Are You There God? It's Me.

I came across Chris Paul Thompson because he photographed a harpist who I enjoy named Madison Calley. I decided to check out the rest of his portfolio, and so much of his subject matter is what I’ve been looking for!

Please enjoy and be sure to follow on instagram!

Meica Lace by Tanaya

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On the way back from the knitting class I take each week, I started to think about what does it mean to live a spiritual life. Several years ago, I took a coaching course to become an inner voice facilitator and about a year ago began to seek out others who used Bella’s technique and lessons since I felt like her unique interpretation was missing from the spiritual space as I saw it.

And, I immediately found how cookie cutter all of these women were. I would think people would take her lessons and transmute them into something else, but instead I found that this wasn’t the case at all. On top of that, whenever I came across these women on my Instagram, I felt like I was being sold something (and I was). These women were constantly trying to sell their courses or services.

I began to feel a bit insane; if your intuition was helping you live this great life, why is all your online content devoted to hawking your wares? And there was the rare woman, who I messaged, who said she does use her inner voice - it’s just that she never talks about it online. This somehow seemed worse because her life didn’t seem that great!

I think Bella Lively is able to cultivate such a massive following because, outside of being a white woman, she is living the sort of dream that many Americans desire - currently she’s based in London, has this beautiful flat and is sort of free to go anywhere she wants and never seems to worry about money. What she is selling is her lifestyle, even though she probably wouldn’t think of it that way.

And that’s what many of these other women are selling: a very specific way of being in the world. The general idea is that listening to our inner voice, and following its guidance, will bring us peace (a la Eckhart Tolle) and while Bella is atheist in her approach to what the inner voice is exactly, the idea is that your inner voice is a source of wisdom that you can draw on whenever you need or want it. So instead of answering people’s questions about (global) politics, for example, she advises people to ask their own inner wisdom.

As someone who doesn’t like or want a politically infused spiritual practice, I think this makes sense. Additionally, Bella is encouraging people to embrace their own sovereignty by rejecting outside opinions and expectations.

Essentially, the only person you are beholden to is God (or rather, your inner voice).

Again, this is fine.

But during my walk, before I hopped onto a bus to escape the heat, I began to wonder, “is peace, clarity and stillness something that listening to the inner voice actually gives to us?” because the woman who promotes her classes insists that it does. Or could this be a market strategy?

I think it’s important to be mindful of how, and to what, people are actually responding to in the world. I have never been an overachiever, and spent all of my twenties in relative poverty. Subsequently, I am not the sort of person who has worked myself to the point of exhaustion, never lived a fast paced life or found myself debilitated from all the effort. I also didn’t grow up with a family that supported me, and at various moments in my life had fewer than one or two friends.

My life has always been a deeply isolated and lonely one.

Alignment - the process of getting your mind on board with your intuition - is pitched as fundamental to this work to get the things you want and cultivate the type of life you desire. This work doubles as emotional work in that you need to clear out blockages so that you can access or hear your intuition better.

It’s comparatively straight forward when you think about it.

And yet! I was drawn to the work because I didn’t want to be responsible for my life anymore. I had become increasingly overwhelmed by my own poor decision making and wanting someone else to take over my life. Naturally, I found very little compassion or support around this and just shut down again.

I discovered Pea the Feary not too long ago, and while I love her insight, found myself unable to square her ideology (your inner world creates your outer world) with my ultimate desire - to give up control over my life to a higher power.

You would think religion would fit in here somewhere but it doesn’t. I’m not interested in Jesus, perceiving him largely as a fictional character, and churches that aren’t interested in Jesus tend to worship white progressive ideology (which is way worse). I felt so traumatized by the racism I encountered from white female Quakers that I couldn’t join a “BIPOC” Quaker group (Quakers are so racist that Blacks and other non-whites require ongoing affinity spaces).

