The interconnected pursuit of God and the Self

Religion often makes the claim that the pursuit of God is the opposite of the pursuit of the self. But the Eastern religious/spiritual understanding of the Self believes that the core of the human self is synonymous with God and not the ego. My belief and experience supports the Eastern understanding of the self. In this paper, I lay out my own pursuit of God, discovery of myself, and how they have been revolutionary to my healing and thriving.

There’s a theological belief in Christianity called original sin. This is the belief that Adam and Eve, the first man and woman of earth, ate a fruit of the tree of good and evil. This introduced sin into the world. Since then, man become inherently evil. I believe that this belief is wrong. I believe that it causes shame, power abuse, loss of boundaries, disconnection from the body, intuition, and God. I believe that connecting with ourselves deeply will help us connect with God and the inherent goodness inside of us. This will help us love God, ourselves, and others. This will create healthy boundaries, inner power, reconnection with the body, intuition, and God’s guidance for a thriving life.

“The world will ask you who you are, and if you don’t know, the world will tell you.” – Carl Jung

As Jung pointed out, it is important to figure out who you are so that your identity isn’t determined by the world. When we are young we’re naive and ready believe what others tell us. Of course, this is often good as we need the guidance of those older and wiser to help us navigate the world around us. However, others traumas, misunderstandings, narcissism, manipulation, etc. can easily hurt us and cause trauma for our very young, impressionable minds. As we get older and go through the psychological stages of development, we start becoming our own individual person. To heal and find freedom, we must delve into our unconscious wherein lies the trauma that others caused us when we were young.

Likewise, much of our understanding of God is formed by our parents and how they raised us religiously/spiritually. Oftentimes, our view of God mirrors the relationship we have with our parents. I was the firstborn. My parents expected a lot of me. They did not let me express my negative emotions. I learned to keep my needs inside, to not have boundaries, to be on guard at all times for my father’s mood so I would be safe and not do anything to make him angry. I wanted to be close to him and sometimes I was. We would play wrestle. I was always provided for. I knew that my parents loved me. But I also had to be well-behaved at all times, especially in public for others. So, I had a chaotic up and down relationship with my parents. My relationship and understanding of God was the same way. I wanted to be close to him. I believed he was loving, but I also thought that he expected a lot out of me. I thought that if I wanted to have a relationship with him and for him to love me, I needed to be totally devoted to him. I needed to hardly ever sin and please him. But I couldn’t live up to these expectations and often exhausted myself. So, I had an on and off again relationship with God.

 “I searched for God and found only myself. I searched for myself and found only God.” – Rumi

For many years I searched for God, but I only found reflections of my subjective view of God, a limited conditionally loving God whose standards I could not live up to (which were actually my own standards). Finally, in Grad school I reached a breaking point. I began to focus on myself. I wanted to heal and grow mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. One day I found an article on trauma that resonated. I kept reading similar articles about famous authors, scientists, poets, etc. that went through hard times and found ways to love themselves through it all. Reading these stories helped me finally access the empathy, grace, forgiveness, and self-love that I had so yearned for and found missing in my life for so many years. I finally felt peace and understanding. At the end of the day I had an awakening, an experience of love, joy, peace, and ecstasy. I felt one with God. For the first time in my life I experienced the unconditional, all-consuming love of God.

“The eye through which I see God is the same eye through which God sees me; my eye and God's eye are one eye, one seeing, one knowing, one love.” ― Meister Eckhart

The next month after this experience I felt full of energy, love, and God. I felt like I was constantly hearing from him through my thoughts, my bodily sensations, through my experiences, through many synchronicities, discoveries about the truth of reality. I now understood that God is in everything. He is beyond my body and the physical world, but also within every single cell, tree, planet, and universe. We cannot be separate from God because we are a part of him. During this time, I no longer had any shame or fear. I was very selfless.

This time did come to an end when I had so much energy that I was not eating or sleeping often. I became delusional and was taken to a hospital and then psych ward. I was placed on meds and given the diagnosis Bipolar 1. My energy, love, and connection came crashing down. I was very confused. I went through a dark night of the soul for many years. However, six years later I read a near death experience book which contained many stories of people who had similar experiences as I did during my awakening. I then began an investigation into my experiences and what they meant.

Once I took my story into my own hands and explored what I thought it meant, instead of passively accepting the “expertise” of others I found a wealth of wisdom. I believed once again in the unconditional love of God. I slowly healed from the anxiety of others’ judgments on having my own unique beliefs that conflicted with others. I began to become empowered as I worked through shame, sadness, anxiety, and anger. I healed the childhood belief that anger is wrong and learned to feel through it rather than bury it within. I also took responsibility for forgiving others who had hurt me in the past without the expectation of them changing or asking for my forgiveness. I began to develop healthy boundaries with others and heal my anxious attachment style. I slowly got back my voice and started my own podcast. I became more comfortable and safe being larger instead of playing small like I did when I was younger. I connected with my body by picking up meditation and yoga again. I explored somatic healing modalities which helped me work through stuck emotions, trauma, and chronic pain.

My point in sharing my experience is that pursuing God externally without pursuing understanding myself inwardly will always be marred by subjective understandings of God based on childhood. If you have a great trauma-free childhood then you may not need to do much inward probing and reconfiguration. But this is a rare experience. By going inward to discover our unconscious beliefs, thoughts, and emotions, we begin to heal these things and come home to God. We begin to have a closer and deeper relationship which leads us to the experience and realization that we are one. This powerful loving experience empowers us to continue building the gifts placed inside of us to help others and inspire them to also discover and reflect the divine inside of them. I will leave you with this poem:

Are you looking for me? I am in the next seat.

My shoulder is against yours.

You will not find me in stupas, not in Indian shrine rooms, nor in synagogues, nor in chathedrals, not in masses, nor kirtans, not in legs winding around your own neck, nor in eating nothing but vegetables.

When you really look for me, you will see me

Instantly-

You will find me in the tiniest house of time.

Kabir says: Student, tell me, what is God?

He is the breath inside the breath.

-Kabir