A personal reflection on the spiritual path, finding God, meditation, plant medicine, and the moment we stop waiting to finally begin living
This article is a little different from the others on our blog. I am not writing it as a guide or an explanation of plant medicine. I am writing it from my own experience — as a personal reflection on where years of ceremony, yoga, meditation, working with the body, and above all life itself have brought me.
The longer I walk my own spiritual path, the more the meaning of the word path itself begins to change for me.
For many years, I felt that I was going somewhere.
That I needed to work on myself.
Understand something.
Heal something.
Overcome certain fears.
Go deeper.
And perhaps one day, after I had understood and healed enough, I would finally reach a place where I could truly live everything I had learned along the way.
But lately, I have started noticing something.
There was always another “when.”
When I stop being afraid.
When I trust more.
When I become more humble.
When I become more conscious.
When I finally get there.
And then a very simple question came to me:
What if there is nowhere to arrive?
Not because there is nothing more to discover, heal, or learn.
But what if I don’t need to wait for some future version of myself before I begin living what I already understand today?
What if the spiritual path is not preparation for some future moment when we will finally be ready to live?
What if the spiritual path is this?
This day.
This situation.
This breath.
This ordinary minute of our lives.
We Spend So Much of Our Lives Waiting for “When”
When we are children, many of us think:
When I turn eighteen…
Then I will finally be free.
I will make my own decisions.
I will live the way I want.
But when we look back, those first eighteen years were not a waiting room before life began.
They were life.
As we grow older, the “when” simply changes its form.
When I have enough money.
When I meet the right person.
When I change my job.
When I heal.
And sometimes the same “when” quietly enters our spiritual path.
When I heal my trauma.
When I overcome my fear.
When I learn to meditate better.
When I trust God more deeply.
When I finally let go of my ego.
Then I will become the person I am supposed to be.
I know this way of thinking very well because I have lived it myself.
And I am beginning to understand that perhaps I don’t need to spend my whole life waiting for some future version of myself.
I am already living.
Now.
When We Keep Searching for Something Deeper
A large part of my own journey has been about searching.
I wanted to understand.
Myself.
My body.
My fears.
Life.
God.
For many years, plant medicine — and especially ayahuasca — was an important part of that journey.
I experienced beautiful moments during ceremonies, as well as experiences that were physically and emotionally very challenging.
I never felt the need to constantly search for another shaman, another center, or a stronger medicine. When I trusted the people and the space, I accepted the experience that came.
And yet I still wanted to go deeper.
Not necessarily somewhere else.
But deeper within myself.
To understand more.
To see more.
To know more.
And I don’t believe there was anything wrong with that.
It was an important part of my path.
In fact, many of the experiences I had during those years are only now beginning to make sense to me in a completely different way.
When Life Makes Us Stop
Eventually, my own body began to slow me down.
Ayahuasca became increasingly difficult for me physically. Even drinking the medicine itself became something I struggled to move through.
Gradually, I found myself drawn toward a gentler path.
Kundalini yoga.
Meditation.
Breath.
Discipline.
Working with the body and the mind.
This part of my journey became deeply important to me as well.
And then, eventually, I slowed down there too.
Not because I stopped believing in yoga.
Not because I decided that ceremonies, meditation, or spiritual practices were meaningless.
Quite the opposite.
I simply stopped feeling the need to replace one path with another path.
For a while, it felt as though I needed to stop searching.
And something unexpected began to happen.
Things I had understood years earlier during ceremonies started making sense in a completely different way.
Not through another extraordinary experience.
But through ordinary life.
Spiritual Tools Are Not the Same as Spirituality
This is where I want to make something very clear.
When I write about slowing down or about there perhaps being nowhere to arrive, I do not mean that ceremonies, retreats, meditation, yoga, therapy, or other spiritual practices are unnecessary.
They have been deeply important in my own journey.
I needed to go through them.
A ceremony could show me something I had not been able to see before. Meditation could show me silence. Yoga could bring me back into my body. A teacher could help me recognize something I could not yet see alone.
And I believe that for another person, a retreat, ceremony, or particular practice may be exactly the experience they need at that moment in their life.
The distinction I am beginning to see is not between practicing and not practicing.
It is between using spiritual practices as tools for our journey and mistaking the practices themselves for spirituality.
Spiritual practice can show us something.
But it cannot live it for us.
Spirituality Does Not Begin or End on a Meditation Cushion
We can meditate for hours every day.
Practice yoga.
Keep an altar at home.
Burn incense.
Attend sound healings, ceremonies, and retreats.
Work with rapé.
Be vegetarian or vegan.
Read spiritual books.
Talk about God.
There is nothing wrong with any of these things.
They can all be beautiful and profound tools.
But none of them automatically makes us more spiritual.
I can meditate every morning and then spend the rest of the day acting from ego.
I can speak about love while being harsh toward the person beside me.
I can experience many ceremonies and still refuse to see something uncomfortable within myself.
I can speak about surrender while trying to control every person and situation around me.
And this is where spirituality is beginning to change its meaning for me.
It is not only about what I practice.
It is about what my practice gradually changes in the way I live.
When Spirituality Becomes Another Identity
The ego is incredibly subtle.
It can build an identity around almost anything.
Even spirituality.
We may stop seeking recognition through money, career, or possessions and begin seeking it through how conscious we are, how much we know, or how profound our spiritual experiences have been.
We can begin to believe that we are further along than someone else.
That our practice is more spiritual.
That our understanding is deeper.
That we know what another person needs.
I don’t write this as someone who has somehow overcome ego.
I haven’t.
In fact, the more closely I observe myself, the more I notice how subtly it can appear.
In the need to be right.
In the desire to control an outcome.
In trying to help someone before they have asked for help.