I couldn’t even bring myself to practice Quaker ideas in my own isolation. During a Meeting, you sit quietly and when you are moved to speak, you can say something. It’s not really meditation, but I think you are just basking in God’s presence. I didn’t love Quakerism or anything, but it’s a pretty entry level religion and there are a lot of books on it (Bayard Rustin was a Quaker, something racist whites are happy to share).

I have basically been on a search for God, for much of my young adult life until now, and struggling to find it. The rampant atheism within American spiritual spaces makes it hard to find people even using the same language, much less developing an ideology that includes God.

In general, there is a huge emphasis on New Thought (ie manifestation) principles among Black, and other types of spiritualists online, with a dash of New Age tools (ie astrology, tarot, Human Design, etc). So a lot of the space has no real diversity because everyone is mostly using the same tools and constructs. The differences between practitioners seems to boil down to who you like the most, versus anything substantive about their work.

I do, however, love

The Abbey of Misrule

- Paul Kingsnorth converted to Orthodox Christianity, but his Substack sort of looks at how spiritually hollow our society as become which I appreciate. I highly recommend! And he’s written a few books, which I have not read.

Another problem is that all of this costs money! Many inner voice sessions cost minimum $200 and can go up from there depending on packages. Even when I was working, I very rarely could justify spending so much on spiritual/new age services. I also struggle with believing the things that come up for me, and have a lot of self doubt about being able to hear, acknowledge and then act on my inner voice.

But I have also been struggling with just getting started. With no resources to really turn to, and no one to really talk to about my journey or what I am aiming to do, I have just sort of flatlined. My general default position is one of emotional neutrality/blankness. Whenever I’m triggered, it’s typically a downward spiral of self hate or when I experience happiness or excitement, it ends up being tempered by reality.

My problems feel insurmountable. I don’t seem to understand myself very well, don’t know how to respond even to my own behaviors or thoughts and ruminate on my personal failures almost daily (ie if I should have quit my job). I’m not necessarily flailing, so much as I’m sinking and don’t know how to either stop or get to the surface.

So I sort of grasp for anything that seems like it might be helpful, but can’t integrate the teachings in a significant way. Fundamentally, I want things to get better, without me having to do anything. When I think of living a Spirit led life, I often panic that God will ask me to do things I am not comfortable doing - even though I think that’s the point. Wheras with New Thought, you just cultivate your dream life (of which I have no idea what mine would look like) and things just come into your awareness/reality as you manage your emotions (which I dont have access to).

From “Losers” on

Life Letters

that I read today and totally wrecked me:

Because I can’t see anything big ahead. I can’t even see anything small, anything at all to be honest. I just see days. Plodding along. One day after the next day. Many days, doing not much. I side-eye my journal of ideas and plans with a frown … the film I want to make, the exhibitions I want to have, the books on my hard-drive I want to publish… I can’t. I tried. I tried as much as my energy let me. My bones are filled with lead, dragging me to the floor. I am a tired loser.

My life has always been a long stint of being a loser; I have never been concerned about metrics because no one I knew were meeting any and I had no context for them. No one encouraged me to get a high paying job, to get married or buy a house and I never internalized that messaging.

On the other hand, I have been trying to internalize the idea that being a digital nomad is The Future, and I should try to live that kind of life instead.

Ultimately, I’m struggling with aimlessness, and how this has caused me ongoing mental and emotional anguish. I have always felt that not having a clear vision for my life is why I worked all those terrible jobs for shit pay, and often lived in places where I was very unhappy and deeply unwanted.

Even now, as each new year brings me closer to forty, I become more and more frantic. I think a lot about dying in obscurity; having accomplished so very little in my life, and having amounted to nothing with no legacy or proof that I was even alive.

I want to do things with my life, often big things, but I don’t trust myself or my ability to make choices. So much of my life has not been very good, and this was my fault. But waiting to hear from God is causing me a lot of anxiety as well, and is partly to blame for even more of my own wayward decision making recently.

All I know is that I don’t want what I currently have, but am trapped in this limbo with no real understanding of how to get out.