So here it is.
THE post I’ve wanted to write for over six months now.
I’ve broken it up into six chapters. A mini-series.
I thought about writing them individually, sending out shorter emails - you know, triggering higher engagement stats. I know how y’all attention spans work. But, it felt right to me they came as one. Packaged as one. One neat, enormous bundle.
So take your time to make your way through each chapter, in as many sittings and chais as you need (although, simple Green Tea has my heart at the moment). Each word is intentional - so don’t be shy to read slowly.
The lost art of reading, in a not busy way.
After writing this, Stories of Sunyata - my pursuit for nothingness, will come to an end.
And, Stories of Sunrise - after nothingness, comes everything (my pursuit to know God through beauty), will birth.
I will share all about both of these journeys today as well. Including why the change, what this means - and how one journey inevitably led me into the other.
When I stripped it all back…
When I decluttered my life, my ego, my soul — with nothing left, there was only Him.
So we begin.
A testimony of sorts.
1. Flooded.
2. In Nothing, He Was.
3. God / Not God.
4. The Most Dangerous Thing In The World.
5. Baptism.
6. The Beauty of Sunrise.
(**I will send a second email with some photos, as adding photos makes the post too large. Hence it’s very ‘text heavy’. Pace yourself xx)
1. Flooded.
I know myself. When something pretty life-changing happened in the months before Christmas I wanted to share it. But I knew myself. I knew that if it was real, and not just some momentary fleeting Truth, that I should wait.
It’s easy to share momentary truths. It’s harder to share absolute truths.
Perhaps because there might only be One.
Who am I to share that one? But who am I not to?
Nonetheless, I was guided with the message to wait six months before sharing anything.
My human mind negotiated that maybe Easter would be an appropriate time to share (it wasn’t quite so far away, and a symbolic time of year). Although God had other, more profound plans for me at Easter. Plans I would still share about - but at the right time. Not then.
I put pen to paper many times over the last six months and wrote many iterations of what I want to say today, but I have discarded them all, and started fresh.
Because, as I was guided, I needed to wait. To this precious moment.
Obedience to Spirit, is a wonderful thing.
Obedience and Submission - two words so deeply burdened with baggage in our current culture. Yet they have become two of the most beautiful, powerful and life-changing words of my life in the last six months.
It’s sunrise.
I’m not going for a sunrise prayer walk today. My ritual of late.
It’s the first day of real rain this year. It’s early winter, and last night I lay awake listening to the earth being soaked as my iconically Australian tin roof pattered (roared, actually), all night, and now all morning.
Rain that reminds me of the first time I was flooded with tears in a lucid dream.
Flooded with the Spirit.
In October last year, I had a dream.
Just before my step-mother died. She came to me in a dream. Except she wasn’t really her. She was actually Christ. And He called me to come to Him. Hand stretched out. Sitting there, in the brightest of love and light and peace. I came. Arm stretched out. Our hands met. “Everything is going to be okay”. Just like that, I knew what was about to happen and how everything was going to unfold. I knew, in my soul, in a way I’d never known anything before.
I felt peace in a way I’d never known humanly possible.
Because it wasn’t.
It was only possible to know that kind of peace through Him.
It is not something we can find by ourselves, in the human plane, alone.
I was flooded with tears of peace. Flooded.
I woke up, drenched.
My clothes, my face, everything, soaking wet.
Like the Earth this morning, after deep and heavy non-stop rain.
At the time, my human, intellectual mind (although a “spiritual one”) didn’t understand this dream or make much sense of how profound it truly was. But I knew that whatever happened in that moment, was a turning point in my life.
Two weeks later, my step-mum passed.
My relationship with the Spirit in that time strengthened.
I spent many moments, alone, in the forest - calling on God for the first time in my life.
Truly, truly calling.
Tears, screams, anguish… peace.
I needed to call on a level of spiritual resilience I’d never needed to before.
As what most people don’t know about the death of my step-mum, is that it also came with a deep, dark underworld of turmoil. Manipulation, trauma, greed, hatred, blame. Not just in the usual sort of ‘the family do weird things after death’ way. In the criminal sort of way. Police. Guns. Money. Drugs. Fearing for life. Proper ganster - can’t-even-make-this-stuff-up-in-a-movie - kind of way. A way, I wanted to have nothing to do with. But as ‘her daughter’, a situation that I could not remove myself from.
And yet, I was held in a Strength and Peace I couldn’t explain.
It wasn’t mine.
It didn’t come from within me.
It was holding me.
I was held.
Wrapped in the strength and peace of God.
Because I called Him to.
And I knew, because He’d told me - that “everything was going to be okay”. I trusted that with all my being, because I’d never been told anything with such Truth ever before.
When you know you know.
And once you know, you realise how the rest has simply been an illusion.
