Don’t Dim Your Light to Accommodate Someone Else’s Vision
One of the hardest things I’ve had to reconcile while moving through a spiritual awakening is that I am alone.
It’s one of the fundamental truths of human existence.
There is only one me. There is only one you. No one else is in my body.
Despite all of the many ways we group ourselves and find kinship with one another, each person's experience is uniquely their own. So, inevitably, we see the world differently. That one degree of separation is enough to make us all, existentially, alone.
We spend our lives running from that truth.
To Seek Belonging is to Separate Ourselves
But the problem isn’t that we’re alone, actually, because we all share that experience. The problem is our need to escape that existential aloneness, to belong.
Much of my life has been spent trying to find a place to belong.
I don’t blame myself. It’s natural. We’re social beings. But sometimes I found myself guilty of sacrificing parts of me to fit in. This was a kind of self-betrayal.
In the past, I’ve felt set apart from groups that were supposed to be welcoming of all kinds. I’ve felt like I didn't belong in the church, or like I didn’t belong in the queer community, or like I didn't belong in the black community.
These identifiers can bring such narrow definitions of how we’re allowed to show up.
You can’t be “Christian” and “Gay”, you’re not really “Gay” if you’re not a “lesbian”, you’re not “Black” enough if you’re not woke, if you wear weave, if you’re well-spoken, etc.
The lists are endless. Depending on which niches you’re trying to fit into the rules change, but the fact is we police each other constantly in an effort to bind ourselves comfortably to one group or another. We judge each other so we can say “I am this and you are not” because, in order to belong, someone has to be on the outside.
So, it felt like I couldn’t be fully authentic in any of these communities. I wouldn’t be accepted without leaving a piece of myself at the door. I’d deny my own wholeness to make other people comfortable.
Acceptance Comes with Seeing the Whole
These days I think there’s a growing acceptance for the ways we’re all different, even within our many identity groups. At least, in certain spaces. Intersectionality is being more widely recognized and understood.
Coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw, the term Intersectionality speaks to the ways our varying social identities intersect, are expressed and experienced simultaneously.
What I’m saying is, thanks to the work of many black women and queer and trans* folks of color who came before, thanks to movements that critique and challenge systems of oppression (which encourage these very one-dimensional perspectives of personhood)….there’s more space for me.
There’s more space for the black alterna!girl, the panromantic demisexual (if you’re into labels ;p ), the God-believing, but non-religious, spiritual practitioner.
Where there isn’t space, I’ve created it by simply being myself as best I can and accepting others with the hope they reflect that love and acceptance back to me.
I’m grateful to say, people in my life do just that. Remarkably, once I began accepting myself in my totality, the people around me did too. Funny how that works. More on that later.
Spiritual Awakening and Authenticity
While coming into my own has been a process, as it is for anyone, after beginning my spiritual awakening journey it became even more difficult to show up in complete authenticity.
Why? Because so much of my worldview shifted in an extremely short amount of time. The concepts and structures that I built my world upon collapsed and new understandings came in to take their place.
Beyond social identity, at the point where identity crumbles, I was left with something much deeper and yet much more ephemeral. It was hard to find a community of people who had gone through exactly the same experience.
I think this is intentional, now. I’ve come to trust that there are certain parts of a spiritual journey that have to be walked alone. We have to face that aloneness, that void at the center of all of us that we’re terrified to look at, to come out the other side and see how we’re all connected.
As I said, my worldview shifted profoundly.
But everyone around me didn’t shift, of course. I’m blessed enough to be surrounded by beautifully evolved and ever-evolving souls. But there are always people in our lives who don’t grow with us, right? Everyone is growing and learning at their own pace, as they should be.
The question then becomes:
How do I show up here?
Do I pretend nothing has changed so that they don’t ask questions or look at me funny, so they don’t reject me? Or am I completely authentic and honest at the risk of being an outcast?
More than once, I’ve come up against a choice: I could continue to operate within a belief system I no longer have faith in and be accepted and acceptable or I could choose not to do that and look crazy to some people.
Do I Dim My Light To Accommodate Others?
Here’s a good example: soul relationships. I didn’t always believe in the concept of “soul” as something that I am or that there are others out there that I’m connected to at a soul level.
There are a number of people who think that’s bonkers. Truly. So, if I have a friend who is skeptical about my experience, do I say “yeah, you’re right, this isn’t real, I’m being stupid”, to avoid that judgment? Do I keep silent about things that have changed my life, deny my own experiential truth to accommodate what they believe?
Here’s a better example: abundance. I’ve come to believe that abundance is largely about mindset. If we live with the belief that there isn’t enough money, that we need to always be thinking about how to make more of it, we attract scarcity. If we trust that we’re taken care of and will have everything we need and more, we do. It’s simple.
But many people don’t believe that, they’re still of the mindset that “money doesn’t grow on trees” or you have to “work hard” to “play hard” as if play is only allowed when you’ve earned it.
To them, refusing to work a job I dislike seems ridiculous. That’s what you do. You pay your dues. Everyone has to do things they don’t like sometimes to survive. It’s naive to imagine otherwise.
Understandably, for the paradigm that they’re living in, my mentality seems crazy. And, of course, I don’t like being seen that way.
So, do I continue to work a job I can’t stand? Do I accommodate this person’s thinking, their vision, and take it on as my own so that they find me sensible and logical?
If You Can See Beyond, Go Beyond
These may seem like silly questions, but we betray ourselves this way all the time. We do things based on what other people think, instead of what feels true and right on a personal level.
I could live that way, but maybe I do myself a disservice when I do. Maybe the cost of fitting in, of not standing in the light of my own truth, of dimming myself so that someone else can comfortably see, stifles me.
You can’t make someone share your vision, but you don’t have to limit yourself to the boundaries of theirs. If you can see beyond, go beyond and if they’re meant to stick around, they’ll catch up to you one way or another.
