spirituality

Gratitude Journal Entry No 3

Today I’m grateful for the quiet recalibrations — the subtle ways life keeps bringing me back to myself.

I’m grateful for the stories I no longer tell about myself. The ones that said I had to earn rest, or be conventionally productive, proactive or constantly performing in order to be worthy. I’m learning to meet my own needs without an apology attached. Boundaries are starting to feel less like fences and more like front doors.

I’m grateful for the body’s loyalty. Even when my mind argues, my body tells the truth — tightness when something is off, warmth when it’s right. I’m learning to listen sooner, to stop negotiating with signals that are already clear.

I’m grateful for the parts of me that used to feel inconvenient: the sensitive one who notices everything, the cautious one who double-checks, the fiery one who speaks up. They’re not problems to fix; they’re internal teammates with different jobs. They’ve become my compass. When I honour them, I move in alignment; when I silence them, I drift.

I’m grateful for work that asks for my heart and my brain. For words that show up when I’m truly present. For projects that teach me patience. For the reminder that progress is often a quiet accumulation of small, honest efforts.

I’m grateful for detours. Plans that didn’t unfold have redirected me towards what fits. The invitation I didn’t receive, the door that stayed closed, the path that forked — each one was a quiet act of care I didn’t recognise at the time. It’s easier now to release what isn’t a match without making it a story about my value.

I’m grateful for the work that lets me alchemise experience into service — taking what hurt and shaping it into language, tools, and presence that might ease someone else’s pain or mind. Meaning doesn’t erase pain, but it does give it a direction.

I’m grateful for ordinary comforts that feel like anchors: sunlight on tiles, cold drink after a walk in the heat, a playlist that hits the exact frequency my nervous system needed. These are my daily stitches — how I mend the day while it’s still in my hands.

I’m grateful for the future I can’t see yet. Not because I know what’s coming, but because I’m learning to trust who I’ll be when it arrives. I don’t need every answer to take the next kind step.

Healing: A Gentle Unfolding

I’ve walked through the terrain of healing, and if there’s one thing I’ve come to understand, it’s this: healing isn’t linear. It may come in recognisable stages, but it doesn’t follow a timeline. It loops back on itself, unfolds unevenly, and often catches you off guard.

It moves in layers. Cycles. Spirals. It stalls and it surges — often revisiting the same path from a new depth.

It can feel like progress one day, and total regression the next. But what I’ve learned is that every part of the process — every step forward, every stumble, every still moment — is part of the return.

The return to yourself.

Even when it feels like everything has fallen apart, what people are really in is a sacred unfolding. A slow, aching, deeply intelligent movement towards healing. They are falling into alignment.

Healing doesn’t come all at once.

It reveals itself in waves, in seasons, in ambiguous moments.

It comes in that morning you wake up and realise you’re not bracing for the day ahead.

In the sudden softness of your breath when someone holds your hand without you pulling away.

In the moment you let the tears come — not out of despair, but relief.

And it doesn’t begin with joy. It begins with honesty.

The first stage of healing, for many, is rupture.

That moment something breaks — a relationship, a belief, your nervous system. Sometimes, it’s loud. Other times, it’s the quiet hum of “I can’t keep doing this anymore.”

Then many enter a state of shock. You might be filled with a thousand emotions all at once: disbelief, pain, rage, confusion. The ground feels shaky. The body instinctively retreats into itself. Let it. Meet the vulnerability with presence, otherwise…

Then comes the resistance.
This is the part we don’t talk about enough. The pushback. The “maybe I’m fine.” The instinct to numb, distract, avoid. It’s not weakness. It’s protection. The body’s way of saying, “I’m scared.”

Then comes the numbness. The protective freeze. The disbelief. You go through the motions. You’re functional, but far from whole.

