The "Spiritual Onion"
Updated: Jan 31, 2020
The full moon is a wonderful time for release. If you didn’t get a chance to partake in any full moon releasing rituals, don’t fret for this energy lasts for 2 days on each end of the full moon. This most recent full moon was one of the more challenging full moons I have had to face thus far on my journey. Full moons impact many people in different ways ranging from extreme anxiety to insomnia. This full moon I was forced to look at parts of myself that I didn’t realize were there. I was staring shadow aspects of myself straight in the face without a clue as to how in Gods name I was going to work through them. I found the last few weeks to be just as interesting as they were difficult. The parts of myself that seem to challenge me were parts that I have kept hidden WAAAAY deep below the surface, and as I felt myself hitting a very hard figurative wall, I said, “wow isn’t this interesting, now I am getting to the good stuff”.
Shrek said it best himself when he said he was like an onion. Human beings are just that, we are spiritual onions, and as one could get extremely annoyed with how much work it can be to be human, but its pretty amazing how powerful we can be. We come to earth with so much karma and damage, and we add on more of that in our current life, and then as adults we look back and try to fix it all. Take a moment to reflect back on all the stuff you have been through so far. At the time a lot of issues in your life might have seemed like your world was crashing down around you, and here you are today on the other side. I can say from my experience that there was a time when I thought things would never get better and sure enough with time and work I am a much better and stronger person because of it all. This is so important for us all to remember, no matter how bad things seem to be, we have the option each and every time to take challenges as a growing and recovery opportunity. I encourage everyone to acknowledge the hardships, pain or even trauma they are going through, but I ask that they resist the urge to think that this is all that there is, because its not. It’s another opportunity for growth, another layer of the onion to peel.
The idea of the spiritual onion fits so well with how I understand all of the soul work that we do. You may not even be aware of your soul work, but you are doing it without even trying. For example, when we go through hard times in our life we generally reach a point of no return, at this point we often say “no! Never again” it sometimes takes us to an unbelievably painful place first, but we have to learn this lesson, so we take the lesson and go. My yoga teacher always says “you can skip down your path, or you can be dragged by a horse”, I think we all have been dragged once or twice but we still end up at down the path we were headed! Even if you haven’t acted upon what you have come to realize, your soul is still growing - acknowledging your growth it is the first step.
Back to the onion – in the beginning of your spiritual awakening you seem to go through phases, allow me to simplify this greatly. The initial stage is a bit of shock and disbelief that there are many things we cannot see happening around us, there is also a lot of excitement knowing you’re not alone! Its like being in a new relationship, you are testing the waters, getting to know the beings around you, trying to understand what is out there, and you may try your hand at a few ‘spiritual things’. The next stage is when the work comes. Things start to come up and you know you cant treat them like you did once before, you know better now – its time to step up. The third stage is when you seem to go through a massive amount of stuff that has been affecting your life, and chances are you knew this was affecting you for a long time. Its the stuff you kind of knew was there, but you need help with understanding it or healing it. You’re really working on finding a practice or modality that works for you, but your practice might fall apart a few times before you realize that you need it for you new lifestyle. The stage after that is something like a lull period, where you manage things that come up but a crisis hasn’t happened in a while. I imagine I am somewhere in stage 5, where the next massive layer is exposed to be worked on. I have no clue as to how many layers there are, and I am sure it is different for everyone, my guess is that a lot of us will alternate between phase 4 and 5 for a while. (Teal Swan (YouTube) talks about 3 phases of spirituality if you are interested.) Near the later phases, this work is a part of your life and deep seeded issues need resolving if you are going to continue to grow as a spiritual human. You are now fully peeling the onion, you cant stop now!
I realized this week that this new layer was a big thick onion-skin hiding underneath all of the stuff closer to the surface. The stuff I worked through previously was actually masking this layer so I didn’t know it was there. As hard as this is to work through it is so amazing to me that I had no idea it was such a prevalent force of my life. Without all of the other stuff closer to the surface I had no other choice but to face it for the first time. As I looked deeper I realized this wasn’t the first time I had seen it, I have had this issue my whole life and I consciously filed it away. I thought this is was pretty awesome to figure out. I can now put myself back in time when these issues were present and I ignored them and stuffed them away because they were unpleasant. They still are not pleasant, but I promised myself I would feel it all, and I have to feel this extreme discomfort. Its all part of the process, you have to feel the emotions before you can release them. Then you can do the work to break your patterns and belief systems. I am still showing up to do the work because like all the rest, this is another layer of onion that’s got to go!
All of the work that we do is like peeling the layers of the onion, some are thicker than others and more bitter. Some peel away easily and others require a bit more work, but the more work we do, we get closer and closer to being back in our divine state. In our divine state we are as perfectly who we are meant to be, but we are still mistake making humans and we wont be perfect by human definition. The closer we get to the center of the onion we will understand ourselves so well that life is blissful, people don’t get under our skin as easy, we don’t stress, and we appreciate life completely. We do work that makes us joyful and we cut things out of our lives that are bad for us. In this state we want to be healthy and eat well, we enjoy meditation and exercise because our souls loves it. This is the goal, we may never reach the core of the onion but the closer we get the better life becomes, and the more you can surprise yourself with how much is hiding and how much you can overcome. I challenge you, start peeling, start at the surface.
Share your stories of growth! I want to hear from you!!
Peace, light and love to all!
Xoxo Kate