Or in believing that I know how another person’s journey should unfold.
So today I increasingly ask myself not only:
What am I doing?
But:
From what place within me am I doing it?
Understanding Is Not Yet Transformation
We can understand something profound in a single moment.
During a ceremony.
In meditation.
In therapy.
In prayer.
Or simply through something life places in front of us.
Suddenly, we see.
And we think:
Yes. Now I understand.
But understanding is not yet transformation.
I can understand my fear and act from that same fear again tomorrow.
I can experience profound love during meditation and argue with someone I love two hours later.
I can speak beautifully about acceptance and then fight against life whenever it doesn’t unfold according to my plans.
That doesn’t mean the ceremony, meditation, or practice had no value.
Perhaps it showed us exactly what we needed to see.
And now another part of the process begins.
Learning to live it.
Not Talking About the Light, but Allowing It to Live Through Us
When I say “begin to live it,” I don’t mean that we should start talking more about spirituality.
I don’t mean that we should teach everyone around us everything we have learned.
And I certainly don’t mean that we need to become spiritual examples for other people.
For me, it means something much quieter.
How do I think?
How do I speak?
How do I act?
How do I treat someone who makes me angry?
Can I admit when I am wrong?
Can I help without needing anyone to know that I helped?
Can I be kind to someone from whom I need nothing?
What happens inside me when someone criticizes me?
Can I release the need to have the final word?
Perhaps it is in these ordinary moments that something much deeper begins to receive more space.
Some may call it light.
Some may call it the divine spark.
I increasingly recognize in it something I would describe as Christ consciousness.
Not as a religious identity.
And not as some distant spiritual level I need to achieve.
Rather, as an inner quality of love, truth, compassion, humility, and surrender to God that I am learning to give more space within my life.
I don’t need to talk about the light.
I can try to act from it.
I don’t need to explain love.
I can try to love.
I don’t need to speak about humility.
I can notice the moment I am trying to force life to follow my own will.
What If “I’m Not There Yet” Isn’t Entirely True?
Until recently, I would often say:
“I’m not living it yet.”
“I still don’t have enough humility.”
“I still don’t trust enough.”
“I’m not where I should be yet.”
And sometimes I still catch myself saying these things.
But lately another question has started appearing:
Where exactly is “there”?
If I keep waiting for the day when I no longer feel fear, when I perfectly accept life and my ego never interferes with my decisions, I may spend my entire life waiting.
So I am beginning to learn something different.
Sometimes I live from trust.
Sometimes I act from fear.
Sometimes I am able to surrender.
Other times, I desperately want to control everything.
Sometimes I feel deeply grateful.
And sometimes I forget everything I am writing about here.
But this too is the path.
Perhaps there will always be more to learn, heal, and discover.
Perhaps I will return to ceremony, yoga, meditation, or other spiritual practices many times throughout my life.
That is not the opposite of what I am describing here.
It is part of my path.
I simply no longer want to believe that after one more experience, one more realization, or one more layer of healing, I will finally become spiritual enough to begin living.
The practice can continue.
The growth can continue.
But life does not have to wait.
I Don’t Need Good News Before I Can Smile
For a long time, it was as though I was waiting for something to happen.
Good news.
A problem to be solved.
More money.
Certainty.
Something that would give me a reason to finally relax.
To feel happy.
To be grateful.
Now I am slowly learning that I don’t always have to wait.
I can smile on a day when nothing extraordinary has happened.
I can feel grateful for what is already here.
I can experience this minute without needing it to take me somewhere else.
I don’t live this way all the time.
But sometimes now, I am able to stop waiting.
And simply be here.
Humility Does Not Mean Becoming Passive
The longer I walk this path, the more it seems to bring me toward humility.
But not humility in the sense of:
“I am nothing.”
And not:
“I must accept everything and never take action.”
I can make decisions.
I can change something.
I can set a boundary.
I can leave.
I can say no.
Humility is beginning to mean something different to me.
I don’t have to control the entire story.
I can take the step that feels true and still accept that I don’t know what will happen next.
Perhaps life will not always look exactly the way my human mind imagined it.
And this is where a deeper acceptance of life and trust in God begins for me.
Not waiting until life finally gives me exactly what I want before I am willing to trust it.
But learning to live, love, and act truthfully within the life that is actually unfolding.
Perhaps We Don’t Need to Search for God Only in Extraordinary Moments
We can search for God in ceremony.
In meditation.
In prayer.
In nature.
In moments of profound connection.
And these moments can be beautiful and important.
They can open something within us.
They can remind us of something we have forgotten.
But if God is truly present in everything, then God cannot exist only there.
God must also be here.
When I cook.
When I clean.
When I work.
When I care for another person.
When I write these words.
When absolutely nothing extraordinary is happening.
Perhaps spiritual practices help us open doors.
But life is where we gradually walk through them.
Final Thoughts: The Path Continues, but Life Does Not Have to Wait
Today, I don’t feel that I should abandon the tools that have been part of my spiritual path.
Quite the opposite.
I want to return to yoga.
I want to meditate.
And I don’t know what other experiences life may still bring me.
Ceremonies, retreats, meditation, yoga, teachers, and other forms of inner work may continue opening new doors.
I simply no longer want to mistake them for spirituality itself.
Because spirituality, for me, is increasingly revealed in how I live afterward.
In my thoughts.
My words.
My actions.
My relationships.
My ordinary days.
The moments when nobody is watching.
Perhaps we don’t have to wait until we are completely healed, conscious, free from fear, or until we have reached some imagined spiritual depth.
We can keep growing.
Keep learning.
Keep practicing.
Keep opening new doors.
And at the same time, live.
Because life does not begin when we finally get “there.”
I am already here.
And life is happening now.