Then comes the awareness…A flicker of knowing that something doesn’t feel right. That the ache you’ve been carrying wasn’t always there. That the exhaustion isn’t just from a bad week, but a buildup of years. Recognition… A dawning sense that something important is surfacing. That the story you’ve lived with isn’t the whole story. And with recognition comes acceptance — not the kind that makes everything okay, but the kind that says, “this is mine, and I can face it now.”

What follows is grief — deep, confusing grief. Grief for the things that happened, yes. But also for the time you lost pretending you were okay. For the versions of you that never got to bloom.

After that, often, comes anger. Rage, even. The fire. The “why didn’t anyone protect me?” The “how dare they?”

Anger is not the enemy. It is sacred information.

It protects your boundaries before you know how to. It says: “I deserved better.”

It comes in waves, or sometimes all at once. And while it’s not easy, this is the part where things begin to shift. The dam cracks. Emotion moves.

After the fire, sometimes there is emptiness. A hollow quiet where the old self used to be. This is not a failure — it’s the shedding. The space left behind when you let go of what doesn’t work for you.

And finally, slowly, there is softening.

Not forgiveness, necessarily. Not forgetting.

But space.

You place gentle distance between the wound and your identity.

You begin to see yourself not as what happened to you — but as the one who survived it, felt it, held it, and lived. As the awareness behind.

That’s when integration begins.

You start living again. Differently. More slowly. More consciously. More bravely.
You try new ways of being. You stumble, relearn, adapt. And it’s hard. But it’s worth it.
You practice micro-choices that add up: Breathing deeper. Saying no. Staying when it’s safe. Leaving when it’s not. Replacing old reflexes with new rituals.

The nervous system settles. It learns safety. Joy peeks its head around the corner. Not the loud kind, but the quiet joy of being present in your life. Of tasting food. Watching films. Catching a captivating scent. Appreciating nature. Of laughing without effort.

And then comes release.
A deep exhale.
Not because everything is fixed — but because you no longer have to hold it all so tightly.
You recognise that this moment, just as it is, holds you. And that’s enough.

Eventually, transformation comes.
Rather than as a grand event, it comes as the subtle, gradual, daily choosing of something new.
You rearrange your life in a way that honours who you’re becoming.
You build your world around your truth.
There’s no need to hurry. Even the smallest steps can lead to profound shifts.

You start choosing.

This journey is not linear. You may circle back, feel like you’re unraveling again, question whether you’ve made any progress at all.

But each time, the return is different. Quicker. Wiser. Kinder.

Healing is a relationship, not a destination. A relationship you nurture over time. One that asks for your presence more than your perfection.

I used to think healing was about fixing myself. Now I know it’s about finding myself again.

The parts I abandoned to survive. The softness I tucked away.

Healing is a series of moments where you choose to come back to yourself, again and again, with love.

And when that love is mirrored by the right people — by safety, by attunement, by presence — something incredible happens…

Your nervous system is shown, again and again, a different story. Through the repeated experience of safety, love, and presence — enough times for your body to finally believe: it’s over now.
And you begin to believe you’re worthy of healing.
And you are.
Always.

Healing doesn’t mean we forget what hurt us. It means we hold it with more care. We bring it to the light.

We meet it with kindness.

Wherever you are in this process, know this:

You’re not late.
You’re not failing.
You’re healing.

Beneath the Ritual of Suppression

Memory has teeth, a hush,
A chamber built of breathing wallpaper,
Peeling, alive. I enter it daily.

I step through, barefoot,
into a corridor lined with mirrors,
with versions of me as reflections:
a girl in pearls and incense smoke,
a woman swallowing her name,
a mouth sewn shut with ribbon.

A silver-flecked box beneath my tongue,
its hinges rusted shut with prayers.
No one sees. The wound wears pearls;

I dressed it in silk,
set candles beside the wreckage,
and called it sacred.
I spoke only affirmations,
like spells, sweet words
I fed the universe like seeds,

my throat full of snowdrops and ghosts:

Please grow me a life
that doesn’t shiver in its sleep.

But the ripple moves. It always does.
Through time. Through space. Through me.

