Things I used to know

I used to know…

how to talk to people about faith.

what to say when people asked me what I believed.

what to say when people asked me if I still believed in God or Jesus.

how to put words together to make sense of the ponderings in my mind and heart.

what this blog was for.

what I wanted to do with my life.

I used to know all these things I thought it was important to know.

Now, I feel like all I know is that I know nothing, and somehow that feels important although it doesn’t leave me with very much to say to anyone else.

I have nothing to pass on right now. I used to believe I had insight (?), wisdom (?), knowledge (?), encouragement, something that was of value to others; something I could share that might be helpful to someone else. Oh the arrogance!

I thought I knew.

A few weeks ago, I had what I guess you might call a mystical experience. I really wanted to try to write down some of the thoughts and insights that had been floating around in my head. They had finally started to coalesce into something more tangible and understandable. I was excited. I wanted to put them into words. I sat down, pen and journal in hand, ready to write.

My mind went completely blank. All of the thoughts that had, seconds before, been accessible and solid, dissolved into nothingness. I felt incapable of thinking. Then, out of the emptiness, slowly fading into consciousness like white words on a dark movie screen, the word “Once” appeared in my brain. I wrote it down, eager for more. But nothing came. I sat for two minutes. Then, the letter “I” appeared out of the void. I jotted it down, beginning to get the feeling that this was going to be a painful experience. I waited. A few minutes later, “finally” emerged onto the screen of my mind. Suffice it to say, it took me about 15 minutes to write one sentence. I actually laughed out loud at the absurdity of it after I got over the initial frustration.

My mind was totally devoid of all thought. Words were being given to me, dripping into awareness one by one.

I used to know how to write. Now it seems that all of my unknowing has caught up to me ultimately unknowing myself.

When I first lost my writing, it hurt so badly I reached out to a spiritual director. I could handle letting go of all my beliefs, my spiritual identity, my belief in God, but losing my writing?!?! No. I had not put that on the table. Whatever this was, my writing was not up for grabs. So I thought.

In lieu of writing, I started talking – a lot. To anyone who would listen. I rambled incessantly to friends and recorded hour long videos of myself going on and on about spiritual stuff. I recorded audio files on a phone app while I drove back and forth from errands. I couldn’t put anything down on paper, yet I couldn’t keep my mouth shut. The words flowed out of me like someone had turned a faucet on, but as soon as I sat in front of the computer or my journal, all words would disappear, instantly vanishing from my mind.

The craziest thing is that now, I’m not even sure how much I care. I’m no longer attached to my writing, it doesn’t define me anymore.

I wanted to make note of this because, when you’re going through a dark night of the soul, or experiencing a major spiritual shift, there’s not a lot of talk about this part. Some people refer to it as the dark night of the senses. A period where all your usual ways of experiencing God/faith/prayer/happiness/fulfillment/satisfaction, etc. seem inaccessible to you. I also stopped listening to music. My need for silence was uncomfortable but deep.

So, if you’re out there right now, feeling like you don’t enjoy the things you used to, or that you don’t know how to do the things you used to do… or you’ve stopped being able to gain emotional fulfillment from things that used to bring you so much joy… YOU ARE NOT ALONE. This is part of the whole unknowing process, part of the dissociating yourself from things that have identified you. For me, spiritual beliefs were just the beginning. Too many people think that “losing your religion” is the goal. But, it’s not. It doesn’t have to be. Unknowing and losing yourself (or what you think of as “yourself”) is the deeper part of the experience.

So, now that I’ve finally become ok with losing my writing, I’ve felt myself also losing interest – in some ways – with all the spiritual stuff. I still talk about it with a couple of select people, but mostly, it feels boring to me. I can’t even believe I’m saying that. I’ve been immersed in spiritual growth and ideas for decades, and these last two years have been so intensely filled with it all that I honestly believed my future would be something like spiritual direction or teaching. And, who knows, maybe it will be, but at this moment, there is no life in it for me.

I’m beginning to see a pattern here of letting go of all the things, especially the intensely personal things, I thought defined me and made me who I am. Ask any of my closer friends and they would tell you I’m a writer, a deep thinker, a seeker… and I clung to those identities as everything. If I knew nothing else, I knew those things to be true about myself.

And now?

I used to know myself as a writer.

I used to know myself as a deep thinker.

I used to know myself as a seeker.

Now, there’s none of it left.

And, yet, I feel more alive and more free everyday.

I feel more myself.

Somehow, the more knowing I let go of, the more of me I become.