Prior to my “spiritual awakening”, I felt that there was a missing piece in my life even though I could not articulate exactly what it was. As a result, I spent years traveling across the continents and seeking a wide array of experiences and connections in hope of finding that missing piece. It wasn’t until the dawn of 2020 when I realized that what I had been searching for all these years was simply my true self.
As a highly sensitive child who pondered on the meaning of life at an early age, I had a keen awareness of the emotional aura in my surroundings and often received random flashes of insights about the mysteries of existence. I still remember my grandma teaching me how to open my third eye when I was 8 years old. That was my first exposure to spirituality. For the years since, I somewhat believed in a greater power but my spiritual beliefs were closeted and unexplored. I found the conventional routes of religious practices either superstitious or too dogmatic.
After coming to America, I had a pervasive sense of not being grounded or centered. For years, I struggled with owning my identity. My happy-go-lucky demeanor was often plagued by an underlying need to be liked and accepted by those around me. While I craved intimacy and deep connections, I struggled with opening myself to others and expressing my own opinions, feelings, and needs because I feared the possibility of rejection or abandonment. As a result, I hid behind a perfectly manicured facade of my social identity.
In truth, I spent much of my life letting the outside world define my worth and who I should be. I conformed to social norms and adopted unexamined values and beliefs of my parents and peers. As the famous Greek philosopher, Socrates, once said, “the unexamined life is not worth living”. For the years I had been unconscious, I felt lost and powerless, falling into a perpetual cycle of appeasing, proving, and protecting my ego self for external validation. I prioritized other people’s needs above my own and procrastinated on my own dreams and goals in order to fulfill my ego needs. It wasn't until the spiritual awakening and the slow disintegration of my ego that I started to explore my true self.
Peeling through the layers of onion was uncomfortable. Surrendering my ego identity to a higher power felt frightening. It became this tug of war between my ego and my soul, with one side pulling me into the comfort of the familiar “reality” and the other side pushing me into the realm of the unknown. For a period of time, I clung onto layers of shedded skin because I felt too exposed in the rawness of my own truth.
My breakthrough came during an opening, to the mystical Force that guides all life. I felt connected to a source of love that was unconditional and infinite. Instead of believing that there is a greater power, I started to build faith and trust in this greater power. Little by little, it opened me to the power of choice, that I have free will to choose how I want to lead my life. I realized that for years, I had been imprisoned by my own conditioning and that freedom is simply a choice. When I decided to give myself the permission to break free, I surrendered to the flow of life and the eternal truth. My journey to become my true self became a co-creative process with life and I remembered who I am - the pearl in the oyster.