The Wayward Minds Collective

The Origin of “Finding Yourself”

“When we talk here of addiction we are not talking about specific psychological disorders, but of an entire human behavioral code that is so self-limiting it does not recognize its own addiction…”

Gene Keys, Richard Rudd, 190

It’s currently 1am on a Sunday, now Monday night. The white noise playing from my phone is a gentle murmur, and harmonizes quietly with my dog’s muffled snores. He hogs the majority of my floor futon, as he does every late night. It’s pitch black except for the blinding light shining from my laptop screen. 

I feel sick, my head pounding. I didn’t eat enough today, my body reminds me. 

“‘When someone seeks,’ said Siddhartha, ‘then it easily happens that his eyes see only the thing that he seeks, and he is able to find nothing, to take in nothing because he always thinks only about the thing he is seeking, because he has one goal, because he is obsessed with his goal. Seeking means having a goal. But finding means being free, being open, and having no goal.”

Siddhartha, Herman Heese

This blog was created to inspire others with experiences that I’ve had, and lessons that I’ve learned over years of intense psychospiritual study. It’s a spiritual journey, yes, but at its core it is an exploration of the avatar who lives the life that I lead.

Not just as a human, but the role her consciousness plays as the puzzle piece that fits into the rest of the cosmos. 

Theres’s such a stigma about what it means to “find yourself.” Society has given us up until a certain age of when it is acceptable to ask these questions of yourself. It’s primarily expected of young children, but even then the scope is within superficial parameters: finding the people that you like, the foods that you don’t, and what you want to be when you grow up. 

Once you’ve hit a certain age, you’re expected to drop all of these questions, or at the very least, suppress them. You have other, more pressing, responsibilities that require more of your attention.

You’re grown now, they tell you.

It’s become uncomfortable for you to ask these questions of others. There’s an unsaid rule that if you think about them too much, you’ll be considered mentally ill or unstable… depressed, even. 

It’s pretty earth shattering moment when you go to your parents and ask them for advice– and they shrug a very indifferent “I don’t know.”

The illusion of anyone having their lives all figured out is shattered in this moment, and any semblance of security and certainty falls away into nothingness. It’s not their fault, of course. That is the way of being alive, and some people never recover from this harsh reality check– that there is no certainty in anything. 

I first made this discovery in my early twenties. It was as if I had fallen into a deep pit, and could not find the bottom. There was never any footing, or any way to stop myself from sinking deeper into this pit dark pit I had discovered. Doubt and uncertainty spread within me like a virus that I could not cure. 

I didn’t know what to believe in or trust anymore. 

Life felt meaningless. People are born. They go to school. They go to work. They get married. They have kids. They get old. They die. It all seemed like a trivial charade to distract ourselves from the inevitability of time itself. 

This couldn’t be all that is.

The Western Solution

This simple hope led me to spirituality. There was always a quiet voice within me that I was scared to listen to that led me into these dark caverns within myself. Time and time again, whenever I trusted in it, it would prove itself to be right. It goes by many names, and I will not exclude any form of rationale by referring to it as just one thing. It is your gut, your spirit, your higher self, your true self, etc. 

I started this journey because I believed myself to be a deeply broken person in need of deep healing and fixing in order to be happy and live my life the way I wanted to. 

Looking back on this rationale, it’s a very Western approach to working with the Self, and expresses a very limited understanding of psychospiritual liberation. We’re so used to buying products with the expectation of a result that is final. 

“I’m going to college to get a degree so that I can get a good job, get a good house, and live a good life.”

That is the typical American solution to existing. We are taught that everything can be fixed with hard work, due diligence, and money. 

“This is the solution to my problem.”

Meanwhile, we’re at a period in history where we have more mental health issues than ever before. The political climate is, dare I say, a minefield that very few can tolerate being in, and depression runs rampant at an all time high. And we address it with the same colonial, capitalist mindset of “fix, fix, fix”.

The issue is that we’ve been trying to slap material bandages on an ethereal wound. 

We have been so diligently trained to run this rat race of finding solutions. We never give ourselves the opportunity merely sit and contemplate what the real problems are. The solutions we come up with address the symptoms, not the causes. No one is surprised that a weed grows back after it is merely cut, instead of uprooted; and yet, we are endlessly surprised at our own unhappiness resprouting within our eternal gardens.

This is why we feel so empty when we return home from our jobs; after a late night of drinking with loved ones; why we try so desperately to deafen the chatter in our minds with the static of media. 

“Every cycle of addiction has natural gaps within it and human beings experience these gaps in awareness. They can occur at any time and they confront you directly with your own suffering. At such times you will generally feel a profound sense of emptiness that is deeply uncomfortable. Our general response to these gaps is to try to avoid them, either through numbing ourselves or distracting ourselves. …”

Richard Rudd, previously cited

The Root of Emptiness

I came into this journey thinking that finding answers about myself and who I was from a greater context would make me feel more whole. Surprisingly, it made me feel less whole than ever as I discovered the pit within myself that I had been running away from for years. 

My psychological tendencies and patterns that I hated was my way of distracting myself from this void that I felt within me. These were my “bought solutions” to fill that emptiness within that I tried so hard to ignore.

Somewhere along the way, I had convinced myself that I wasn’t normal, and that’s all I ever wanted to be. I was so certain this void wasn’t normal.

After years of studying, I discovered that this empty void is not unique to me, but a universal experience of being human. 

