How to Start Your Life Again

How do you pick yourself up again after your life falls apart?

I’ve been thinking a lot about this recently as I’ve struggled with the flu.

I don’t get sick often. Usually, I have migraines. Acute, terrible symptoms, but thankfully temporary. So I don’t know how to start again after weeks of being in bed.

One of the first things I let go of was my spirituality. It’s hard to see beyond yourself when your pain is the main theme of your life. I was gasping for breath and lost in a haze of confusion.

Naturally, everything fell apart at the seams. Because when you let go of your connection to what’s greater than you, your life becomes a series of parts without glue.

What’s my purpose? What should I do next? Does it even matter what I’m doing now?

All these questions swirled in my head when I was at my worst. But they didn’t go away as I got better.

The questions got louder.

Spirituality Is Always a Search

The reason why I let go of my spirituality when I was sick wasn’t that it was hard, but that I stopped searching. All I could think about was my next breath.

One mistake many people make, sick or healthy, is assuming that spirituality has all the answers. If you stop pursuing spirituality after being spiritual for a while, it may not seem like you’re losing anything. After all, you learned everything you needed to know, right?

But that couldn’t be further from the truth. You’ll never meet a real spiritual person who has stopped asking questions and that’s because spirituality is about the pursuit.

That may be surprising to you. Will your spiritual path be one without concrete answers?

No.

Just because spirituality is about a lifetime of questions doesn’t mean you’ll go a lifetime without answers. Rather, the world around you changes so your answers and sometimes even your questions transform too.

But there will be times in your life, perhaps when you’re sick or face some other difficulty, that you’ll stop asking questions. Your spiritual quest will end and you’ll build a wall in its place – and sometimes without a door.

When this happens, you think you’re protecting yourself from uncertainty. That you’re going back to reality and sticking with the questions and answers you already have.

We all do this because we think the answers we seek are already in front of us.

But we’re blind. What we have will never be enough because we can’t see how the world is going to change with every decision a person makes.

Spirituality Is Rhetorical

A common pedagogical technique is for teachers to answer a question with a question. This is meant to activate critical thinking and help students see beyond material memorization.

Spiritual pursuit works in much the same way. The universe could reveal everything to us, but we wouldn’t understand it. Not all truth is helpful to the individual.

Asking “the big questions” isn’t about revealing big answers, but personal ones. What’s the purpose of life? Irrelevant to you. What’s your purpose? That’s what matters.

The pursuit is about finding your context within the universe, a context that can change every day depending on the choices other people make and the conditions of the environment.

This is the error I made when I stopped my spiritual pursuit while I was sick. I assumed any previous spiritual revelation I had would be the same and sufficient in all circumstances.

Had I asked what my purpose was at that moment, it likely would’ve been to rest.

But I didn’t ask – so I didn’t rest. And I didn’t get better.

And that should be the lesson of any difficult period in your life. You need to be prepared for the spiritual questions and answers you’re seeking to change – at least temporarily.

It’s not about picking yourself up again. It’s about never stopping your spiritual flight to become with. You can’t become a flightless bird.

Practical Spiritual Advice When You’re Down

It’s not unusual for spiritual people to have complex, multi-step rituals with a lot of tools and accessories. So when life gets hard, there can be a lot of impossible friction with getting in touch with your spiritual side.

If you must wait until a certain lunar phase, light a certain number of candles, and arrange everything in just the right way… you’ll not do anything at all if you’re feeling under the weather or your schedule just can’t make it work.

Go ahead and have all that if it’s meaningful to you normally, but there needs to be something simple to fall back on when life doesn’t go your way.

For most people, that’s meditation. All you need is a few minutes of peace. I like to use tarot though. I grab whatever deck is closest and pull a handful of cards for whatever is most pressing on my mind. Sometimes I’ll even ask about current events or pop culture. It keeps me tethered.

When I was sick, I often didn’t reach for my cards unless it was for work (and I was usually too sick to work). But when I did reach for tarot, I felt a connection on a spiritual level that I don’t feel elsewhere.

You need your tether, even if it’s just a pared-down version of what you normally do.

When I wasn’t using my cards, I thought and acted materially. I only thought about what was in front of me and what would make me feel better in the next moment.

That may seem like the right thing, but it’s not. Health is made with the future in mind, not just the present.

And that’s where the big spiritual word “mindfulness” is likely to pop up in your head. Being present isn’t tending to your immediate needs, but putting that immediacy in a divine context. At every single moment in your life, you’re connected to something greater. The pursuit is about recognizing that.

Your spiritual questions, especially when you’re in the midst of a difficult time, are acts of mindfulness. A pared-down, simple spiritual practice is your key to ensuring that.

You Rise With Each Day

One of the ways I’ve been able to get “back on track” after the flu is to take life one day at a time and see each day as significant.

I need to stop comparing my best days with my sick days and seeing any deviation as a failure.

As I put my life into context with my daily life conditions, it’s a lot easier to see how even small things that I’m doing are meaningful.

The questions and answers I seek may change, but the pursuit feels different than material living.

It feels meaningful. Like I’m asking big questions and getting personal answers.

I hope you can see the value of that in your life too – no matter how difficult your days can get.

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