For me it wasn't a single event (though there was one event that pushed things along). I've always been this way, even as a kid. I always wondered what the point of life was; I always wondered why so many people stayed miserable rather than follow their dreams; I always wondered why so many people believed that there was something morally wrong with choosing one's own happiness. And I didn't get religion--I couldn't understand how people could believe certain dogmas or take certain things totally on faith--but at the same time I knew there had to be something bigger.
When I was a young adult, and later at times when things got tough, I tended to fall into a "this is all there is, and there is no significance" mindset. During the most economically trying period of my life I even got into Objectivism. But I kept having too many things happen in my life that couldn't be explained rationally--hearing voices, intuitively knowing what was going on with other people before they ever said anything, receiving strange images I didn't understand but knew I was supposed to paint, picking up on the "vibe" of a room, building, or object.
So for me it's been a lifelong process of muddling along, trying different things, and occasionally going through long periods of spiritual "hibernation," where I didn't actively engage in any spiritual practice or study at all.
The one major spiritual event I experienced, back in late 2000 (I received a "visit" from a friend who had died a couple of days before) accelerated my progress by completely blowing away a lot of my nagging questions about life beyond death. That experience profoundly changed my entire worldview, and obliterated my fear of death, and I'm still receiving insights and learning from that experience to this day. (Just thinking about how much my friend loved me, to give me that gift, still makes me cry.) But overall, things have really begun clicking into place for me in the last two years. I've gone back and read spiritual books I initially read 10-20 years ago, and they are like completely different books; all the stuff that was boring or confusing or seemed too woo-woo back then now makes perfect sense. I'm finally in a position to fully understand what is being said and how it actually works in my life.
|