On Conduits
And just like there are spiritual blockages in life, there are also spiritual conduits. Universal conduits are those people, places, things, or moments that alert us to our interconnectedness in life. They are those strange moments of synchronicity where everything just lines up, those lovely moments that can’t possibly be just a coincidence.
They are the workplace that calls us into a meeting to help us, rather than send us packing. They are the mentors who watch with patience as we fail, and then get back up to try again. They are the people that bring us calm, be they family, friends, or lovers.
It is particularly hard to discern when things are Good for us when we have been traumatized in some way. Whether or not a stressful incident becomes traumatizing is often all about how helpless a person feels in the moment (or moments) of high stress, which is why childhood stress can be particularly traumatizing. Certain kinds of stress take away our sense of agency, which wipes away the brain and body’s ability to tell itself I am going to get out of this and I am going to be okay. We become passive and dependent in our search for healing, rather than active and independent.
For many of us, even if the trauma is long gone, we get stuck in an auto-response that we are barely even aware of and struggle to turn off. The more frequently we operate in a state of stress, the less self-aware we are able to be. Our nerves are shot, our bodies seem to be set to vibrate, and it is almost impossible to discern what we want in the moment (for more info on the body’s response to trauma, read Bessel Van der Kolk’s The Body Keeps the Score or watch one of his lectures on the topic here).
This, in my view, is why prayer and meditation are so useful in healing and wellness. Prayer, if we choose to commit to such a daring act, teaches us about ourselves - our hopes, dreams, values, and priorities - and meditation helps us listen to the response, both internal and external. We start paying attention to our experience differently. With practice, we can slow down a little bit and watch for answered prayers. We can slow down a little bit and start to discern what we actually want and need in any given moment.
As I have said before, and I will continue to say, I’m not sure that it really matters if there actually is a God or not. What is most important is our willingness to consider that there may be something Good out there working in our favor when we are willing to focus on it, participate in it, and ultimately believe in it. There are too many people out there cut off from belief in Good (or God, call it whatever you need to) itself, in the simplest terms. So many of us have faith in nothing, except for maybe that everything is awful. I just don’t believe that is true anymore, but it took a lot of practice.
Meditation also helps us with connecting to ourselves and exploring our trauma response in a safe way. Through grounding ourselves in nowness, through breathing, observation, the 5-4-3-2-1 method, we can start to have a different relationship with stress and trauma, be here in the present moment, and pay attention to what we want, what we need, and when the universe is showing up for us in all it’s connectivity.
Call it Good, call it God, call it what you want, but it can be available to us all if we are willing to slow down, tune in, take deep breaths, say our prayers, and pay attention.