Getting Down With God

A Relationship with the Cosmos + Human Design

I have been trying to be committed to this Substack but, quite frankly, have been struggling. The lack of progress is an ongoing theme in my life for which I haven’t been able to meaningfully solve, and only seems to get worse. Deciding on a relevant and consistent direction for this space is difficult because I am not sure what I seem to care about.

Although I quit my job at the end of May, I have been spending my time not doing much of anything. I have discovered a movie theater near me only charges $5 for a matinee, and $7 in the evening, which is like a third of the price for Regal, the main chain where I now live. So, for much of June, I spent my time going to the movies and that was about it.

Before I left my low paying call center position, I imagined myself reading all day (as I would often read at my desk between calls), aspired to go to the Y to take classes throughout the week and even flirted with buying a bike so I can get even more exercise. I just thought my life would be more active mentally and physically and that has very much not been the case.

Photo by Adrian Swancar on Unsplash

All of this laziness is compounded by the fact that I’ve moved to the South, and it is very fucking hot and extremely humid. Unless it’s overcast, or has just stormed (which is almost everyday), it’s over 90 degrees with even more humidity. I don’t drive, and the public transportation here is sparse. It takes at least an hour to get most places I’d like to go, and there is no bus to other places I’d very much want to visit regularly.

The best times to be outside are early in the morning, before it gets too hot, and in the evening, after the sun has begun to set. Anytime between, say, 11am to about 6pm is Peak Sun. This, coupled with my friendlessness (another lifelong problem) has prompted me to just sit at home and not do much of anything.

This will be the third summer I have left a job only to wind up not doing anything. I don’t have any words of wisdom, because it was my depression that prompted me to spend my savings traveling and wind up living with my mother. Now that I’ve built up my savings a bit, I have quit my job again - still depressed of course - and unable to move in any direction.

A lot of people have opinions, and most of them are pretty terrible. I think that while momentum works in theory, it hasn’t actually worked for me. I have spent my life chasing behind opportunities and interests only to arrive in the same place I have always found myself.

I have a lot of experiences, but my mental (and by extension emotional) state hasn’t actually shifted in a way that’s improved my quality of life. I still don’t really have any friends, I don’t date, I keep falling into low paying and unfulfilling work and am no closer to any kind of clarity of purpose or even my own desires.

As I spent time traveling to all of these different cities and states last Fall, I felt really empty on the inside. I live with a heavy sense of loneliness just in general, and during my state hopping, I wished I had had a partner to experience everything with. I didn’t even have any friends to share my experiences with, and spent much of my time talking to no one (except the Airbnb hosts on occasion).

In general, I have learned that I am not like other people. And not in an interesting way…

I think I am caught between where I am in the my life and what I want? Or who I think I need to be in order to get what I want?

Either way, I am trapped in this cube - not even of my own making! - and struggling to find a way out. I have recently begun to try and double down on spirituality to see if there’s anything there that might be able to help me. Being committed to a spiritual practice has also proven to be a Herculean task. I think because I am not sure what the results should be or look like. I also have no idea on how to get started or even what the hell I’m doing.

Over the course of my life, I have sampled Paganism, Wicca, Judaism, Quakerism and Unitarian Universalism. Presently, I am trapped in the nebulous “spirituality” space where I get to pick and choose what I want to do. I have attempted to dabble in New Thought, but didn’t find that it was an effective tool for getting what I wanted. (It didn’t work for me at all, basically).

Even when I was working, I didn’t have very much money. But now I definitely can’t afford therapy or any kind of theraputic tools. I have a book from the library about shadow work - that I haven’t cracked open - and an unwavering sense that there is something fundamentally wrong with me that is preventing me from doing or having anything of value.

I feel like I can’t really force my way into clarity, purpose or having. There is also the likelihood that I simply was pursuing the incorrect tasks, or that the other problem was that I never took the time to really think about what I wanted or what I was doing. I pretty consistently made choices that would help me escape situations I disliked - often ending up in worse situations - or pursued an interest that didn’t lead anywhere.

But I still don’t know what I want!

I just feel like there is something so deeply broken in me that can’t be fixed. I can barely motivate myself to do things I think I want to do (ie: exercise, writing, reading). How can I manage to pursue things that I’m not sure I’m even interested in (ie: learning new skills to help me in my job search).

There is also the issue of me constantly being disliked or unwanted. I knew that when I left my job, I would go back to having no one to talk to. But I was talking to no one even when I had a job! I had noticed that if I sat quietly at my desk, very few people would talk to me of their own volition, despite the very friendly atmosphere.

As I contemplate why my life is a series of unconsciously making the same mistakes over and over, I am reminded of human design. After spending several months not accomplishing much (and learning even less), I had abandoned it. Within this framework, I am a Generator which is the most populous type and has the most confusing strategy which is “to respond”. Basically, the way it works is that as a Generator, you put out an energy to the Universe that is meant to attract things to you, and you’re not meant to go out and DO things (like a Manifestor).

This website articulates it in a way that I also find helpful:

The only way I know how to make sense of “wait to respond” is to have a spiritual orientation to life—the understanding that we’re in a dynamic relationship with the creative intelligence of the universe.

Whether you call it the flow of life, spirit, the universe, God, goddess, or the All That Is, there’s a creative intelligence that’s been creating our universe for billions of years. We’re not separate from it—we’re actually an expression of it, part of this greater web of life.

And in fact, everything is responding to everything else, all the time.

This is incredibly liberating when you truly get it. You’ll understand not just intellectually but in your bones that you’re not alone and you’re not on your own. What a relief!

To be honest - this probably explains why I have always believed in God despite not being raised with any religion, and my interest in various religious practices.

I am not sure I believe that God was instructing me to quit all these jobs, but I do think that my striving, my aggressive pursuit of these jobs, hobbies, experiences - that ended up being some combination of awful, low paying and unfulfilling - was a consequence of rejecting my strategy.

This isn’t to say that I am going to do a deep dive into Human Design - it is still a very complicated concept that involves a lot of information, like environment or digestion, that the average person might not need. But, this idea of waiting to respond instead of just initiating things is kinda nice. That means that I don’t have to do anything except cultivate a relationship with the Cosmos, which I think is easier said than done, but it does lift some weight off of my shoulders for sure. At least in terms of needing to figure everything out.

So I may still be fucked up, but quite honestly, the only thing I have to do is develop relationship with God and in turn, with myself, and HOPEFULLY this will help.

Only time will tell.

Photo by madison lavern on Unsplash