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“You are not a drop in the ocean. You are the entire ocean in a drop.” —Rumi
The last days of the year felt like the right time to let go. I stood in my backyard with twenty-five years of journals—thick notebooks filled with prayers, confessions, and late-night spirals—ready to release them to the flames.
I wasn’t being dramatic. I was being deliberate. I stopped daily journaling several years ago.
For years, I’d used these journals as a kind of inner courtroom, constantly building a case against myself or others. Every page held evidence of failures, proof of my profoundly advanced ability to gaslight myself. I could shrink or morph into whatever was requested for another person’s comfort.
Small flowered booklets documenting all the ways I couldn’t get “it” right.
I thought I was processing. I was actually prosecuting.
But something strange happened as I flipped through them one last time. The first journal opened with the fervent prayers of a fifteen-year-old devout Christian girl, begging God to show her the way. The last one closed with a forty-year-old woman asking her spirit guides for direction. Different words. Different cosmic addresses. Same desperate energy.
I was always asking someone else—something else—to save me.
Across decades, births, moves, career changes and multiple spiritual identities, one theme remained constant: I wrote like I was trapped in a universe I had no control over. My words painted me as a passenger in my own life, watching myself make choices I didn’t understand, helpless against forces I couldn’t name.
Please help me stop doing this.
Why does this keep happening to me?
I don’t know why I can’t change.
When will the perfect thing I really need be delivered to me?
Every entry reinforced the same story: something outside of me was pulling the strings. Whether I called it God, the Universe, my Higher Self, energy, or my spirit guides, I related to it the same way—as a powerless child begging a parent for scraps of control over my own existence.
I didn’t realize I was doing this. That’s the insidious thing about spiritual bypassing disguised as devotion. It feels holy. It feels humble. It feels like surrender.
But there’s a difference between surrender and abdication.
When Spirituality Becomes Disempowerment
Last year, I enrolled in a shamanic training program. Of all the trainings I’d ever taken on, it was by far my favorite. My mentor noticed something in our very first session that I’d been blind to for decades. She listened to me describe my spiritual practice—my daily prayers, my readings, my checking for signs—and said simply: “You’re relating to the spiritual realm like you have no agency.”
I bristled. Wasn’t that the point? Wasn’t I supposed to make requests to the sky? That’s a pretty central theme across the vast spectrum of ways I have related to a force beyond myself.
“Prayer isn’t the same as powerlessness,” she said. “You’re allowed to ask for what you want. You’re allowed to make choices. You’re called to be a leader and director in your own life, even if you believe in something greater than yourself.”
Over the following months, I returned to this theme again and again. I paused every time I slipped into that familiar language of victimhood—if it’s meant to be, it will be; I’m just waiting for confirmation; the Universe will show me when it’s time to go or to stay.
“You’re the one living your life,” Chris reminded me. “Not the Universe. Not your guides. You.”
Looking back at those journals with new eyes, I could see how this core disempowerment had shaped everything. Every relationship I’d stayed in too long because “maybe this is my lesson.” Every opportunity I’d missed because I was “waiting for divine timing.” Every dream I’d deferred because I didn’t receive the easy and clear way to begin.
I had outsourced my decision-making to the cosmos. And the cosmos, in its infinite wisdom, had apparently decided I should spend years stuck in patterns that didn’t serve me, asking the same questions, making the same mistakes, waiting for permission to live differently.
The truth is simpler and scarier: I was waiting for permission from myself.
When You Stop Asking and Start Choosing
The shift didn’t happen overnight. It started with small, uncomfortable acts of agency.
Instead of asking my cards whether I should apply for a new opportunity, I asked myself what I actually wanted. Instead of praying for clarity about a difficult relationship, I got honest about what I already knew about my needs. Instead of waiting for a sign that it was time to change, I changed.
At first, all my old stuff came up. Who was I to decide? Who was I to want specific things? Who was I to act without cosmic approval?
But slowly, I began to understand: spirituality doesn’t require me to be small. Faith doesn’t mean abandoning my own will. Believing in something greater than myself doesn’t mean I have to believe I’m not important.
I could honor the mystery and still make choices. I could trust in divine timing and still take action. I could surrender control over outcomes while claiming full responsibility for my decisions.
So I burned the journals.
I didn’t read every page. I didn’t need to relive every crisis or cringe at every desperate plea. I already knew what they said. I’d been saying it for decades: Save me. Fix me. Tell me what to do. Bring me what I need.
As I watched the pages curl, I thought about what I wanted to write in my real life during the year ahead. Not prayers to external forces. Not requests for rescue. Not evidence for the prosecution.
Just truth. My truth. The messy, imperfect, often too much but still powerful truth of a woman who finally understands that she’s allowed to choose her own life—even while honoring forces beyond her understanding.
I’m still spiritual. I still believe in magic, in mystery, in things beyond my comprehension. But I no longer relate to the sacred from a place of powerlessness. I pray differently now—not as a beggar, but as a partner. I ask for support, not salvation. I look for signs, but I don’t wait for them to give me permission to live.
Because here’s what I’ve learned: the Universe doesn’t want my obedience. It wants my participation.
And I’m finally ready to show up.
About Christina Lane
Christina Lane is a writer and somatic coach. You can take her new archetypes quiz, which will guide you to your primary and non-dominant archetypes and their best matches here: www.christinalanecoaching.com/email. We can learn so much more about how our personality blends best with the personality of others through lenses like archetype work!
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