The Discipline of Staying With Yourself

The High Cost of Keeping the Peace

We’ve been taught that spiritual wellness looks like a clean slate and a calm mind. But true spiritual health isn't the absence of noise; it’s the refusal to lie to yourself about what the noise is telling you.

The Luxury of Denial

There is a specific kind of exhaustion that comes from pretending a "fine" life is a "full" life. You spend your days smoothing over the cracks in the floorboards, hoping no one notices that the foundation is shifting.

"Spiritual bankruptcy doesn't happen in a landslide. It happens in the quiet moments where you choose a comfortable lie over an inconvenient truth."

The Lonely Road to Freedom

The part they don't tell you about choosing your soul over your comfort is the silence that follows. I am walking a road that feels increasingly narrow. I have lost relationships I thought were permanent. I have watched seats at my table go empty because I stopped providing the "comfort" everyone else was used to.

It is a staggering price to pay. But I’ve realized that freedom doesn't always look like a celebration; sometimes, it’s just the ability to breathe in a room alone without feeling like you had to betray yourself to stay there.

How I Anchor Myself in the Quiet

When the solitude feels less like "freedom" and more like "loneliness," I practice the art of staying put:

• The Exit from the Cycle of Explanation: I used to spend every other week defending my heart or accidentally offending someone just by being honest. I hate confrontation, and the constant need to explain myself was a slow leak in my spirit. Now, the silence isn't empty—it’s peaceful.

• Practicing the Art of Letting Go: Following Dr. David Hawkins’ teachings, I’ve learned to sit with the emotion instead of running from it. I don’t suppress the loneliness; I let it burn through.

• Shifting to the Observer: I remind myself that I am not the one "suffering" through this; I am the Spirit observing it. When I step back into the seat of the Observer, the loneliness loses its teeth.

• Connecting to the Earth: I get back into my body. I touch the ground, I look at the life around me, and I count the reasons I have to be grateful. The "good side" of walking away is that there are no more fake people at my table. My space is finally clean.

The Promise of the Village

Please understand: I am not saying life is meant to be a solitary sentence. I am not suggesting you cut the world off just to prove you can.

What I am saying is that when you set yourself free—when you truly learn to love the woman you are in the dark—you stop shrinking to fit into rooms where you were never meant to stand. You stop compromising your light just to keep others from squinting.

Learning to be alone is the training ground. It keeps you strong enough and your light bright enough so that the right people—your actual village—can finally find you. You have to be visible to be found. And you can’t be visible if you’re hiding behind a version of yourself that doesn't exist.

Let’s Talk in the Quiet:

I want to know where you are in your own journey of "becoming":

1.    What is one 'comfortable' thing you are currently holding onto that feels like it’s starting to rot?

2.    How do you handle the silence when you finally stop explaining yourself to people who aren't committed to understanding you?

Drop a "🕯️" in the comments if you’re currently walking the lonely road. You aren’t as alone as you feel.

There’s a certain kind of clarity that changes everything… but doesn’t tell you what to do next. It just makes it impossible to keep pretending you don’t see it.

If you’re in that space right now—where something has shifted and you can’t quite find your footing again—this is exactly the work I’m stepping into more deeply this month.

I’ll be opening a few reading spots soon. If you want to be notified when they go live, you can join my email list here → Join the list

Until then… just stay with what you’re noticing.