I was honoured to share parts of my journey as part of a panel on Interfaith: An Inner Journey at VST’s Inter-Religious Studies Conference. This year the (virtual) conference theme was “Religious, Spiritual, Secular: Living in a Pluralistic Society”. These are my thoughts.
(The script from which I spoke is below this video and yet I strongly encourage you to watch the video. It’s short – less than 9 minutes long. As I began to share what I know to be true from my journey thus far, an energetic burst of compassion from the divine feminine came through filling my heart. The opportunity to experience this with me even as we feel our way through the words cannot but emphasize my knowing that there is more, much more, available to all of us – awaiting our choice to let go and allow joy to flow.)
Hello, I’m Eloecea. I came to Vancouver from the States as a retired psychologist three years ago, led here to attend VST. The search for meaning, for fulfillment in my life has guided me into religious, spiritual and secular places.
I was raised in the Calvinist tradition of Christianity amidst a great deal of thinking and doing. I attended many services, listened to hellfire and brimstone sermons of the 1950’s, memorized catechism and Bible stories, knew the books of the Bible and verses and sang in choir…yet, something was missing. Somehow, I was empty…I rebelled against all the ‘have to’s’ and ‘don’t do’s’…and left religion behind when I left home.
After a few years of nothing but doing and thinking in college and work, I shared my misery with a friend. She suggested that the Bible spoke of love and grace from her Baptist tradition (thank you, Phyl). The Living Bible had just come out in the ‘70’s. Reading these words without the emotional baggage I had accumulated with the King James version allowed me to feel into new possibilities. I found grace in Philippians first, and then in so many other places in the Christian scriptures.
In my early 30’s, I knew I wanted to help Christians who were unhappy and troubled…so I entered the doctorate program in clinical psychology at Fuller…AND I started my own therapy for the first time. It took many months to break through the shield of defences my ego had created to survive…but finally, I realized I was trying to fit into the mold of being a good Christian woman from a good Christian family, doing good Christian work. As I opened the well of stuffed emotions, I knew I didn’t fit there – and I finally found a door that offered More…I was lesbian. I loved women. I wasn’t sourced in the usual cisgender or heterosexual manner of relationships, be they intimate or more formal. And I wasn’t sourced by a religious tradition or God that considered homosexuality a sin.
And then someone outed me to the Fuller Board of Trustees. I didn’t know if they would expel me before I finished my 5 year degree program. In the end they did let me graduate, but I was done with the limitations and judgments of Conservative Christianity.
I was introduced to liberation and feminist theologies through the Metropolitan Community Church fellowship, a church founded by and for LGBTQ+ folks. The pastor at the time, an ‘out’ Southern Baptist, gave me new information from biblical archaeology and more informed translation work. God loved me exactly as I was…it didn’t matter what other people thought, including my family. This was the first time I remember consciously choosing what I Know, what felt right to me, over what other people told me was true.
Then this community that had supported and informed my own personal shift started changing too quickly for my ego mind to accept…changing the interpretation of familiar bible stories, the language of favourite passages and the words to meaningful hymns in the name of inclusivity. Remnants of my conservative self remained. It became less emotionally fulfilling to be part of that and I left religion altogether for several years – again.
And then, in 2000, another friend (thank you, Carol) suggested that I have a personal reading with a trance channel from a New Age group she belonged to…once again my life shifted. More on that in a moment…
There are three imperatives that come from my search for More, my Journey into Joy. I encourage you to feel through how these might impact your life today:
- We must leave room for emotions – all of the emotions. When we preach and teach about love and compassion and joy without acknowledging the presence of fear and anger, depression and anxiety, trauma and stress, and encourage ways of releasing them, we negate the experience of those who listen. Guilt and shame come in and the open heart shuts down a bit more each time. Encouraging ourselves and others to be who and where we are, to accept who and where we are and then open to new possibilities helps that door stay open for More.
- We must leave room for differences – all differences. Not that we accept another’s truth or their actions as our truth, but that we appreciate and affirm that their truth serves them in their journey. For me, it was finally allowing myself to be lesbian, queer and now, non-binary (new terms I picked up here at VST). I am both masculine and feminine and everything in between – I am gender fluid. Accepting myself in that way, choosing to live from that truth, has opened a door to feeling more whole, more real and more confident in who I am and what I am about…more able to love myself and others and to receive love.
- And we must leave room for a bigger picture of what is going on in our reality. You know, I was frustrated and then scared when the whole idea of alternative facts started coming out – what others were saying made no sense to me. But I think of Galileo and the church, of quantum mechanics and mainstream science, and other pivotal times of change. The normal human reaction is to push against new, unfamiliar thoughts. We see that today with COVID-19, not to mention the political scene. Who do we believe? What do we believe? When do we shift what we believe? In my experience, it means releasing the emotional attachments I have to old beliefs and allowing the Divine within to guide me in my choices as I think and feel through new possibilities, allowing new wisdom.
I really faced this head on in 2000 when I was invited to open to a new world view, a universal or cosmic understanding through a New Age group I met with for five years. Channeling? Ascended Masters? Reincarnation? This was anathema in my earlier years. And yet these new truths have opened me to More. I am no longer a human with a soul. I am a soul, a spark of the Divine, of Pure Consciousness, having experiences in this human form.
What I can tell you is that it works for me. It gives me a different perspective on why I am here and what’s up with this Great Pause or Global Reset we’re experiencing today. It feels right in all of my being and experience that I am a Creator, not a pawn or helpless human waiting for, beseeching some outside force to intervene. We are finally realizing that life will never be the old normal again – I see this as an opportunity for all to begin to create a new future with every breath we take and every thought we have. I know together we can create a world of Unity Consciousness, where Interfaith lives for me.
Are you willing to open to ‘More’? Is there a new door, a new way of being that is available in your life, offering More?
[avatar user=”admin” size=”thumbnail” align=”left”]Quan Yin – goddess of compassion[/avatar]
by Eloecea
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Header image courtesy of NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope