How an Ancient Spiritual Roadmap Helped Me Discover New Lands
I lived a lie for 20 years and didn’t even know it. My life looked great on the outside but never felt quite right, even though I did everything I could to convince myself it was the life I was supposed to be living.
The problem was I got it wrong. I was pretending to be someone I wasn’t supposed to be and I didn’t even realize it was happening.
For most of my adult life I was a Rabbi. On the surface you’d think this deep, spiritual life would provide fulfillment and meaning. It did… but something was off.
I would give sermons, talk to congregants, and provide guidance, but it always felt like there was some disconnect — as if I was having these interactions through a veiled barrier, like a glass window I couldn’t see.
I’ll spare you all the challenges, suffering, and anxiety I went through to get where I am today, but eventually I stumbled in the darkness long enough to find an ancient roadmap that led me to the promised land” (see what I did there?).
I didn’t end up in a land of milk and honey… No, as Proust said, “The journey of discovery consists not in seeking new lands, but having new eyes.”
The challenging thing is that to discover these new lands, you have to lose sight of the shore for a while. The process I went through helped me to find myself. My True Self.
As a wise 9th-century Zen master said, “To study the way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to open to something greater than “self.”
Using the 9 Lives path, I pulled the veil back and saw how fears and desires, programming and conditioning, even the experiences of my ancestors — stuff like generational trauma — largely dictated how I moved through the world and shaped what showed up in my life.
By removing these barriers I began to experience something greater than the island I had marooned myself on for so many years.
It was kind of like Plato’s Allegory of the Cave.
I had been living in a dark cave for so long that it became the only reality I knew. I thought it was bright and comfortable. But then I went outside, felt the sun on my skin, heard the birds singing, and felt an aliveness that filled my cup.
It’s not all sunshine and rainbows, but today I have a fullness of life I didn’t realize was possible… in all it’s beauty and messiness, happiness and sadness, all of it.
In the end I walked away from being a Rabbi so I could enter into the life I was meant to live. And before you stop reading, let me say that you don’t have to take as extreme a step as I did to create new possibilities in your life.
The process I went through was simple, but not easy. First, I dove into the enneagram to learn more about myself. It uncovered how I react based on programming rather than respond skillfully to situations.
Some call it the shadow and light sides of ourselves.
With this understanding, I could adjust the behaviors that were keeping me stuck. Once I saw my true self I was able to identify my unique Soul Contract. Next, I reintegrated spirit and sought guidance from something greater than myself to fulfill it.
Going through this process helped me break free from the invisible prison we all trap ourselves in. It’s a key that can unlock a bigger, brighter, beautiful new world filled with possibilities.
Today, I have deeper connections in personal relationships, more success at work, and a level of meaning and purpose that’s hard to describe with words. You can have that too. It’s not for everyone, but I hope you’ll join me.
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