This text is part of my ongoing reflection on self-awareness, emotional patterns, and conscious growth.
Growing up I did not think that God existed. My grandmother had some religious images in her household as she grew up Christian, but no one ever forced religion on me and I was a ‘free’ person, or so I thought. Like so many people I believed that God did not exist due to the fact that there is so much pain and suffering in this world.
And even though I thought the whole God-concept was a joke, I have always been interested in the viewpoint of the believer. Some of my friends did grow up with religion, being Islam and Jehova’s witnesses. It struck me that their religion should have placed them in opposition of me, but in reality there was no division between us. We were good friends, are good friends.
So how can it be that some of my most valued friends believed in something that I had zero interaction with?
Little by little my interest in this topic grew. I started reading passages from the bible and I would try to talk about God and religion with anyone I met that was a believer, but it did not ignite new ways of thinking, yet. Now, looking back, I think my environment at that specific moment in time wasn’t capable of providing me with this insight. At the time, I had no idea that one day my dog would become one of my greatest teachers on the subject of God.
Back then, I watched the news regularly, I was interested in politics and naturally curious to remain invested in daily conversation topics. I thought I knew it all. But that was until my body started protesting my reality. One of the first common pastimes I released from my reality was watching the news. As you can read in ‘The world’s first influencer’ I was forced to stop watching the news by my own nervous system. To put it simply: my whole nervous system contracts when seeing ‘bad news’ and one particular broadcast made this insight unavoidable for me.
I had to stop watching the news, because I gained clarity on how much it was costing me. It gave me stress and it kept me in a small way of thinking. But it wasn’t enough. I still did not feel good, unable to manage my energy properly with depression as a result. It was a very transformative time for me and many big things in my life changed. I moved countries and in this new place scheduling no longer seemed important. An important move for my consciousness as my life in the Netherlands was built up from a stress schedule.
I am sensitive and it would often occur that I would commit to a certain calendar activity, but when the day came, my energy level could be completely different and I would be unable to follow through. Immense feelings of guilt would enter my mind. I made this agreement and I wanted to follow up, but my environment was working against me.
So much of these seemingly little things were of such big influence on my daily energy reserves.
Life was costing me, every day.
By losing this obsessive need for scheduling social- and work related activities, I created so much more space for my own being. A lot of microstress was dropped from my life and it left room for consciousness on other stress that was stuck in my system. And with all this new space and consciousness I was drawn to a new perspective.
All of a sudden I had more space to accept all the miracles in my daily life. So many synchronicities, so many nudges leading me the way. And I followed them, I had time, I was freer than ever. I saw so many miracles happening around me that it was hard to grasp the fact that I had suffered so many depressions and thus I started thinking about my depression, evaluating it on a more spiritual basis. I was baffled by the conflict between my natural- and my depression state of mind. They were two completely different characters and many questions entered my mind.
I started seeking information. I read books about God, and learned that a piece of God is inside of us. And it made me think. If God díd exist, than the devil could also possibly exist. And I started looking for these two aspects within myself. I noticed that there is always a choice on how to deal with emotions and events. Good or bad, true or false, go or stay et cetera.
And once I became more aware of this all, I noticed that my outer world changed with every decision I made.
Then I found a video on YouTube on the gospel of Thomas. It taught about our reality and how it is seemingly created by our thoughts, words and actions, and this paired well with all other insights I had gained. Later, other books and information, such as The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz, seemed to support this narrative. And it got me thinking.
If my outer world is a projection of my inner world, made real by my recurring thoughts, words and actions, then any change I would like to see in this world, would have to come from within. This was a huge shift in perspective for me. You must understand that beforehand I was always trying to help everybody and push people in certain directions, and of course I never succeeded. I was never able to actually change anyone and all that time where I focused on other people, I could have already changed my reality from the inside.
And an insight landed. Maybe I had been distracted from God. By always thinking that everyone needed to change, I was blindsided from the fact that I needed to change. And so I did, change. Even on a daily basis. Ever since then, I have been studying myself and my patterns, and I have been comparing them with who I want to be and what I would like to see in the world around me.