And you can’t go back.
These moments were a turning point in my life.
I had opened my heart, truly, to God, without even understanding what I was doing, other than that I knew there was no where else to go.
The rest unfolded from there.
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2. In Nothing, He Was.
If you have been following along for some time, you’ll know that over the last year and half I have been on a journey of surrender. I have been in a pursuit to unravel a large life of “everythingness” to one of simple “nothingness”.
This journey has actually been ongoing for nearly a decade, since a health crisis that shook my world and recalibrated my path.
But it took a serious acceleration, when my husband and I decided to sell our house, release our material possessions, and undertake a huge “cleanse” of life as we knew it (physically and spiritually) - jumping off a cliff in faith - that we would land into our Highest Life.
It’s almost hilarious to look back at that moment.
We were deep in the new age manifesting world. We had a vision board.
We thought we knew and were in control of our “Highest Life”.
And in those moments we were certainly reassured by “The Universe”.
Truthfully, I have been guided by God my whole life. I have always received messages from Him.
When I first met my husband, I received a loud audible message that he would be the father of my children. I pretty much picked up my dinner and ran out of the restaurant as fast as I could. But God had other plans. In a one and a million chance, a tiny pin from my immobiliser fell out, and I couldn’t start my car. I had to wait 3 hours (it was Friday night) for the RAC to come out and fix it for me. So I went back, with my tail between my legs, and “waited” with him at the pub.
We even broke up for some time early on our relationship. Even though I was the one who basically ended it, I was actually super confused, as I remembered that message I received that night. I thought - oh well, I must have got it wrong. I must have made it up? I guess he won’t be the father of my children. But again, God had other plans. It did not take us long to get back together. And when we did, we talked clearly about our intentions to be a family.
Actually - we sat in a Vipassana during this time, whilst separated. I did not want to do it. Sitting in silence for 10 days was about the worst possible scenario you could have put me in, in that time. But I knew that deep down, silence was the antidote.
I was too busy, too swept up. I was not listening.
These messages have guided my life, my career, my relationships. I haven’t always listened. But I have always heard them, and in those times I actually listened they always unfolded as I was told they would.
One fateful Saturday, October 2021, after we’d gotten back from another incredible trip to the remote North West of Australia in the Kimberley, my husband and I sat down and knew we needed to make some decisions about our life, our future and what we wanted.
We made some decisions.
(Actually - I got a message about some decisions and my husband was both scared and excited about the ideas, but jumped all in - he has learnt to trust my messages too).
We made a few scenarios “in case”, and then surrendered the rest.
A few hours later, we had sold our house. One serendipitous conversation. Done.
It was beyond coincidences, how it unfolded.
Not just in that moment, but in everything after that too.
It has been incredible and perfect, and led me to a place in my life I am beyond grateful for.
The only times we faced challenges, have been the times we “didn’t listen”. When our egos thought they knew better. Or tried to play God in our own lives.
When we didn’t surrender into God’s will.
We we didn’t surrender into God’s arms, and be held.
* * *
You can re-read the stories of this journey in the Archive, as I started this Substack about a year ago, and captured some of my journey and explorations.
The journey to declutter our lives and souls, took place on every level.
But it was about six weeks before Easter last year that I got another message.
I needed to do a fast.
A big one.
I’ve not really been into fasting before that. I used to find it really hard, emotionally. I convinced myself that I was “giving myself a treat” after having two babies back-to-back and breastfeeding for all those years straight. Breast-feeding right through my second pregnancy, tandem feeding for a year and a half after that, and my littlest was even still feeding when I undertook the fast. I was sure my milk would dry up, and it would be a way for us to wean (she was not keen to wean). Spoiler: my milk did not dry up. How?!!
But deep down I didn’t know why I needed to fast, other than the fact I just needed to.
I tried to find coaches to help me, but again, the message was — I’m here to guide you. Day by day. Trust. You do not need anyone or anything else.
So I just started, not knowing what I was doing.
For parts of the fast, I was solely fasting on Water. No inputs whatsoever.
It was not a physical cleanse in the end (of course my physical body reset - although kept producing milk!!), but it was a spiritual one. Every single day, was a deepening into my spiritual self. A shedding of another layer of ego, another layer of constructed-self, another layer my life and mind. Released.
It was about 40 days from start to finish, finishing at Easter.
40 days, 40 nights in the desert. Before the crushing, crucification and resurrection.
A spiritual guide of mine at the time (not knowing about my fast) told me that the antidote for my Soul’s journey was to metaphorically walk in the desert for 40 days, like Jesus. Through this journey I would find my “destination” - of nothingness. Of monkshood, essentially.
And I did.
It was Easter, six months before I consciously met Christ and was flooded with The Spirit, that I stripped away everything I knew to be true, everything that distracted me from life - and met God.
