I Never Set Out to Become Spiritual

What spirituality means to me

I never sought enlightenment either. The word still does not really speak to me. I was looking for meaning.

Sometimes, my own decisions surprise me. When I decided to work in the humanitarian field, I had this idea—an obsession, really—that I needed to go to the front lines, to the heart of conflict.

It is a rather curious idea to have, when you think about it. And yet, I did not hesitate. Going there felt so unquestionably right.

Looking for meaning

I began to understand why during psychotherapy. Later, through my explorations of altered states of consciousness, I delved much deeper into another dimension of that decision.

After confronting war and human violence, I found myself at the bottom of a well. As I searched for a way out, a friend told me about Vipassana meditation. I watched an introductory video featuring Goenkaji. Honestly, I understood almost nothing of what he was saying.

But I knew I had to go.

The ten-day meditation retreat was particularly difficult. It was a ruthless confrontation with myself.

And yet, by the end, I felt both emptied and renewed. My resentment and anger had subsided. Something had moved through my body and loosened some of the knots I had been carrying.

Not everything had been resolved. But I had found a direction—a path, and the beginning of meaning.

I also had a thread to follow: my intuition. I have never questioned the strongest of those intuitions.

Another decision that might have seemed reckless was leaving humanitarian work without knowing what I would do next. It echoed the other part of the intuition I had received in 2007, when I entered the humanitarian field: I somehow knew that I would do this work for ten years, and that afterwards I would move towards something connected to yoga.

So when the time came, I took the leap.

I did not think much about what I would do with it, where it might lead or whether I would succeed.

It was the right choice.

Not the easiest one, certainly, but the one that kept leading me towards a deeper sense of meaning: further into the higher dimensions of consciousness, into the invisible world, and into the living world that surrounds us, the world we neglect so profoundly.

This spiritual path did not take me away from life. It brought me back to it. I now feel that I have come full circle.

All these explorations have brought me back, quite precisely, to being here: in life, in the present moment, in presence with myself and with others.

Spirituality is not a succession of transcendent experiences. It is the process of integrating those experiences so that we can return to life, face it fully, and meet it with joy.

I am more present now. I am more able to see what is, with fewer filters. I am freer to accept life without giving up my ability to act on what is mine to change.

For me, spirituality is not about escaping the human condition. It is about returning fully to ourselves and to life on Earth.

Have you ever found what you needed in a place you would never have thought to explore?

Hi, I am Claire. I read the invisible, the unconscious and what seeks to emerge from what you are going through. You see, Life initiates us. We are simply looking in the wrong direction. If you feel you need support and want to explore what it can be for you, let's chat. You can book a free session here