At first I called it healing, but it was only ever about self-understanding.
I did not need healing, I needed to understand my power of creation. To be able to protect myself with boundaries and protect my environment from incoming distractions and (micro)stress. I needed the God perspective. I needed to understand that we behold the power of creation within ourselves to be able to see that I could change my world and that I needed nobody else for that.
Now, years later, I am in a love-hate relationship with God, or myself so to say. My mood swings are bothering me now because they don’t seem to fit my mindset and it is frustrating at times. I want to be somewhere that I am not. I want to have more energy, more this and more that, but it is this exact frustration that I need to let go off. Even with all the self-help and self-care I still get impatient when it comes to my outer world.
And then I noticed something during my dog walks.
A while back I was in a poor state of mind. I felt really unstable and powerless and my days were spent in feelings of frustration, anger and despair. My outer world was hurting me, due to my impatience. And I was sending out this disturbed vibration all around me. I felt horrible but the most shocking thing is that it reflected on my dog. During these walks my dog would get grabbed by bigger dogs, they would attack him for no apparent reason.
It was horrible to see and it happened a few times over and it made me wonder, why now? Why was my dog being grabbed by other dogs? My dog is super friendly, loves people and other dogs and it just did not make any sense. But an insight landed. It was me. It was my f*cked up energy that I was radiating over all these animals. These animals were able to sense my chaotic energy and they reflected it back on my dog. Something needed to change, because this situation was unbearable to me.
I even became a little scared of taking my dog for a walk and that is not a good place to be. Walking your dog should be a relaxing moment in your day, for me and definitely for him. And so I needed to step up. My ‘angry walks’ were hurting my dog. I started evaluating my walks and moods to find coherence in this situation and I decided to change myself to be able to change the outcome.
I kept walking my dog, but I firstly gained more information. I read a book about dog communication and chatted with AI to gain clarity and the corresponding self-confidence needed to leave the house and conquer my chaotic energetic state. And, all of a sudden, I remembered that I never experienced these kinds of fears and stress factors when I was young.
I used to roam the streets like I owned them, not a care in the world.
I saw my emotional influence on my dog and chose to take full responsibility. I needed to remember a feeling to be able to retrieve it in my current walks. Now, whenever I walk my dog, I will firstly remind myself of my power. I will say something to myself such as “We are going for a walk in our neighborhood, it is our freedom and right to enjoy a peaceful walk together.” And then, I tap into my childhood state of mind and step out of the door with confidence, openness and above all curiosity.
I have consciously transformed my ‘angry walks’ into ‘clarity walks’.
I use my dog walks as a practice for awareness. No thoughts, no internal battles, only clarity. This way I can anticipate on potential danger way better than I ever could. And, equipped with the knowledge on how dogs communicate, I can choose to pull my dog out of a situation. And there is no more fear, there is only seeing, witnessing and in case it is needed, anticipation.
Our walks have become peaceful again. Because I chose to see what was really going on, I was able to take on responsibility and actually do something about it. I changed myself, because I cannot change my dog. But slowly I have noticed that he is relaxing with me. I changed my reality, because I have the power to change my reality. And we all do.
And I think this is what they mean when they say we are all children of God. It does not make us perfect, it does not make us better. It makes us able to decide. It makes us able to create our own reality, with awareness. Because when we are conscious, we are automatically connected to our reality. We are more open to receiving possible warnings. And aside from that, when we are conscious, we are not distracted. Distraction causes us to believe in our fears. Distraction causes us to disconnect from our responsibilities. We let ourselves be overtaken by fear without ever noticing our power to withdraw and transform.
So, if you want to see a change in your outer world, it might be time to take responsibility and to ask yourself how you can change, in order for your reality to change with you.
For me, believing in God equals the belief in yourself.
And I can now assure you, that I believe in God.
p.s. Dog just happens to be an anagram for God…
This text is an open reflection.
More guided, integrative essays are gathered in my paid essay series on Ko-fi.
“Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.”