Past all the distractions, there was nothing left but Him.
In Nothing, He was.
* * *
At this point, I boxed God into the new-age spiritual language and identity that I knew. Although, I was closer than I had even been to Source, to Spirit, but I could not comprehend the idea of a Creator. One God. My God. In my mind.
But there are so many incredible indigenous cultures, ancient religions, etc? My intellectual mind had a lot to say about “God”. I couldn’t even use the word G.O.D, because it was so linked in dogma and prejudice and church-hurt for me. But truthfully, my intellectual mind had no idea. It only had the perspective of the life I’d lived up until that point. A highly educated, highly progressive, highly new-age spiritual, highly ‘holistic’ perspective.
But there are other perspectives. I had written them off. And rightly so, I thought.
So my life continued, deeply connected, but knowing there “was still more” to unravel.
I tried many different things during this time, things more familiar to my circles — shamanic ceremonies, sweat lodges, plant medicine, etc. — it was all beautiful, all powerful. But I knew with certainty it was not my path. I used each experience to know deeper that each of these paths, whilst powerful, simply felt like traps, hooks and loops for me. They felt like false freedoms and confirmed that there was another Truth out there for me.
They would take me so far… but!
I’ll share more about this next - in the God / Not God chapter of this post.
I will say, though, I’m lucky in the sense, I have remarkable boundaries to darkness. It never penetrates. I’ve been blessed and protected my whole life in this way. No matter how “dark” the experiences I’ve had, my soul has been uncorrupted. I am not open or vulnerable to evil entities. It’s not to say they can’t knock me, but they can’t over take me. My inner guidance has always been strong and clear, that every time I’ve entered into something dark, that I could always just gracefully walk right out, and let it be.
After my fasting experience at Easter, despite being a bit confused of “where to look”, my heart knew the destination.
I knew that I had already surrendered a life of The Flesh, and taken on a life of The Spirit.
I knew that I was ready to submit to God’s way, over my way.
I had no idea that it would come in the form of meeting, knowing and loving Jesus, though.
As someone who was essentially raised in Atheism, this was not comprehendible to me.
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3. God / Not God.
On a recent trip to the City to see my family, a friend of my father’s (who was staying with him), asked me about my experience.
So why did you decide to get baptised?
He was a man who has been involved deeply in evangelical circles throughout his life, he has also been involved deeply in new-age spiritual circles. He is one of the ultimate O.G. “conspiracy theorists” and is a deeply aware, awake, intellectual and interesting man.
The answer to his question is both a long and a short one.
But the answer I felt called to share with him in that moment was something a little like this —
I think the really big turning point for me was realising that I am not God.
Humans are not God.
We are not at the centre of our lives or the Universe.
Now, I know this might sound really obvious. But the different between the idea of a Creator God, and most of the new-age spiritual beliefs, is simply that God is God, and we are not. He is the Creator. He has Sovereign Will.
Sure, humans have free will. We do not have to listen, submit or obey God. But at the end of the day, there is a Creator that is divinely orchestrating our existence.
I believe we can have the experience of unity with God whilst on Earth, through Christ. But we are not the same thing.
In the new-age circles, there is a lot of emphasis that we are the creators of our realities. That we hold the power / are em-powered. That all of life and all the power comes from within us. That we must reclaim this power. That we hold the medicine of the Earth. And so on.
If you’ve been in new-age circles, you won’t have to think to long to come up with an example where the onus of Life is birthed from within you.
Where your truth, is the truth.
For me, the new-age spiritual marketing machine is not too different from than the A.I. Big Tech marketing machine.
They are hooks and loops that keep you trapped in the cycle of thinking that you can play God and that we should.
Now, I’ve simplified what is indeed a very complex and nuanced conversation.
But going forward, I no longer feel the need to unpack these complexities and nuances and try to make a point. The Stories of Sunrise, will be different. God has called me to express the beauty in this world, not to crusade against the challenges of it.
It’s all become very simple to me - is it God or Not God?
I was chatting with a dear friend, who was unpacking where the lines are with Artificial Intelligence and where / how we can use it for good. We were talking about Tech in general. The Cyber Pandemic that is likely upon us in coming months / years. Just some casual Wednesday lunchtime chit chat, sitting in the rain at Hyde Park, watching the last of the Autumn leaves fall over the lake.
At the end of the day, my answers and experiences came down to the same thing — is it God or Not God?
Yes, ChatGPT can “free up your time” so you “don’t have to think” so you can “focus on being human more”. But this is absurd. How about just be human all the time, even when you’re thinking and writing and doing tasks. I will not start a rant about our society’s ridiculous obsession with being machines (even turning God into a machine). I told you, these stories are taking a different twist. But at some point, we need to take our head out of the sand and look around and start to realise that we have absolutely lost the plot. A return to “home”, is critical.