I tried to frost the wound in light.
I hung dreamcatchers like talismans,
whispered mantras into tea.
I spun silk out of lavender oil
and rose quartz,
lined the ribcage of my life
with glittering distractions.
I painted over the cracks
with angel wings and moon phases.
I made altars out of dissociation
and called it healing.

But silence echoes.
Even in temples.
Even in rooms where everything smells holy.
The unspoken grows legs,
wanders through the years,
flicking switches I didn’t wire.
It calls to me in mirrors:
“I am you.”

Kriyā and the Art of Alignment: Writing from the Self

There’s a passage in The Artist’s Way that has stayed with me, one where Julia Cameron introduces the concept of Kriyā, a Sanskrit term meaning “action”, but which she expands to describe a kind of spiritual crisis — a deeper, almost visceral reaction we have when something in our life is misaligned. It’s the pain that hits right after we force ourselves to endure something we shouldn’t. The exhaustion that follows overcommitment. The anxiety that builds when we ignore our creative instincts. The psychosomatic warning system that lets us know when we are forcing ourselves into a life that doesn’t fit. A kriyā is the body saying, “Enough.” It’s a warning from the self we’ve ignored for too long.

She describes how, when we ignore our truth — whether by working a job that stifles us, overcommitting to obligations that drain us, or even rescuing people who should be rescuing themselves — our body protests. We get sick, anxious, lethargic. Our emotions flare up, and our energy vanishes. Cameron’s Kriyā, in this sense, goes beyond simply taking action; it requires recognising when the actions we are taking are working against us.

Through morning pages and self-reflection, we begin to see where we are out of sync. At first, this clarity feels like loss.

“I can’t keep ignoring my health or sacrificing my time for this job.“ Or “I have outgrown this job.”
“This relationship isn’t working.”
“I don’t enjoy this anymore.”

Realising these things can be painful. We often resist. We want to keep the illusion that everything is fine. We don’t want to change — we want things to change for us. But as Cameron points out, once we eliminate ambiguity from our lives — when we become clearer about who we are, what we want, and what we stand for — we also lose illusion. And while losing illusion can feel like a loss, it is also a gift. We gain something invaluable: the truth.

And yet, truth doesn’t arrive gently. It disrupts. It can bring tears and frustration. Cameron compares this process to a spiritual seizure, an upheaval that shakes us until we let go of what no longer serves us. This is where art and self-expression come in — not as an escape, but as a way to process and understand this shift.

One of Cameron’s most striking ideas is that as we clarify who we are, our creative voice becomes coherent. When we are fragmented — when we suppress parts of ourselves to fit into jobs, relationships, or roles that don’t align with us — our creative work reflects that fragmentation. It feels scattered, disconnected. It lacks a centre. But as we strip away the false selves, as we clear out the clutter — physical, emotional, psychological — our writing, our art, begins to feel like it comes from the same person. A pattern emerges.

She calls it the snowflake pattern of the soul — a unique, intricate identity that takes shape once we shed false layers. The more we remove what is not ours, the more distinct our pattern becomes. And when we create from that place, our work has coherence, continuity. Our writing, our art, no longer feels like it was made by multiple conflicting selves but by one true self.

Also, writing (or any creative work) involves tuning into what is already within us, rather than inventing something outside of ourselves. And that means confronting our real emotions, our real desires, and our real experiences. This is why Cameron insists that creativity is not based on fantasy — it is rooted in reality. Art happens in the moment of encounter: when we meet our truth, we meet ourselves. And only by meeting ourselves can we create something original.

She seems to emphasise the following points:

1. Listen to the kriyās. Pay attention to where life feels wrong, where you are forcing things. Let yourself feel the loss of illusion.
2. Write from clarity. As you refine your self-understanding, your art will refine itself too. Your writing will begin to feel like it flows from one true voice, not a chorus of conflicting selves.

Beyond its myriad interpretations and purposes, art is about becoming someone. Becoming the person who can create freely, without distortion. And in that becoming, as we align with who we truly are, our voice, our art, the snowflake pattern of our soul will finally emerge — whole, authentic, and coherent.