“The root of human suffering is wired into your DNA in the physical body…The primal wound is our perceived separation from the totality, and the astral body responds to this wound through desire. All desires are really rooted in a single desire– the desire to escape the suffering caused by the primal wound and return to the pure state of unity.”

Richard Rudd, previously cited

Every person feels this void within themselves. It lies in the center of the chest, residing in the solar plexus. It is an aching that we can never fil, no matter how desperately we try to throw material things, relationships, and experiences into it. Some people are able to ignore it within themselves because of a profound disconnection from their internal reality. Those who are more empathic and spiritual may feel it more deeply. It is a dangerous hole for those who do not understand it, and often leads to various addictive vices and paths of self-destruction. 

“If you could look deeply enough into this desire without acting on it, it would actually burn itself out, which is the underlying purpose of meditation.”

Richard Rudd, previously cited

I cannot begin to describe the many misadventures that I have been on in my own futile efforts to distract myself from this void, despite knowing that what I was doing wasn’t going to make any difference in how I felt. The euphoria of satisfaction from fulfilling the desire was so fleeting, and quickly replaced with a profound embarrassment in my actions.

 My spirit told me, again and again: “Doing this will not change how you feel”. The human aspect of me, the root of carnal and material desires, just refused to believe it to be true, despite it being true every time.

“This time, it will be different,” became the lying mantra that my human mind subconsciously repeated within the walls of myself.

What makes distractions so tempting is that they dismiss the pit for a short while. Material pleasure is powerful, and fleeting. Once it fades, nothing remains except a hollow regret. 

“When you know better, you do better.”

Maya Angelou

I got so angry for years with myself over this– doing things that I know I shouldn’t have done, situations that I should not have been in. I grew to hate myself for being so stupid and not learning from mistakes. It was almost as if I was holding myself hostage to the fleeting pleasantries of temporary joy. I would get embarrassed telling people that I was going on yet another date, or yet another bar. 

The phrase “if you know better, do better” kept haunting me, and made me feel as if I was a hamster on a wheel; a slave to my own habits with no willpower over my own actions. It was essentially a possession. 

The Compassionate Self

It dawned on me that I had to re-contextualize this saying within my mental space, to prevent myself from utilizing it as a weapon of self-loathing and hatred.

The more compassionate question to ask ourselves is, “What part of me is holding me back from doing better?”

The reason for this void within us, and especially in the Western hemisphere, we’ve practically disowned that which cannot be physically proven. The very nature of being human in the first place. 

The spirit, the mind, and the body are all interlocking gears that work within us simultaneously, side by side. They coexist, yet they are not the same. They exchange information among themselves, but there are aspects that get lost in the channel of communication. Just as a human can never explain how a car operates to a squirrel, the body can never explain to the mind how it makes the heart beat. 

This deep primordial void within us is based on the knowledge of the spirit that we have been disconnected from our source, from the origin of life, and the rest of the cosmos. This is a profound knowledge that we feel so deeply that it translates to the material bodies as a feeling of emptiness. The sensation of not being whole. We attempt to remedy this sensation within the physical and material aspects of ourselves, but it is an ethereal wound. 

It’s ironic how one of the first things that we learn as children is that the square block goes in the square hole, and yet we struggle with this very same concept within our spirit bodies. 

More and more people are drawn to spirituality than ever, and yet many still feel as listless as they did before. There is a widespread  misunderstanding of the impulse of what drew them in the first place. It is Spirit responding to the deep resonance and calling of returning to that from which it came. It’s not about finding the best spells to make someone fall in love, or manifesting money. 

It was always about returning to our organic state of the point of creation, before it was created. The potential of being. The unmanifest.

 The void, is not a hole at all. It is a portal to yourself. Your most intimate, innermost workings that are obscured with fear of what you will find. The most powerful act that you can do with it is sit with it in silence. Notice the callings that you have to fill it with things. Pacify them with acknowledgement, and not action. Resist your humanly urges to “hurry up and do something”. Ask yourself questions. Find the stillness within the inner turmoil of your emotions, and listen to what speaks to you. 

I wish someone had told me about this void sooner, but all knowledge comes in due time, and not when you think you need it. Overcoming the ego of needing to know everything all at the same time is another part of the psycho spiritual journey of Self.

A Conversation with Spirit

“Your void is your etheric heart which calls you to reconnect with the divine, with the source of creation. Do not ignore this call, nor be afraid of it. It is not something to be ashamed of or hide from. It is your purpose in this life. 

You are not something that is broken, or in need of fixing. You are holy, and every experience that you have drives you to becoming the being that is able to manifest the folds of reality within yourself and within others. Believe in your ability to create with the power of creation that you were given by being alive. 

Trust in the silence, noble one. Watch the waves and observe the screams within you. They are part of you. Let these waves be waves and not mountains and trees, for they were never meant to be anything more than what they are. 

Trust in this silence, and in the path that leads from your portal. 

Reconnect and restore by acknowledging that which is.”

We all have flaws and defects that we are ashamed of. Things we wish that we can change. There is something to be said about changing ourselves for the better, but when you do this immortal soul, do not make the mistake of identifying the symptom for the cause. 

In what forest does your tree lie?

When a tree is poisoned, no one expects it to be better after cutting off a branch. The soil must first be purified of the poison so that it is not taken into the roots, and spread to the rest of the tree.