"I remember talking on the phone with a friend who teaches Fung Shui and is involved in several healing modalities involving energy. We’ve both been studying and practicing spiritual principles for longer than they’ve been in vogue. In my case, I’ve been studying and practicing them for more than 30 years. During our conversation, my friend reminded me “enlightenment isn’t for sissies.” Amen! I loved that phrase because it summed up what I'd experienced.

When I first learned about spiritual principles, I was an elementary school teacher in Laurel Canyon, California. As part of my fifth grade class’s preparation for creative writing assignments, I lead them through guided imagery meditations. This was quite radical at the time but it sparked a lot of creativity and inner calmness.

I read everything I could get my hands on, studied The Course in Miracles (TCM), and participated in small group discussions about TCM in Marianne Williamson’s apartment in West Hollywood. I thought I had found the Holy Grail for happiness. Little did I know that I just found the tip of the iceberg.

The more I learned, the more there was to learn. For the first decade of my studies, I used spirituality as a way to avoid feelings. When I was afraid, anxious or angry, I took a few deep breaths and “focused on the positive.” This worked for awhile but soon I could no longer hide from my feelings behind a thick wall of affirmations, meditations, visualizations or anything else for that matter much as an alcoholic hides behind booze and a drug user hides behind the drug of the day. I could run but I couldn’t hide. Wherever I went and whatever I did, my mind, body and spirit came with me.

As time went by, I learned that feelings are the core of living a spiritual life; feelings couldn’t be denied in favor of spirituality. Both were essential. Meditations and affirmations were useful because they helped me to quiet my mind so I could feel all the emotions that I stuffed into my body.

The more I explored my feelings and my unconscious beliefs, the better spiritual principles worked for me. For example, the “Law of Attraction” says whatever you focus your attention on is magnetically drawn to you. I wondered why, when I focused on manifesting money, large amounts of money didn’t flow into my life.

If the “Law of Attraction” was like the “Law of Gravity”, it should always work. What I found out is that it does as long as I truly believe in the principle and rid myself of doubt and unconscious beliefs. I can’t keep pulling a carrot out of the ground and expect it to grow to maturity. Deep in the recesses of my mind, I had the belief that you have to work hard to make money and that belief was stronger than the one that says I can manifest whatever I want just by having a clear intention.

I soon experienced the challenge of having to look at all my feelings and beliefs, determine if they were mine or came from somebody else (i.e., parent, teacher, religious leader, etc.) and then have the courage to try to do things differently. Yikes! This was and continues to be challenging.

Fast forward to the present. I am still uncovering and exploring more and more buried feelings and unconscious beliefs. Each discovery triggers many emotions and gives me the choice of “facing the fear and doing it anyway” or staying stuck. So far, my choices have been to move toward the light and the truth that’s in my heart. In the process, I often am anxious, scared, and hopeful, all at the same time. With each step forward, I have a deeper understanding of the spiritual beliefs that I started studying 30 years ago.

I sense that the more I explore my own inner world, the more my outer world will change for the better and the more I will truly feel the truth of spiritual concepts. I will move from knowing and being able to recite the principles to feeling and living them. This process isn’t for sissies and it never ends.