A Peek Into My Spirituality

... and an invitation to practice with me

Part of the beauty of Catholicism is that it offers so many entry points, styles of prayer, and tools for contemplation. Two millennia make for a rich religious tradition!

I’ve alluded to my earliest forays into spirituality back before I joined the Dominican Sisters. Since that initiation, my formation in religious life has been a crash course in spiritual and theological learnings. I’ve adopted many as my own, I’ve adapted some to become my own, I’ve outright rejected others, and some served me for a time, until they didn’t. I consider all of those learnings as building blocks on my faith journey.

To me, there is no single right way for seeking meaningful engagement with God and my own has evolved significantly from where I was in 2013 until now. That said, I’d like to share one component of my spiritual journey that has been consistent throughout. It enabled me to take that initial leap of faith that changed my life and it’s continued to support my growth. I truly believe it has the potential to transform.

In 2012 when I began learning about Jewish mystic tradition, it’s hard to exaggerate my level of ignorance about anything spiritual. My former teacher, who was a Christian, taught about the energies of the Sephirot and the annual Connections for receiving grace from God. I had only heard of Kabbalah in relation to Madonna. While I had zero context about what I was doing, I was desperate enough at the time (see Breaking Points) that I began to practice the meditations and prayers “religiously”.

I’ve continued to observe them ever since and, with each year, have deepened my understanding of the concepts and incorporated Catholic imagery and theology to tailor them. I wrote this piece a couple of years ago sharing how my prayer life has been influenced by those early learnings.

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Contextual Disclaimer

When it comes to God, I’m a Both/And believer. I trust that each world religion has something real and holy at its foundation. That said, the Sacredness that lies at the core has been interwoven with centuries of human interpretation and politics—much like my own Catholic tradition. If you are a member of an organized religion in the 21st Century, it is super challenging to distinguish the Truth of the Sacred from the bulls**t of the human.

Catholicism is my entry point and offers an endless depth and breath of the Sacred (and of bulls**t) to sift through. I ultimately find that mysticism—whether Jewish (Kabbalah), Christian (Meister Eckhart and the like), Buddhist (Zen) or Muslim (Sufism)—offers a throughline for those seeking a direct and personal experience of God.

I joke that the movies which, together, best represent my spirituality are Conclave and Everything, Everywhere, All at Once. So I continue to observe the Spring and Fall connections, aligned with the Jewish calendar, in much the same way as I learned to do back in the day. What I offer here is a taste of the Spring Connection—specifically the most significant point that is the Passover. If you’d like to try this, don’t concern yourself with learning the terminology. Rather, focus in on the familiar concepts and the emotions that resonate.

God Bless!

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The Spring/Freedom Connection (April 12th-14th)

The Tree of Life (TOL) and the Tree of Knowledge (TOK) of Good and Evil represent two distinct states of consciousness for experiencing life. The TOL is aligned with the laws of the Creator: freedom, life and divine creation. In contrast, the TOK is aligned with our human-created reality: dualism, suffering and limitation. Each person inherently has a powerful TOL consciousness blueprint within them that aligns with God’s will and is capable of providing all they need to thrive. However, over time it gets contaminated and buried by TOK concepts as we experience living in a profoundly broken world.

The Spring Connection is about severing the TOK entrapments so that our TOL consciousness can grow freely. Exodus offers a powerful metaphor for this process when God liberates the Israelites at Passover in Egypt. It begins their collective journey and transformation into the People of God. The Passion of Christ is another metaphor for this type: a harsh severing to allow for transformative new life.

How We Imprison Ourselves

The Tree Of Knowledge (TOK) consciousness gets in our faces, distracting us and generating doubts as to whether the Tree Of Life (TOL) can really provide all we need. When we choose to engage with the TOK by our own free will, it always involves some form of sacrifice. The act of choosing the TOK automatically means sacrificing something that the Creator meant for us to have. These sacrifices might mean giving up our source of supply, our protection, our discernment, our relationships, our purpose, our passion, our prosperity, our truth or our right to freely be ourselves. This is often given-up for some perceived pay-off, but that’s a lot of sacrifice!

