I always notice, sometimes reluctantly, that the minute I decide I’m going into ceremony, it starts working me. It starts to shift my perspective. I feel different in my body, like the expansions starting. Like something in you has started to dilate.

Making the personal universal

I saw a phrase from a spiritual person I really respect saying, “Don’t make the personal universal.” It’s been sitting on the front of my mind since I saw it, which means there’s something there for me to dig into. I’m guilty of that for sure. I’m guilty of that a lot, honestly. When I get to the core of it, it’s a pattern I’ve used to find a way to gain control and security over my life. Which means it’s an affliction of my ego.

I had a friend who used to say something to me like: you know, you are very sure of the things you think you’re sure about, and then when it changes, you’re still equally as sure. And it’s true. I am quite experienced in being very confident about the things I believe to be true, only to find a new piece of information and realize I was very confidently wrong. And then still, move very confidently into the new truth.

I’m not hard to admit I was wrong, I’m happy to admit I was wrong, but rather than sort of learn how to dive, or float or swim, because the truth isn’t just in one place, I jump from island to island, saying “no, this one’s it, I’m sure!”

The phrase is making me look right at that need for certainty and security in my life. In the act of control, validation, and attachment that all the ways ‘making the personal universal’ creates in me. My ego wants to cling to what it knows because if it can be certain, it can create a false sense of security, and then we can be “safe”. It all happens so fast, so subconsciously.

By clinging to the need to be right, like it’s a shield that keeps everything else at bay. It convinces us that if we’re right, if we know something about the world, then we’ve got control over it. It wants the illusion that it is the master. And again, for the ego, control equals safety.

The ego doesn’t care if what it believes is true, is actually true. It’s like saying, "I know what’s up, and because of that, I’m safe from the unknown." But in reality, that "safety" is just a temporary fix that keeps us stuck in a loop of defending our version of things, of creating separateness, of taking us out of the practice of faith and surrender.

It’s wild all the little, covert ways—the ones that seem harmless, or that we’ve even told ourselves are helpful and are doing good for others—that are created by the insecure needs of the ego.

I don’t know if I put together until just now that our ego can even project confidence to feel safe. I’ve always been quite confident, perceived as confident, and admired for my confidence, when it may have been (partially) an ego projection—a safety mechanism. I’m not trying to say don’t be confident either. We want to cultivate confidence. We want to hold confidence, just not the kind that is about BEING a caricature of confidence.

And instead, finding a groundedness in the body, like the mountains or the stone. Where confidence isn’t certainty and security. But, I think, more like a strength and at the same time surrendered. Able to constantly change with an essence all the same. I’m looking to the mountains for the answer here. I know they have what the medicine of what I’m needing. I don’t know if I have the right words to describe it yet, but I’ve never seen a mountain need to know it’s right about something and try to tell you about it.

Finding security

I’m being asked in more ways than one to find a new sense of security deep within myself. What can actually give me the security I crave? It’s not a man (for years I thought it was). It’s not my parents. It’s not money or prestige or a good job (I had all of those, and I was still spiritually sick, lost, and miserable). I was craving a deeper sense of security that I couldn’t name. I could only see it in people who had it, in the way they moved in the world. I could only see it in nature, where all things move freely without attachment.

And what I’m realizing is, the security I’m really looking for, the one that helps you feel safe in the world, through challenge, heartbreak, the greatest moments of life, and the worst, isn’t from the outside. It’s from and with God.

And if you thought I was going to say something else, HA! I’m not. This is it. It all circles back to God. We want it to be more complicated, so badly, that’s the ego wanting to be needed. And it’s not! And we can find peace in the simplicity of the answer, not needing security to be like the legend of Ponce de León searching for the fountain of youth (he never found it).

Because security found through a relationship with God is the kind of security that remains (in my experience). I can’t buy it, manipulate it, or earn it. I can only admit I know absolutely fucking nothing in the face of life and let that expand me. And if my writing helps you, awesome, and if it doesn’t, even more awesome.

I hope my writing hasn’t ever felt like I was trying to make the personal universal, but I want it to be perfectly clear (to me and you, reader, and God), that I have no intention to force my perspective on others or make my journey the template for everyone else’s. I’m just here, a woman in the world, sharing what I’m learning, and that’s enough. We all walk our own path, and sometimes the best thing we can do is trust that our personal truth doesn’t have to be everyone’s truth. We’re all just figuring it out, and that’s the beauty of it, too.

Love,
Val

Send in your prayers

Every Sunday at 1 PM MST, I’m going to be making a collective prayer. How can I pray for you this week? Are you going through something major or just need someone to hold your becoming with a little care? Whatever it might be, send me a note by replying to this email. All personal and confidential info is kept anonymous. Prayers will be live-streamed on Zoom.

I’m writing every day right now. If you missed one or want to see what’s been written before, click below.