* * *
Before I left to go to the City for my step-mums funeral last year, I had a conversation with a friend who alerted me to the idea that lots of new-age influencers and original new-age leaders from the 90’s were turning to Christ.
I remember how much this conversation impacted me.
It was the first time, I realised that I had completely ruled out the idea of Christianity as a path for me and my life.
And it was the first time, I really questioned why I had?
Even though I knew I was living for God’s way, not my way, even though I had known Christ’s love and peace, at that point, I had not made the jump from my own direct experiences to what this meant for my life. To be fair, I was in the midst of grief and survivalism.
I remember vividly saying to my friend — “I guess I just can’t reconcile the idea that God is a He”.
And then I questioned why this is. But why couldn’t I?
Was it because, raised by a single mum, I had not truly known what I means to be loved and held by a Father the way Our Heavenly Father could hold and love us?
(The irony is, once I let myself be loved by The Father, my own relationship with my father is the most beautiful and loving it has ever been).
I started speaking to friends about their experiences with Jesus. Some deep in the new-age space, who have met and channel Jesus in their ceremonies, some friends who pray and speak to God every night, but have no connection to Church, some friends raised deep in the Mormon world, friends that literally have loud, audible, direct conversations with God every day.
I started to realise I had closed the door to Jesus in my life (or perhaps I didn’t even acknowledge there was a door), but he was knocking. Loudly.
I very lightly opened the idea up in a Substack post. You might even remember the first time I talked about God. And a friend reached out. She sent me some songs. She was kind, generous and non-intruding. I could tell she cared deeply for me to find a relationship with Christ.
This song spoke a thousand words to me.
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I decided the next step was to meet with a local Pastor of a Church that a few friends went to. A church that was a beacon for our community during the Pandemic. A church where I knew the Pastor would be open, non-judgemental and honest. That I could talk to, in confidence, and explore my experience.
Pastor Mat was a hardcore atheist (it was his mission to turn people away from the Church!), turned new-age spiritual businessman, who’d had a big life (like me), and who wrestled out the big and hard questions about Jesus, until he had no where else to go… but believe.
A few weeks before Christmas, I sat at the dinner table and I told my husband that I’d asked my friend for the number of her Pastor. I asked my husband how he felt about the idea of me meeting with Pastor Mat.
My husband surprised me with his reply. I was expecting hesitation of confusion or something.
Instead, he just said “Well, I’d say you’ve already been walking the path of Jesus for quite some time, you are living devout to His teachings, you’ve just been doing it unknowingly… so this feels like the natural progression”.
The same tears that I felt in my dream, all those months ago, flowed once again.
I was absolutely overcome by the Spirit.
It was if it wasn’t even my husband talking, but Jesus himself.
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I realised around this time I knew nothing about the Bible and Christianity.
I was not raised in a home, a school or community where Christianity was really present. My grandmother went to Church, and I went to Sunday school once at Easter and came home and told my mother vividly about the gruesome details of the nails in Jesus’s hands on the cross. Needless the say, she didn’t encourage me to go again. Although, interestingly, some of her favourite childhood memories are of her Sunday School (she went to a Christian All Girls School).
I always had a fascination with Churches, though.
When I was a teenager, I dated the Pastor’s son. I went to Youth Group nights and “gave myself to Jesus” during a rock band concert where you could go down the front and “be saved”. But I didn’t know what it truly meant, and my life did not feel any different. We broke up not long after - he cheated on me, he addicted to drugs and porn and other “bad boy” stuff, and told me I was going to hell because I was not baptised..
There were other experiences like this in my life.
I tried a few times to go to Church, but I never truly felt included or safe or that I belonged.
The last time I went, was when I was at University in Canberra, and I started to go along to a beautiful old traditional Anglican Church. I loved singing the hymns. I didn’t know anyone. No one made an effort to know me. One day the Pastor made a comment, assuming I started coming because I was single, alone and pregnant, and trying to figure out what to do. Actually, I was just bloated (I had irritable bowel syndrome), and just wanted to connect. I didn’t go back.
My experience with “Church” was not particularly positive.
And I knew people who’d suffered massively under the hands of institutionalised religion.
In fact, my mother’s job for over a decade was recording the victim’s stories of those who suffered child sexual abuse and trafficking at the hands of the Catholic Church, for the Royal Inquiry, and then seeing how institutionalised religion did a wonderful job at burying it all. And then witnessing the PTSD she suffered after that.
Terrible, terrible things have been done under the name of “religion”.
All throughout history.
So I knew that if I was going to call on Christ in my life, I needed to understand.
My faith came first.
But it was “not enough” for me. I needed to be able to reconcile my intellectual understanding with my direct experiences, and make sense of how I was going to up-end my life to walk the path of Christ - with integrity.
