In starting this blog, I hope to document a personal anecdote of parts of my own spiritual journey and the personal insights that have and continue to contribute to my greater healing and wholeness. With that said, I wanted to start off with a short reflection of the origins of my journey and where it has taken me.
You could say that my spiritual journey started as a 16 year old teenager at a revival when I became a Christian, the temporary escape it gave me from a dysfunctional home and the 22 year journey into integrating psychology with theology, the Christian contemplatives and eventually to the spiritual path that I find myself on today. While initially a savior from a difficult upbringing, the rigidity and dogma of my faith, to say the least, had become debilitating and outdated. My spirituality had outgrown my religion.
It was in this time, around 2013, I had started working in customer service for a new office just moved to Austin, TX. It was during this time that I found and latched onto the writings of Eckhart Tolle, among others, starting with his book A New Earth. I was instantly gripped and ironically encouraged at seeing for the first time just how of my own ego had created so much of the suffering I was experiencing in my life. I was inspired, to say the least, at the thought of finding greater ease and contentment through being more present or being more “in the moment”.
Years later and after reading numerous books on contemplative Christianity, spirituality, mindfulness, and personal growth, I went from working in customer service and delivering pizzas (upon first moving to CO) to becoming and working as a Certified Addiction Counselor in the state of Colorado, after moving there at the end of 2015. I would soon get into therapeutic books and begin to learn of psychotherapeutic modalities that utilize mindfulness. This would eventually lead to me going back to school to get a second Masters degree, this one in Mental Health counseling and to becoming licensed as an Addictions and Mental Health counselor.
Today, all of these life experiences contribute to who I am as a counselor, how I show up for my clients and how I continue to develop in my spiritual practice and in my personal life. My hope through this part of my blog is to encourage and inspire to others in their spiritual practice.