According to Cameron, writing (or any creative act) therefore requires a stable sense of self. We need to know, at least on some level, who is speaking in order for our voice to emerge authentically on the page. If we are constantly shifting to accommodate external expectations, our work will feel scattered, fragmented, and uncertain — reflecting the uncertainty within us. To write from the self, we must first reclaim it. We must listen to our Kriyā, recognise where we are out of sync, and make adjustments — not just in our creative work, but in our daily lives. The more we align our actions with our deeper truth, the more naturally our words will flow.

That said, I don’t fully agree with the idea that writing requires a singular, stable self. Writers like Whitman, Virginia Woolf, and David Hume remind us that identity is not a fixed entity but a shifting constellation of thoughts, perceptions, and impressions. Whitman famously declared, “I contain multitudes” while Woolf wrote, “I am rooted, but I flow”, suggesting that while parts of us are fluid, ever-shifting, there is also a deeper, more unshakable core — something immutable that makes us who we are. Hume, on the other hand, challenges even this notion of a stable self, asking, “When you enter most intimately into what you call yourself, what do you find?” His answer: a collection of perceptions in perpetual motion, never truly fixed.

In my case, the fluidity in my writing does not stem from accommodating external expectations; rather, it emerges from exploring the fluidity of the self itself. Creativity allows me to move between different facets of my identity, to express contradictions, to embrace the shifting and evolving nature of being. Even to dream myself into another existence. Rather than seeing this as fragmentation, I see it as expansion — writing as a way of capturing the many selves that exist within me, rather than fixing them into one.

At the same time, there is work to be done in letting go of how my writing will be received. It’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking about how something might be interpreted, whether it will make sense to others, or whether it aligns with an external narrative. But ultimately, what matters most is this is how it feels to me. Writing from that space — without worrying about how it will be perceived — feels like the truest way to honour both the clarity and the fluidity of self-expression.

Immersion. Expansion. Reverie.

Having decided to embrace the unknown, we take confident steps forward, aware of our part in the greater design. Scent of ritual, sight of stars, and a refreshing breeze that revives us. The atmosphere takes us out of our formerly stagnant, limiting state. Everything is aligned perfectly. We are here for a purpose. We are here to forget some things and remember others. We are here to let go. To accept. To integrate. To be. Piercing eyes are not invasive here. Each soulful gaze feels like home. I can see myself in them. I am a vital part of something special and I can feel its grandeur, yet my core is still untouched, consistent. My focus is selective, the concept of pain is utterly nonsensical here- a faraway notion, neurosis removed, as each step gets me closer to a perception that I would have previously described as godlike. Pieces of narratives overlap, discourse becomes unnecessary. The power I could only vaguely fantasise about and partially conceive of before, becomes reality. In a total paradigm shift, the peaceful, blissful nature of an uncorrupted, spiritual power supersedes previous understandings of power, as it’s no longer conceived by a self that’s trapped in the temptation of existential nihilism or materialism or restricted by the limitations of an ego held captive by negative attachments.

There is a sense of complete, beautiful harmony between body and spirit, as well as a liberating, soothing awareness that we are more than embodied selves. Yet we choose to experience our surroundings by inhabiting a body, even in this realm. Still, we have the power to make that choice, so we are now no longer confined to experiencing reality in merely one plane of existence, as consciousness merges with wholeness, with our eternal higher selves. We no longer process the world merely through our brains, on a physical level. I had a glimpse of this state before on a conceptual level, but back then I wasn’t fully in control, or at least the part I identified with and had access to wasn’t, and I felt pulled towards that state, perceived in a fragmented way.