So, naturally, I started studying the Bible.
I started reading all kinds of resources.
I read essays that friends had written (for fun), about philosophical ideas from the original Greek, Hebrew and Aramaic translations. I read both Christian and Agnostic Textual Criticisms, to understanding “how” the Bible came to be and where its words “really” come from. I read from the Traditionalists, the Legalists, the Apologists, the Progressives, the Mystics and more! I read about women and marriage. I read as much as I could.
I am still reading.
And I still feel like a baby deer, taking my first steps.
I even wrote my own essays about Gospel and Astrology, trying to reconcile what I once knew to be to true with what I was un-learning and re-learning to be true.
My mind needed to make sense.
My mind is my greatest gift and my greatest weakness.
I started going to Church.
Tuning into podcasts and apps.
I eventually arrived to a point where my faith and belief were able to match up.
Where my experiences and truth met.
Heart and Head.
I was able to look at life through a new lens of understanding. One I had ignorantly shut off because it didn’t match up with my idea of “truth”. It was uncomfortable at times. Challenging myself, my own ideals and beliefs. Deconstructing, more. But at the end, I realised there is an absolute Truth in this life —
And it is God.
And everything else, is not God.
For me, it’s been as simple as that.
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At some point in February / March, a friend came to visit. We had a lot to catch up on. We walked into the forest and laid down in my Bell Tent. Just the two of us. My husband was with the kids. We laid there in stillness and peace for a moment.
I told her I had something to tell her.
I struggled to find the words, but I knew she’d understand.
I told her “So… I love Jesus”.
And just like that I was flooded again, in the peace, just as the first time.
It was the first time I spoke it out loud.
It took the most enormous amount of courage and breaking of shackles from all my life’s conditioning, experience, from all the dogma and pain, from all the hypocrisy of Church. The word itself, Jesus, was so loaded for me. Not in the good way.
It was the hardest and most difficult thing I have ever spoken, to this day.
But it was also the most freeing and powerful thing I have ever spoken too.
Freedom.
That moment. That conversation, changed my life.
Again.
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4. The Most Dangerous Thing In The World.
I’ll cut to the chase for this chapter. I’ve come to believe the most dangerous thing in the world is self-sufficiency.
Say whaaat.
This has been a really important part of my journey, understanding this, and I felt it an important part of the story to share.
Throughout the last six months I have had many opportunities to explore all of which I’ve written here and more, in practice. I have been devoted to daily, actually.
There were a number of experiences that opened my eyes as well to the root cause of suffering of almost everyone.
I’m not going to have a conversation about systemic issues (i.e. systemic poverty, racism, etc). Because at the core of these issues are many lifetimes and iterations of individuals’ power and control patterns, that have nothing to do with God, and everything to do with evil. Rooted deeply in the Enemy, that wishes to keep as far away from God as possible through deception.
Aside from the forces of evil, of which I believe are very real…
In our own humanness, I feel that one of the greatest causes of suffering is our self-sufficiency.
I once tried to write a post about this, during my writing hiatus.
(I hope you can see now, I’ve been on a big journey fumbling my way through all this!)
I wrote the post, and read it to my husband. He’s my greatest Truth filter for this sort of thing. Even though I’ve had many conversations about these topics with him before, he got to the end of it and was like — so, “I don’t get it?!”.
I deleted the post…
So here I am trying again. Hopefully more clearly this time.
I recently had the privilege of supporting a number of women through some enormously hard times. Each of them had a different story. A different rock bottom moment. Each of them handled their experience very differently. And so, I was able to support them in different ways.
There was one friend in particular who showed me the power of the Grace of God.
She was a very self-sufficient woman.
I often used to think of her like a beautiful porcelain vase. Every time she’d get knocked, she’d be quick to pick up the pieces and glue herself back together. She was so good at this. In the end, she was held together by her own gluing, but in truth you knew underneath she was delicate and broken. Like all of us. But when the final knock came, she knew it was time for the vase to smash open, so all the beautiful butterflies, that were the freedom of her soul, could fly free.
She’d been holding it together, by herself, for too long… and she knew there had to be another way forward. She knew that freedom awaited her soul.
We often think we have to do it all ourselves in this life.
That there is no one else in our suffering with us.
That we have to carry it all, heal it all, do it all.
It’s a real disease of the modern era. Of the ego. Our sense of separation.
This relates to our healing, our juggling of life, our space-holding, our supporting. All of it.
We are told to lean in to the discomfort.
But what if we lean back and just be held?
WHAT IF God could actually take away all your suffering if you let Him?
WHAT IF you didn’t have to do it all, carry it all, manage it all?
In your life, in your woes, in your relationships?
