me.
This was one of the most painful things I have experienced...
It wasn't only the fear that people might reject me.
It wasn't only the question of whether I was worthy of love or belonging.
It was something far deeper:
The feeling that existence itself
had turned away from me.
The feeling of being exiled from the very truth
I thought I had finally found my way home to.
As if the thread connecting me to the whole
had somehow been severed.
And perhaps this is one of the strangest contradictions:
How can I believe everything is one...
while feeling like I am an exception?
How can I see infinite worth everywhere...
while questioning my own worth?
The pendulum was not only swinging through my thoughts. It was reflected in my body.
In “I am more,”
I lifted my chin
and moved out of alignment.
In “I am less,”
I curved my back
and collapsed inward.
In both directions,
the connection was obscured.
Not because it was ever gone —
but because I had moved away
from the natural axis of being.
The body revealed the movement
before the mind could see it.
But looking back...
I see the illusion beneath both.
The two extremes were not opposites.
They were mirrors.
First: "I am more."
Later: "I am less."
Both came from the same place.
Both were built on the same hidden belief:
"I am separate."
One creates separation
by placing the self above everything.
The other creates separation
by placing the self beneath everything.
Neither was ever the truth.
I could place myself above.
I could place myself beneath.
I could even experience myself
as completely outside.
What I believe to be true
can become true within my experience.
But... that does not necessarily make it the deepest truth.
And the deepest truth
does not need my belief
to remain true:
I was never outside of the whole.
I was never above or beneath it either.
I am not.
I cannot be.
All along... belonging was
never something
I had to earn.
🥹
Perhaps this truth is something I glimpse
long before I know how to live it.
Each glimpse may allow me
to hold a little more of what I have touched.
A glimpse may become a moment.
A moment may slowly become a way of being.
The pendulum still swings, the identities are still there.
And I am learning to let them be there...
without mistaking them for the whole
truth of who I am.
So the movement continues —
not as a problem to solve,
but as life itself unfolding.
Gently.
Imperfectly perfect.
And always held within what never left.
🔯 The Remembering
Life does not always unfold in ways we can see or understand.
Sometimes there may be no visible movement at all...
while something deeper is taking root.
Perhaps I was simply at the beginning
of discovering what it means
to live within a truth
I had only begun to glimpse:
Everything is Divine.
Not just the light.
Not just the moments of presence.
Not just the peace we sometimes touch.
Not just the parts of ourselves
we are proud to call sacred.
☯️ E v e r y t h i n g 🔯
Each of us is a unique way
in which the same mystery reveals itself.
We have never been
separate from it,
and we never will be.
— even when we forget.
Perhaps this is a remembrance waiting for all of us:
Not that we have to become more.
Not that we have to become less.
But that we are invited...
🤍 to let go of the search for what was never lost.
🌊 to move through this life in our own unique way
like many waves rising from the same ocean.
🪷 to bloom as a unique expression of the one mystery
while growing from the same ground that holds us.
🌺🌼🍀
Always different.
Always belonging.
❤️💛💚
Yours and mine,
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