A chill flooded my veins and my body shook a little as the billboard passed me. I was a few miles outside Placerville, CA on my way to Sacramento, on an impulsive search for my birth mother. On the billboard was her last name and a willow tree, the symbol of the town she lived in. I had, moments before, asked God for a sign that I was doing the right thing.
In the moment, I attributed this chill to the Holy Spirit. I had recently become a Christian and finally had a name for this spirit that spoke to me. I had felt it all my life, but teetered between, "It's only the room that's cold" and "Wow, someone heard me and responded." For the first time, I could name this confirmation I received.
Throughout my life as a Christian I would feel this "shiver" in times when I was asking for guidance. Sometimes I would feel it when a particular moment was connecting to God in a way that felt personal. It was often felt through music, but sometimes it was a child laughing or a story on the news that was significant. It felt like something was telling me to pay attention.
Some years later, I heard a psychic on TV talk about this feeling as spirits talking to us. I had heard that psychics were evil or working for the devil, but that didn't make sense. What I was feeling was the same thing psychics experienced. Could it be we were connecting to the same spirit and calling it something else?
Last year with Navy Guy I experienced this chill again but it was far more intense. I called it a shiver at the time. It was like a chill, but stronger, more like an electrical current shooting up through my body. It happened when he touched me, starting at the base of my spine and traveling up through my shoulders. I did a little snake like movement as the energy left through the top of my head. Almost every time, a giggle followed.
It was a wonderful feeling, like something was tickling my soul. This happens in moments when I'm feeling connected to something or someone. I'll hear a friend say something that resonates, or I'll ask a question. The chill returns an affirmative answer. It's as if someone is telling me I'm on the right track and I should keep exploring.
I no longer gaslight myself about this. It happens even when the room is not particularly cold, and it's often enough now and the timing spot on. I don't doubt that I'm receiving guidance from somewhere. But I have asked why it's so much more common now than in years past. Is it because I believe in it more now? Is it psychosomatic and I'm causing it to happen myself? A high pitched ringing in my left ear says no.
What I've come to believe is that a channel is now open. I've healed things that acted as blocks before. Childhood wounds, generational trauma, even past life woes, have healed in recent years.
In 2020 when I left my husband, I felt called, no, driven, to heal. I was watching my children deteriorate with my marriage. I wanted to help them. With my oldest in therapy, I was learning about all the ways I had let them down. My eyes are welling up now as I type this. It still hurts to know the damage we did to them as parents. I was so caught up in abuse I couldn't even see them.
When my husband moved out, I vowed to open my eyes and never look away from pain again. I was witnessing the damage I had done in hiding from pain. I had been an ostrich, keeping every harsh truth buried until it destroyed me and everyone close to me. I never wanted to go back there.
So I dove into every opportunity to heal. I felt every feeling, cried every tear. I screamed every scream, until I purged decades of emotion from my nervous system.
Four years later, I'm in a rhythm with the shivers and the chills. The ringing, the visions, the dreams, and the intuitive whispers are all normal now. I still doubt myself sometimes, but I'm more comfortable talking about it. And I'm hearing from others who have the same experiences.
The night of the election I had my first collective experience. Between three and four in the morning I awoke, as I often do, with a message on the tip of my tongue. I usually grab my phone and record a quick voice note before going back to sleep, but this morning I didn't. I was especially tired and ignored it. But when I woke a couple of hours later, I remembered.
"It's not over."
Three words rang in my mind. Later that morning, I began seeing dozens of TikTok videos of women telling their stories. They too had awoke between 3am and 4am with similar feelings of calm or messages of hope. One woman described "buzzing for days" and I understood exactly what she meant.
As I did coming out of my marriage, I went through another emotional purging. Over the next few days, I cycled through anger, fear and depression. Each episode lasted anywhere from a few minutes to a couple of hours.
During this period, I felt compelled to stay away from TikTok. Instead, I felt called to engage with Christians on Threads. I've stopped questioning these things and now I go where I'm led. I was surprised to find myself engaging with Tr*** voters without the slightest trigger. I remained calm as I asked them hundreds of questions.