When I was supporting all these different women, I witnessed how they all operated on different ends of the self-sufficiency spectrum. But one thing is true - they all started at the same point - suffering on their own. Whether they were single mums or in marriages in turmoil. They felt alone.
They did not feel held.
Now some of these women let me or their community hold them. One of them let God hold them. Some of them continued on their own, trapped in their own self-sufficiency, despite my best intentions to help.
Boy oh boy, was there a difference in the outcomes.
The ones trapped in self-sufficiency remained in the hook and loop cycle of trauma.
The ones that were able to be held by me, others, their community, had breakthroughs.
The one that was able to meet God and let God hold her radically transformed her life, healed her brokenness and has found true freedom. It literally brings me to tears every time I think of her courage to be truly held.
I just received the most beautiful, heartfelt hand-written card and gift box from the other side of the world from this incredible, brave woman, sharing her gratitude, for essentially being brave enough in my own walk to share the love of God with her.
I share this — because time and time again I hear of families suffering, marriages suffering, mothers suffering, people suffering — and time and time again, I try on the idea “could they be free from this if they leaned on God?”.
And the answer is always a huge and resounding YES.
It has been a YES in my own life, my own parenting, my own marriage, my own happiness and wellbeing.
If they knew they were held, unconditionally loved and supported - that they were not alone and did not have to carry their burdens alone - they would be free.
The catch is, though, to feel this love, to truly be held, you essentially have to give up yourself.
“Deny yourself” in Biblical terms.
Give up your ego, in new-age terms.
To fall into the ultimate arms of unity with your Saviour.
Oh gosh - the self-sufficient wound doesn’t like that word… saviour… does it?
“I’m not broken, I don’t need saving”, you say.
But what if you are? What if we all are? Simply because we are living in separation from God? And continue to perpetuate a world and life like that?
It’s not enough to simply just “sprinkle some Jesus” on top of your life. It requires a full-life radical upheaval of letting go of “your way”, and letting it be “God’s way”.
The ultimate surrender of self-sufficiency.
The ultimate freedom.
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5. Baptism.
On my wedding anniversary earlier this year, my first night away from my children ever, immersed in the love between my husband and I, I realise how much my marriage had changed. It was like we had only just gotten married for the first time. It was like we were only truly beginning our relationship for the first time.
One of the first podcast series I ever listened to in this journey was the Story of Marriage on the MessengerX app, recommended by a friend.
I feel like it changed my marriage over night.
11 years my husband and I have been together. We have done a lot of relationship “work” over those years. Lots of different courses and retreaty style things. We have been committed to making our marriage work and being “happy” together and in our family life. It’s a value and priority for us.
But one little video series on an app was what changed the game. For me, anyway.
And in turn, for us.
There were a lot of gems in it, but there was a simple shift in perspective that changed everything for me.
So often in relationships, as with in the new-age circles, we put ourselves at the centre. Our needs at the centre. We focus on whether my needs are being met or usually how they’re not being met. Rather than realising that when we have a relationship with God, our needs are always met.
We often perpetuate the separation of Self in the relationship.
Rather than the unity and oneness, that can only truly come with knowing unity with God.
My job to be the most loving, serving wife I can be is between God and I, not my husband and I.
Bam.
Now that’s a perspective shift!
Okay, okay… before you start getting your knickers in a twist, there is a lot more to it. I’m sharing the tiniest of tiniest snippets here of a much larger conversation of an entire course. But it was powerful. These shifts in my perspective have done more for my marriage than any of the five love languages or intimacy archetypes have! (Although those things are still useful, I won’t deny).
This year, on our anniversary, in one of our moments of incredible emotional intimacy, in the spa with a glass ceiling under the stars, I shared with my husband the feeling that I’d like to get baptised. Whenever the opportunity may come.
A few days later, they announced at the Church, that they were having a Baptism day…
So I decided then that I would undertake this beautiful ritual of giving up my life and making the sacred declaration that I would choose God’s, way over my way.
It felt like the perfect completion of what had been an enormous journey returning to nothingness.
It felt like the beginning the next book in my life.
A new kind of everything.
It felt like coming home, finally, after a lifetime of self-sufficiency, searching amongst emptiness of material everythingness.
Over the weeks that followed, it was Easter.
It was one year since the big fast I had done the previous Easter, that stripped away all the distractions of my life.
In the weeks leading up to my Baptism, I felt God with me very strongly. I was walked along a path of interesting synchronicities, messages and callings that gave me clarity and conviction. I could easily write another 10 chapters on those weeks alone —
To what happened with my family, my heart, my home and in my wider and more intimate communities.
But mostly, I really understood (in my whole being) what happened on the Cross all those years ago and why Easter is one of the most holy times of the year. I, for the first time, truly understood Jesus’ teaching and why he came and why he suffered the way he did.
