Finding God in the Mundane

I had intentions of continuing to write this blog weekly as I navigated the first year of my Pacifica PhD program. That sentiment was evidence of my Virgo Rising astrology, the part of me that resides at the helm of my psyche’s ship. In other words, it is my perfectionist self that never rests and works at a breakneck pace.

In truth, I had to come to terms with the all-encompassing experience of graduate school and also trying to juggle the rest of my life. The relentlessness of my inner perfectionistic Virgo has the capacity to drive me into the ground before I realize that I am far beyond the boundary of equanimity and peace. So, here I am, emerging from my dizzying spin into the ground, collecting the pieces of what was lost in the last six months, and working to find the center—my center—once again.

The near-death of my creative heart and soul has been one of the many costs of letting my Virgo steer the ship. In its quest to keep things on task, I lost touch with my sense of awe and wonder. So much so, that the only times I have glimpsed it in recent months is in the two and a half hour pause that I have in an airplane above the chaos of the world as I fly back and forth to the Pacifica campus.

Above the clouds, the noise subsides, and I am left aching for the hopeful connection with something bigger than myself. This something bigger than myself typically steers me back towards soul. Towards writing. Towards my astrological Piscean Sun eyes that see this world as something magical to be lived in mess and wonder, as opposed to an equation to master. Even those of us who work with human psychology for a living have the capacity to get lost in our own old patterns of flawed existence.

As I find my way back to myself, I have wondered what I could write about. Like all other facets of my life, my adoptee journey has been on pause. I could probably write a self-help blog, but it would lack heart (typically, those types of blogs bore me before making me feel guilty). I am left, then, with the idea that I should always write what I know. What I know right now is a quest to regain a sense of meaning and direction in a world that can be exhaustingly linear and contrived.

When I left the Catholic Church, it was because the well ran dry, so to speak. The idea of an omnipotent man in the sky, or even a personal relationship with an infallible man named Jesus, never truly felt like a spiritual home for me. Whatever meaning making I had found in the church slowly drained from my spiritual veins and the dogma suffocated me out into the unknown. I knew I believed in something, but instead of showing up once a week to have it (literally) served to me, I had to seek it.

I have to seek it.

This is something that I still, occasionally and willfully, come to blows with. Perhaps it is the small, orphaned girl within me. The waiting for some great I Am to come along, scoop me up, sit me down beneath the night sky, and draw a map to the meaning of life and my purpose here on the planet. In essence, to mainline meaning into my veins so that everything makes sense. My Piscean heart knows this is beyond the bounds of possibility, and that it removes all autonomy from this journey I am on. Damn, would it be nice, though.

I am in a season of so many unknowns, all of which light a fire under my Virgo self, which seeks only to know. What I am remembering in this season is that there is far more unknown than known, and everything is as it should be. At times I envy those who have a spiritual home to lean on while facing the unknowns. People have asked me where I find “god” now that I am not Catholic. I hesitate to call anything “god” because of the connotations, but even this is something that I believe needs to be reclaimed from our patriarchal world. Yet, I have recently realized that when I say “meaning,” I mean “god.” For example, “where is the depth and meaning in this grad school program?” is actually “where is god in this grad school program?”

It may sound extreme, and I would imagine some of my dear classmates would chuckle and pat me on the back because not everyone is on this tireless quest to seek the meaning—or god—in the mundane. For whatever reason, this is how I am built, and I am learning that this is also how most creative types are built. What I have discovered in this search is that sometimes my Virgo self decides to run my quest for meaning and does it so efficiently and so intensely, that I strain my eyes so hard I miss the meaning in the mundane.

I end up seeking in all the wrong ways as I try to control and harness the future. I caught a glimpse above the clouds in those airplanes and wanted to write a poem about it, but I didn’t. I wanted more clarity and more meaning mainlined into me, but I missed it.

I am currently enrolled in a class on Hindu traditions where I have been told that god is infused into everything. Every person, every breath, every moment. The divine is written into all of it. My mind still struggles to understand that, and yet there is relief within my heart that perhaps I can simply live the meaning. Live the unknowns into existence. Meaning is that whisper that speaks to my soul and hopes I will answer. It is in the answer where the magic happens, and for that I must be willing.