Have you been praying for Divine Intervention & calling it a mid-life crises

If you were to think back to when you were 17, the plan or path you were on, was it the chosen path of your parents and teachers for you or did you follow your own ideas of what life was going to be?

What were the said and unsaid decisions you made for yourself at the time.

To give you a brief background of my super-ambitious younger self, at 17 I had my first paid internship experience and by 18 I was offered a full-time work position that I graciously accepted while also working on a full-time Bachelor's degree in Business.

By age 23, I graduated with an MBA and my fiance and I got married and by the ripe age of 24 I gave birth to our beloved baby girl. I took accomplishing milestones very seriously back then and was on a tight schedule.

In the years to follow I battled the work-life-motherhood conundrum wanting to be the Best in All that I did.

And it wasn’t easy with mountain-loads of guilt & shame that kept emerging in me, for not being a full time stay-at-home mother initially.

My work-life at the time was more a means to an end rather than my dream job or a robust career and so I kept wondering "Was I making the right choice? Is it all going to be worth it in the end?"

"Having a successful career and being a good mother seemed like competing intentions at the time and for a long time!"

Most of my friends were thriving in their respective professions by then, living up the single life, making the most of their University qualifications and jubilant youth, while I felt that somehow my life situation of learning how to care for and nurture my family and myself, made me less successful than them at our age and at the rat race.

"I'd wonder in my ego mind 'Why me?'"

As if to say life had worn me shackles that were keeping me from enjoying myself and living into my plan for a successful Banking career, dating, a sweet engagement and a long many years as a happy married romantic couple before notching it up with the responsibility of parenthood.

"This victim mentality became unbearable to cling to as life kept unraveling it's plan for me.

I became aware of a choice I had to make in myself."

The metaphor of being on a white water rafting expedition came forward in my Mind's Eye and my choice now was to be All-in and steer to the best of my ability or throw my paddle overboard and call it a day, blaming God and the Universe for placing me in situations that felt 'out of my control' and ones that I thought I wasn't prepared for.

I mulled over the latter thought form for a few years and it made me sick with resentment to visualize us on this voracious white water rafting trip and me resisting the ride of my life, with my family, one that I was already on!

It seemed more and more foolish to assume that my power was in resisting life and refusing to go with the flow as if that would bring this movie to a halt and rewind or change script mid-way.

As I began doing deep healing work in consciousness that brought me into the present moment, into a deep loving acceptance of the challenges that I'd experienced in getting married young, having such intense work experiences while still being a college kid, witnessing the difficult relationship my parents endured with each other and within our family, of learning to nurture my baby and being responsible for the well-being of our little family unit before truly understanding how to be nurtured myself.

I was able to compassionately forgive myself for the judgments I had placed within myself. I'd judged myself as an immature grown-up, an inexperienced mother and wife, unsuccessful at my chosen career in Banking. I also became aware of judging the Universe for it's 'backward' life plan for me, for feeling out of control in myself. For all those upset feelings of unfairness, blame, resentment, guilt and shame.

Today I live in deep gratitude and fulfillment, Inner peace and Joy for all of Who I am. But how I got here is another part of the journey, the part in between me consciously awakening to my inner reality of pain and suffering and transforming my perspective from the intellectual ego mind to seeing through Soul-centered eyes.

By the time I became aware of my inner reality of feeling like a victim, helpless, unprepared, and angry for not being in control of my life' s destiny, our daughter was already in her tween years as the Universe was preparing her for puberty.

My husband and I had our own business and during those years just before the city's economy hit recession like never before, rents had sky rocketed, petrol prices doubled, inflation was insane, traffic made us wonder, the city's population had increased more than two-fold before the crash.

It was interesting how outer reality was in a manner of speaking reflecting what was going on inside, with all the patterns of thought and emotion coming to it's peak of inner torment before dissipating and dissolving once the healing began.

Once I realized I was stuck in a rut, I began doing things that were previously uncharacteristic of me like attending Latin & Ballroom dance classes at The Arthur Murray Dance School on weekday evenings after dinner, or getting myself a club membership at one of the city's most elite health clubs at the time and making it my practice to have a dip in the lazy river at mid-day on my way to the school run every afternoon.

I started going to the spa regularly and invested in an entirely new designer wardrobe, bags, shoes, jewelry et all.

I became a Reiki initiate and began reading and listening to self-help, psychology, power of the mind & spiritually inclined books and materials all the time, in between my regular chores and workday duties.

I studied Vedic Astrology and learnt to read birth charts as the Soul's blueprint for this lifetime.

I would attend every free awareness talk and meditation being offered at the couple of health & well-being centers newly opened in the city at the time.

At 33 I heard the loud insurmountable Inner Calling to register for a Master's program in Spiritual Psychology which I attended by travelling from Dubai to California, once a month for 3 years, to attend every class weekend month after month, learning to formally work-my-process and facilitate others in their healing, growth and Soul's evolution.

My friends and family by this time were convinced I was either having a psychological breakdown or a mid-life crises or one and the same.

At the University, I was trained in facilitation skills and spiritual practices as ways of Self-counseling & facilitating others through the misunderstandings that we all invariably cultivate as we try on other people's perceptions about life, for size.

I gently released myself from the pity party I had going on inside me for years, the anger and depression of not being in control of my life's incidents and events.

Applying the skills, tools, principles and practices I learnt in the Master's program assisted in a much deeper level of healing on the psychological, spiritual and physical levels, revealing to me my Authentic Self.

"I recognize that from the moment I was born there was and is a Higher Power looking out for me, guiding me, protecting me and nourishing me."

This regardless of my choices and the choices of others around me.

I was able to appreciate my contemporaries for their career and home related choices and accomplishments. I stopped grudging my family from receiving my love, attention and affection.

The popular notion 'everything happens for a good reason'; i.e. my daughter is 17 and exploring her own life's direction now, I am in my specific profession of choice as a Spiritual Psychologist having received all the experiences, exposure, training and very unique qualifications that I needed to heal myself and serve other women and men in doing the same; true yet seems a little 'Pollyanna' to me.

What I do know is that our spiritual curriculum or lessons in Consciousness, that which our Soul has reincarnated to experience here in the now is not an agenda created, implemented or easily understood by our intellectual mind and thankfully never will be as the intellectual ego mind is only a teeny tiny iota of Who we really are and so it has limited information.

The sequence of our life's events cannot be controlled or measured by linear timing, even though physical life seems to work that way.

I know that the purpose of all our life's events is to awaken into our Higher consciousness, and become consciously aware of our inner reality and how that influences our outer experiences.

I know that once you have the experience of consciously awakening out of the lucid dream that is our physical world reality, you will know God & the Universe as your Source and will let go of expectations you've held your parents and others to.

I know that sometimes what you may perceive as your limitations or shackles may be what is keeping you grounded & on your 'original'* path.

These life events may seem to be slowing you down from achieving the goals your intellectual ego mind attached and enlisted to growing up, And in that may very well be Divine protection and order.

*original path, the path of your Soul and that which is ultimately in your Highest Good and that of all concerned.