I felt no need to argue with them or try and change their minds. I described to a friend on Marco Polo later that I felt like it was dropping breadcrumbs, little morsels to make them think.
I asked them if they were sure they had their history right. Could there be other sources they hadn't considered? I asked them what they knew of narcissism. What did they think of certain evangelical teachings that mirrored this?
I asked them about things like love bombing and devaluation. Calling people sinners and telling them they're chosen by God is a contradiction, isn't it? When I told them I left the church, they told me I wasn't a real Christian in the first place. I ask if that was the same as a narcissistic discard.
Although I disagreed with every last one of them, I felt no anger or spite, no bitterness or even any need to change them. I felt only compassion for their place in time. I was right there five years ago. My awakening came as a result of healing myself. And this is where the church has led us astray.
Christianity has become a tool by which half of humanity has lost their freedom. None are free while they believe theirs is the only way. If they stray even a little, their God will fail to give them a place in His heaven, a place created only to worship Him. The more I turn back to look at my old faith, the more I see the "devil" is there and not out here where they've claimed for thousands of years. But that's another post for another day.
Here's What I Believe Now
Our power against the things we can’t see is in the things in us we can’t see.
What the church teaches about the unseen turns everything into external spirits, demons, angels, ghosts and specters. But those things are all within us. They’re our intuition, our psychic voice, our childhood wounds and generational trauma.
Christianity others the things within us that drive everything we are and do in the world. If something is wrong, we have something else to blame. We’re so detached from ourselves we’re helpless. We believe change comes from someone else somewhere else.
If there were an oppressive spiritual regime, this would be the simplest way to control humanity. It would behoove them to take our power in this way. To convince us that everything we fear is outside of us and can be ignored, leaves us helpless.
But if we have the power to fight demons and we’ve had it all along, this would upset this evil regime. It’s not calling on the name of Jesus that gives us power. It’s healing the wounds that give those demons a home inside us. It’s healing the generational trauma that gives them an invitation to stay and make a home in our children.
In the first Matrix movie, Neo is awakening and discovering a new world. He's going through some training to learn how to fight the agents in the matrix. At some point he's told that his power is not in fighting the external world. It's not the agent, the table, the door, the wall, he is fighting. His fight begins within his own mind. It's himself he's fighting.
Similarly, in The Karate Kid, Danielsan is learning lessons in self control. Mastery of the self is his true power. Opponents are no match because they focus on fighting and not mastering themselves.
The entire scope of the world as we know it could be changed by mastering ourselves, by healing from the inside. War and famine, hatred and malice, are solvable with some therapy and a commitment to self improvement. I realize how simplistic that sounds, but we've over complicated things with religion.
We've made such a spectacle of demons. But it feels too simple to say it's only an abandonment wound from childhood. We've given so much credence to sin. But it's silly to say we only need to practice self love to care for our bodies and minds. It can't be this simple to avoid harm to ourselves and others.
Self care and self love are not special enough. The world needs a savior whose image we can hang in our hallways and church pews. It's too much to think we have the power to change the world within our own minds, hearts, and nervous systems. If we have the power and the world is still coming to and end, what does that say about us as? Easier to put it on a god.
Convenient. A cop out, as my mother used to say. But she'd be right to say it here. It's time we take responsibility and do the work to uncover our demons, our shadows. Bring them to the light and heal them. Our power isn't in historic idols and religious texts. Our power is in us and our ability to change the world from the inside.
What I’ve been listening to
New podcast: Mending Moments
If you missed it yesterday, I published a second podcast, an offshoot of this one. This is shorter moments, like TikTok, but audio. Listen while driving without having to watch a video! If you’re subscribed here, you’re already subscribed to this new section. You can unsubscribe anytime if you like. And if you want to keep the podcast but don’t care for the emails, see if you can set up a filter in your email inbox to filter those emails out. Then go to Spotify or iTunes directly for the audio.
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