It’s an almost impossible concept to fathom in our life of insane privilege. Especially growing up in Australia where we have never had to experience true hardship, war or revolution. We are so satiated in the world of the Flesh, we have no compulsion to go beyond that. Why would you, when life is so comfortable? Why would you give up the power, control and comfort of being in the drivers seat of a cushy earthly life?
But I understood.
I understood what he meant when he simply said Love One Another (John 13:34)
(So simple, but I challenge you to truly try it)
I understood what he meant when he told us to put down our offerings if we come to the altar but still have grievances with our brothers, and go back and make peace first (Matthew 5:23) - we must do the real work of God first.
I understood why he came to shatter the illusions of law, religion and slavery to our own sin, and somehow we missed the point and didn’t get it.
I understood what it means to live a truly Christ-like life, humbled in heart and mind.
I understood why he bled from every pore in his body taking on all the worlds sin and suffering in The Garden of Gethsemane. Why he was crushed in the place of the same name.
In those weeks, making that decision and declaration to get Baptised, took me from simply having some experiences, having an intellectual and philosophical understanding, to having a knowing.
To being convicted by the Spirit.
They say that faith has to come first.
God is not someone you test - “well, show me first, then I’ll believe”.
Well, I took my leap.
Not in courage, but in trust.
Even the days and hours leading up to the event were filled with signs and miracles.
The more I let go and trusted, the more powerfully things unfolded.
I didn’t think I was even going to tell anyone about it.
It was honestly just for me.
I was just going to show up.
But then I realised I should probably at least tell my parents and a few close friends who I knew would understand, and I wouldn’t have to have a big conversation with to “explain myself” and my journey. As most of my journey up until this point was very inward and private.
I’ll happily sit down with you with a cuppa and share about all the incredible moments that unfolded in those months in person if you want to know.
Somethings are meant to be left for that kind of intimacy.
Otherwise, I’m happy to leave it at that, and save the rest for some a chat.
My walk, so far.
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6. The Beauty of Sunrise.
So we arrive at the final chapter of today’s post…
A friend of mine introduced me to Prayer Walks. I’m not exactly sure how she does them, but I’ve come to learn it doesn’t matter how you pray. It just matters that you try. You do. You be devoted in your faith and your connection.
Because every human will have their own, unique experience and connection with God.
God only ever meets you where you are.
Continually revealing new revelations for your walk in the perfect time.
Everyone is at their own unique point in their journey and their walk.
Everyone.
It doesn’t matter if you’ve known Scripture of the KJV your whole life. It doesn’t matter if you opened a Bible for the first time yesterday. It doesn’t matter if have a direct, audible daily line with your Creator or you don’t hear from Him for years and years. It doesn’t matter if you’re distracted by the world of the Flesh, or if you’re living devout as a Nun.
What I’ve come to learn that matters, is that God meets you where you are at.
And you have faith in that. In Him.
And you continue to have faith in that. In Him.
And you trust, submit and obey to His will.
There’s those words that I mentioned at the beginning. Those words that can make a modern feminist shudder. I hear you, sister. Those words have been poisoned by the world. By man, by sin. But when those words are used in the context, out of this world, by God… all I can say is, watch your life change.
Watch your heart find peace.
Watch your marriage become whole.
Watch your anxiety melt away.
Watch your capacity to give expand.
Watch your children’s nervous system relax.
(Children are so naturally at home in the arms of God)
Watch miracles happen.
My prayer walks usually happens at sunrise. Sometimes at other times in the day, but almost always at sunrise. I love to get up and go and breathe the new day into my heart. Plus my husband usually goes to work, so it’s “my time” before the responsibilities of the day begin.
I don’t take music or a phone or anything else.
I walk around the perimeter of the 60acres of forest on our block, or I walk the 3km down the end of our driveway past the neighbours forests and farms.
Either way, I am alone. I am amongst my favourite Church (nature), and I witness the beauty of Creation.
It’s so beautiful I pretty much cry every morning.
I awkwardly talk to God, “Hey God, me again! Har har… How are you today? Ahh, silly question, why would I ask YOU that?”
Some people preach that He loves hearing our voices. My experience has shown that to be true. Whenever I’ve connected orally or prayed with my spoken word, it’s been a totally different experience.
It’s often as if I hear His whispers speaking back to me in the hush of the wind through the trees, or the sudden appearance of a giant rainbow.
Sometimes my prayer walks feel arbitrary, and I just “think” the whole time, caught up in my ego, caught up in the world of flesh and material matters.
Sometimes they give me unparalleled insight.
Either way, they give me peace.
A walk in nature is a healing thing on its own. But add prayer, and now we’re talking…
When I was deciding “what to do” with these Stories, as I knew that my journey to “nothingness” had come to its natural end (at least in this part of my life), I went on a prayer walk, and all became clear.