The TOK, by definition, is knowledge of good and evil not good OR evil, as many believe. So when we engage with it, we create an opening for good and evil to run rampant in our life—with the benefits come the detriments. Chaos comes from the TOK, so we’ll experience highs and lows, feasts and famines, peace followed by suffering, and around and around in cycles.

The long-term effect of all of these ups and downs is the illusion that we are growing or getting somewhere. In reality, we are gaining ground in one aspect of our lives only to lose ground in others. This experience of loss and sacrifice only exists on the TOK, not on the TOL.

The Spring Connection is always related to how and when we’ve used our free will to choose the TOK. The most common way we choose to engage with the TOK is by believing something outside of ourselves will solve our problems. We then begin clinging to those attachments (possessions, reputation, information, status, etc.) and think that if stop engaging with the TOK, we’ll somehow lose all of those gains and become vulnerable.

But the TOL provides you with a direct pipeline into the heart of God, as well as the requisite flow, forms and structures to receive it, embody it and live it. There is no limit to what can be provided to you through this Connection since the TOL is the system of connecting with more life. The pipeline simultaneously runs on energy-intelligence and conveys energy-intelligence to you. This is the life force that gives you energy, healing, protection, resources and wisdom, guidance and discernment.

With these things, you don’t need to sacrifice yourself for any pay-offs. In fact, once you release the bondage that’s restraining you, you’re almost immediately provided with the reasons why or how you lost your freedom to begin with. With this Connection we need to simply trust the process and trust that this is happening.

What Happens In the Severing

A good metaphor for this is to think of a shrub in the spring. Its branches are all dried up and the entire plant appears to be dead. However, the life force within the plant has only pulled back within itself, sacrificing the “dead” branches to the extremes of the winter season. If you trim off the old branches the plant re-sprouts new branches and then springs forth to grow even larger! A similar trimming process happens with the Severing.

During the Passover, the Creator amps up the “death energy” on the planet for 48 hours, beginning at sundown on April 12th. Remember that death and suffering are energies that only exist on the TOK so it can only affect those TOK “limbs” that entangle us, so to speak.

This special exposure to “death energy” attacks whatever power the TOK has over us. It’s actually the death of death - which means life! For those who are aware of and observe this connection, it offers an opportunity to actively “sacrifice” patterns or choices from the past which are costing us our freedom and binding us to the TOK.

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Preparing For It

The Passover (sundown 4/12/25 through sundown 4/14/25) is the energy of death targeting the TOK and its constructs. This year, the Connection is about the energy-intelligence of Gvurah which corresponds to our boundaries, our push-back, our judgement and how we contain and restrain ourselves.¹ I like to think of it as the integrity that keeps us true to ourselves and gives us the wherewithal to resist outside influences.

During Passover, we offer-up some way that we've subconsciously or unconsciously created a prison through Gvurah and will subsequently have that attraction pattern removed from our systems. So to prepare for the Passover, we reflect on Gvurah principles to see what might stir within as binding us through Gvurah. A prison is a world view or attitude or habit that you keep perpetuating despite your desire or effort to change it.

Understanding Gvurah

Gvurah energy is the counter-balance to Chesed energy (loving kindness). It takes two forces to put in a nail—one to drive and one to maintain it in the opposite direction to ensure the board holds its own boundaries. Gvurah energy bolsters us through self-containment and creative resistance. Whereas Chesed draws together into God's sphere of being, Gvurah pushes away and proclaims: You do YOU; stand on your own two feet; earn your own keep. Christianity teaches that we are all one body, but we are each different parts with distinct gifts to serve God. Gvurah is the energy that distinguishes between those parts; the energy of healthy separation and individual integrity.

This Gvurah year (Sept 2024-Sept 2025), we want to do our absolute best to develop strength; restraint; boundaries; judgement or holding back, so to speak. Consider yourself in light of the following questions and take the time to probe memories and consider your experiences that speak to this dynamic in your life.

• Are there situations or relationships where I give-give-give but don’t receive in return?

• Do I discipline my time to allow for an inward-attentiveness through prayer, meditation or self-reflection?

• How well do I restrain myself emotionally? Do I over-share? Alternatively, do I intentionally withhold or isolate myself for control?

• Do I find myself seeking others’ validation and approval by doing or saying what they’d want or by acting a certain way?