Back then, I recall it also felt like there was another presence inside me, a godlike presence I was having an inner dialogue with. I remember wondering– Is this God? The Devil? Someone from another world? Or am I a Goddess temporarily stuck in a human body with only a piece of my divine consciousness? (I used to identify as an agnostic with atheist tendencies) I couldn’t really tell if that presence was me, or something separate. It felt like something external, an ‘Other’, but at the same time like there was something of my self within this uncanny Other. We were communicating in a weird “language”. Through vibrations within. The presence was asking me or telling me something telepathically and if I resonated with what was said I would feel a sense of euphoria. Was that an unconscious mind process echoing religious beliefs I had drifted away from? The episode happened during an otherwise dark chapter of my life; For a long time, I have repressed it and avoided revisiting it because of the darkness associated with that time and because I needed to move on as I just wanted peace of mind. In an instance of curious chronological symmetry, towards the end of the same challenging life chapter, I had another episode involving an agonising amount of inexplicable physical pain. Ecstasy and agony. Like something entered me and a few months later it was purged.

The doom and the gloom were perhaps aspects of a fragmented psyche, the experience itself couldn’t be separated from these haunting states of mind, since I experienced all of that through the filter of my consciousness. I attributed the experience to a fleeting disturbance in my brain, a glitch in the matrix of my otherwise sane mind, rather than one in the fabric of the universe as I knew it, because of my agnostic beliefs and because I couldn’t pinpoint the nature of it; yet I couldn’t stop thinking about it, hoping (and partly fearing) it had a greater connotation. Once the darkness no longer had power over me and I could remove it from my psyche, I redefined the experience, attributing a different meaning to it. I removed the absurd beliefs that were just echoes of trauma and I kept the mystical side in the hope that it was a first step towards experiencing spiritual awakening, an insight not solely generated by a deluded mind, rather a deeper truth about what it means to be human and about my journey. Because let me tell you, an agnostic leaning towards atheism does not feel at peace, especially when they are ego-led.

By integrating the experience, I became more open to the mystery of existence, and implicitly to the possibility that consciousness can persist independently of the brain- a view that was a cure to my ontological obsession and to the despair brought by thoughts about death. Of course, I still had doubts eating away at my newly found existential relief: Was my experience a sign of shifting towards a higher level of awareness or did it not carry any more truth than some pathological psychotic state? And, more importantly, was I simply replacing one religious framework supporting the idea of a make-believe world beyond our brief life on Earth (that I was skeptical about) with a different belief supporting the same idea, but a refined, more acceptable version, anchored in eastern spirituality? Was I still ego-led, refuting at all costs the idea that there is no grand scheme of things or that humans are insignificant in the grand scheme if there is one (for me, existential transience implied insignificance no matter how accomplished or meaningful one felt their existence on Earth was; in fact, the more relevant and interesting someone was in life, the stronger I felt the tragedy of the fleeting nature of human life) leading a transient life on a floating planet- a wonderful planet that is, however, just a small piece among myriads of pieces making up the cosmos? The cosmos and the exact nature of our consciousness may indeed have been a mystery, but potentially nothing more than a result of a series of lucky accidents of physics? After all, to take a moral stance, there was so much suffering in our world, in this small piece of the puzzling cosmos. Could all that suffering ever really be part of a bigger plan? Could those horrifying people who moved away from kindness, towards sinister acts of inflicting pain on others ever be an extension of something as beautiful and awe-inspiring as the Source or oneness?

Still, I had a sense of self-importance, which had always been unshakeable, even in my most nihilistic state. This had to transition into the realm of spirituality. Yet even when I became interested in spirituality, most of my beliefs were still anchored in science. I was still inclined to believe I was in control of most of the things happening in my life and the rest of the events were random rather than predestined or under divine control. Considering my glimpse into a higher self, I had to wonder: did that self have any power to influence what was happening in my current life, at any time? Could she act as a guardian angel? Or was it just that one ambiguous, interpretable intervention? I was on a quest, seeking a system of mystical esoteric beliefs that could meaningfully co-exist with science and make sense to me. At the same time, seeking to experience something extraordinary, “otherworldly” that didn’t “make sense” or only made sense from a spiritual perspective.