Beauty.
The first time I acknowledged “God” in my writing, was last year when I was travelling to the Kimberley, and I was learning about the Renaissance. I was learning about people’s devotion in that period to try to “capture” the beauty of God through art.
I had so many “downloads” during this time. Of course, it took me many months to make sense of them. I’m still making sense of them.
Many of which, will unfold over the coming years — in God’s timing.
I am patient and trusting, but I know what is coming.
A retreat, a place, of Godly beauty, where the intention is to know God through beauty.
When I walk along the track in the mornings, and I witness the dew drops illuminated by the rising sun on the old wire fencing, the spider webs sparkling, the golden light turning darkness into the fresh greens of forest, the kangaroos eating their morning fruits, the farm animals meeting me with curiosity or fear along the fence line, the mist of the morning air hovering above the road…
When I witness the sheer beauty of sunrise every day I go on my walks…
And how it changes, every day…
I just know.
Over the last year I have written many different posts.
Posts sharing about my own past experiences, sharing about my current experiences, sharing about my Truths in the moment, sharing about my opinions and perspectives on different topics.
Sometimes they’ve just been simple. But often there has been a “crusading” energy behind them, because of my inflated sense of self-importance that my words matter in some way. That they might even “impact” lives.
And I often get messages and emails sharing in all the ways they have.
I know, even this post, will impact someone’s life in some way.
That’s the thing about walking your walk, and then allowing people to witness it.
But I know that I am being called down another path.
My priorities in the World have changed.
It’s inevitable once you meet your Creator and your Saviour that your whole life changes. It has too. You can’t simple carry on how you were before.
I want to invest my energy into cooking food for the hungry and the hearts that need nourishing. I want to sit and have cups of tea with my grandmother and the elderly and listen. I want to have dinners with friends regularly rather than feeling scarce in my time and energy. I want to be totally and utterly immersed in the simplicity of connection with my very real world in front of me. With those that I can touch. And preparing paper, hand-drawn cards to those that we love that are far away.
The internet is a funny illusion like that.
I don’t believe in this artificial world we have progressed to that it is truly possible to connect or impact through this medium anymore. We have gone past the tipping point, and that’s that.
God has made it clear to me, my work is in the Flesh and the Spirit, and not this deceptive, illusionary medium that perpetuates the “Not God” phenomena I shared about in the chapters above.
I close Book 1: Stories of Sunyata: Becoming Nothing in a World That Expects Everything.
And I open Book 2: Stories of Sunrise: After Nothingness, Comes Everything.
Like the literal void before Creation, like the darkness before the sun comes up.
Genesis 1:2
From nothingness, comes everything.
Going forward, I don’t know what I’ll share in this new book yet.
I suppose most authors know what they’re going to write in a book before they write it.
But these are books of discovery for me.
I was thinking of even simply taking photos of my morning sunrise prayer walks sometimes and sharing them. One little snap that captures a thousands words. Poetry that has been inspired by the beauty of God. Reflections on my walk as I continue to have new revelations.
I will take photos on a camera. Write poems with a quill pen on paper. I will write in a journal. Perhaps I’ll even get a typewriter.
And from time to time, I’ll upload it here, into this new book.
Snippets and musings of beauty.
Forging a new path and story with a heart in tune with the beauty of God’s.
The end.
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You are welcome to ask me questions in the comments on the Substack app / browser, share your thoughts, reflections or reply personally via email. I might do a follow up post if there are lots of Q+A to share with all. But I am here. Open book. Sharing a little of my testimony, if you will. And I am happy to have any kind of conversation with you.
Thanks for reading.
Thank you for journeying with me up until this point. Absolutely no hard feelings if you feel that you no longer resonate with me and my art here, and choose to unsubscribe. I have indeed been reborn anew, a new purpose, and I naturally expect with that some of the “old” will fall away, to make space for the “new”. As it so happens, throughout the seasons and iterations of life. Although, of course, I hope you’ll stick around. Even out of curiosity. I am not intending to fill your inboxes too often. But when I do, it’ll be heartfelt. As always. And hopefully beautiful too.
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End. Next. Begin.
Thank you for this. Over the past few months I've come across many post "like yours" (as in coming from the new age and now fully immersed in christianity and it makes me more and more curious, together with a "new" partner for the last 1.5h that opened up my eyes more towards christianity. what i am wondering is what first books/texts/resources you'd recommend for someone who's curious/still very much of the private path of finding out more :) (coming from a completely atheist upbringing and knowing absolutely minimum)
I’ve read over half and it’s the most captivating thing I’ve read on substack. I actually don’t really know how this platform works and still figuring it out. Perhaps spirit/god is keeping me awake at night of late so then I stumble across revelations like this one. Reading this at 1:30 in the morning. I relate to so much in this. X