• What boundaries have I set to maintain my sense of self?

You see, God knows that you’re struggling and wants you to be free — in Exodus, it was the cries of the suffering Israelite slaves that activated God to help! If you can tune into the energetic or emotional cost of your struggle—the suffering that it’s caused—that is the sense of yearning for your Passover prayer!

Articulate Your Prison

Your prison is some deeply held belief or ego construct about reality, something which has overwhelmed you or causes you to believe that it is more powerful than the Light within you. Think of it like a tumor growing on your Tree of Life. With Passover, the Creator does spiritual surgery: cutting out the tumor at its root. God then re-issues life force to heal us so as not to experience that struggle moving forward.

Take some time to consider these questions to formulate your Passover Prayer. The best prayers for freedom from something which has really disempowered you, which may cause you to cry out "Why me?!" Those tears you feel when considering the prison are what will really open the gates of Light. Know that your prayer will be answered.

Here are some questions to help you discover your personal "prison":

1. What do I believe will never change/improve for me?

2. What has always been "my story"?

3. If this one thing was removed from my life or altered in some way, I'd feel free to pursue my dreams...

4. Where or how do I feel "shut out" of life?

Here are some examples that could serve as models for naming your prison. Keep tweaking the language until it lands and you feel it articulates a truth. Bringing it to prayer or meditation obviously helps!

Made-Up Example: A person identifies their prison as feeling shut out from social connection. They feel isolated and alone—separated from a loving, caring family/circle of friends/community.

My Example: My prison is feeling like everyone has to like me. It leads me to self-censorship and self-consciousness that I’m doing something wrong. I automatically take things personally and pull inward.²

Insert whatever words resonate with you and best articulate the cost of your prison. It may be several issues you’re aware of or it may be one big issue that dogs you. It can be helpful to simplify it to one thing which makes you super emotional—now that’s a powerful prayer. The simpler, the clearer, the more resonant, the better.

Craft Your Passover Prayer

Once you identify your prison, then turn it into a gratitude statement for the new life, new freedom, new creativity, and new prosperity that you will experience on the other side. Start by mustering-up a sense of alleluia!!

Made-Up Example: I am grateful to be free of the illusion of separation. With positive expectancy, I recognize the value of the friendship I bring to others, and I am recognized and welcomed to happily take my place within my new community.

Mine: I am grateful to be free of concern about how others judge me and from trying to control how I’m perceived. With positive expectancy, I follow my heart: speaking honestly, acting with integrity, and living my authentic self with fearlessness.

Let your prayer sit a bit after writing it, you might bring more to the prayer before sundown on April 12th. You may even find that during the actual window of Passover you are guided to alter the prayer. Receiving this kind of guidance should elicit a strong YES! feeling inside of you, affirming that the edits resonate even more with what you've been struggling against.

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The goal during this 48 hours is to remain in gratitude for the immense gift of grace that the Passover offers. For those of us ready to sacrifice our patterns of self-sacrifice, the death energy passes through and removes the pattern. This outcome is only possible by aligning to the opportunity and allowing the process to work for us. During Passover we thank the Creator for freeing us from these burdens so that we can more effectively tend to our peace of mind, our connection to God, our spiritual needs, and our authentic nature. During this period of 48 hours, keep your prayer handy and reflect on it in anticipation of the joy and possibilities that will arise once you are set free!

At the end of the 48-hour period, destroy it and don’t look back. The prayer is answered. There is another phase of the Spring Connection called Counting the Omer. It includes several weeks of daily thematic reflections that cultivate the “sprouts” of a renewed Tree of Life no longer restrained by this prison. If you’re interested contact me.

1. Each year focuses on a different Sephirot on the Tree of Life. Fall 2024 through Fall 2025 is about Gvurah.

The TOL Flow & Ten Sephirah

Other Examples of prisons:

• Being imprisoned by my false sense of urgency and the drive to rush, be busy

• Defining myself and my limitations by my chronic back pain

• Being dogged by the insecurity/suspicion that if I don’t find my life partner there is something wrong with me (this was a pre-convent prayer which was answered ironically!)

• Here’s an interesting prison many of us have: the haze of privilege, luck, and wishful thinking

2.