8. When My Old Life Stopped Fitting

The year that followed is what I wound call my major untethering year from my old life and had initiated what I would call a dark night of the soul, except this time it wasn't physical pain I was healing from like the car accident — it was emotional and spiritual anguish and existential questioning. And painful as parts of it will be to write it about, I deem it necessary as it is essentially how I earned my stripes to do the work that I do today.

It was Spring 2019, pre-pandemic, and I was already spending the majority of my time at home, on zoom. I started joining regular zoom sessions with people in the sangha and from India around the world, as I continued my spiritual devotion practice. I felt super powerful, making lights around my apartment flicker, they had never flickered before all those months I lived there, but suddenly they were always flickering when I was doing my practices.

I wanted to share this newfound excitement for my spiritual practices and these mindblowing things I was now able to do with my current friends and family. I did 1:1 calls with them and did the coconut rolling thing. And told them about my new sober, vegan lifestyle. Many were supportive, but to my disappointment, no one had quite the reaction that I did when Clifton introduced me to all of it. I noticed many were content with just how they were.

I started feeling less and less like I belonged being in the matrix, less like I could relate to my co-workers who hadn't gone where I'd gone in consciousness. I just wanted more like-minded people I could share those experiences with, and at the moment they only existed on zoom on the other side of the world.

It became very jarring being in a hospital environment with all of its stimulation at all (even though it had been years since I left my chaotic work environment in acute care) with my new level of energetic sensitivity.

I set the intention to plan my departure. Secretly I was waiting to transfer to the integrative health department full time, but the process of getting a new hire approved there had been taking over a year at this point and I was starting to think it wasn't meant to be.

I asked Clifton what do people do for work in the sangha. I learned that he had departed from his Co-founder role at Human Garage and was between projects. I learned that some people in sangha were stay at home moms or dads and the other parent was working in the matrix. There were some I encountered there who had corporate jobs, and they kept this spiritual side of them separate. I did not want to be that way. I wanted to have my purpose support me, but I wasn't sure how to do that anymore.

Before my time with Swamiji, I wanted it to be my Reiki/Aromatherapy business, but at this point I hadn't figured out how to monetize that beyond a couple of hundred dollars a month. I also was questioning if this was still my vision, as I had changed so much.

After diving deeper into spirituality and energy work, I also started feeling like an imposter doing Reiki and monetizing that when what I discovered now was even more powerful, and I was unsure how to productize it. I didn't know what I wanted to do next, but I knew I was supposed to work with Clifton.

This is what we now say is your identity expanded faster than your business model, common in many individuals we've worked with over the years who are go through conscious awakenings and have not stabilized that expansion into their service or business yet.

I was receiving more and more Akashic records readings from Clifton. In one of them I asked if we had a past life together and found out that we did. We had a past life where we were married and he had some karma to clear up with me from that so he was here to help me in this moment in my journey in this lifetime.

I realized I had grown a fondness towards him. Afterall, through doing all these readings he knew more about me, my shadow, my secrets than anyone. It was like that therapist I was calling in to speak to about all of my existential questions months prior. Now that's a healthy starting point for a relationship, right?

Now that I uncovered many of my wounds, I did not want to stop working on them until they were 100% healed. A wound around abandonment, a wound around invisibility, a wound around seeking approval, all felt like landmines I had to navigate around gently to get the confidence to make several life changing decisions that followed.

At this point I was spending more time talking with Clifton than anyone else in my reality. All day when I was at work we messaged, and did video calls in the evenings when I was home. Things started evolving in a more romantic direction. We decided I'd take a trip to LA to check out if the chemistry was there in person and if this was worth continuing to pursue. I started using up all of my remaining hospital vacation time.

In LA, we went on our 2nd date, which ironically enough we found out was EXACTLY 3 years from our first date to the exact date, March 9th! How weird. We uncovered little things in common that made us smile. We found out we both created a list of everything we wanted in a partner only a couple of months prior and saw SO many of those qualities in one another, and even the fact that we both used the same packing cubes.

In LA, Clifton introduced me to a number of people in the conscious community who were his friends, some cool quantum technology projects he was working on with the founders, like a vibroacoustic bed. He took me to Erewhon, the best organic gourmet grocery store I'd ever been to, and we did a water tasting. In his apartment he shared with his sister, he introduced me to all his supplements and daily practices.

At this point I was already doing daily morning practices recommended by the guru — rinses for the eyes, netipots for the nose, enemas to clear the colon and evening supplements that cleared the gut. From this visit with Clifton, I took notes of what I wanted to add on, like scrubbing my entire body with turmeric and haritaki in the shower (this unleashed quite the potent detox reaction when I got home.)

I hadn't been to LA since my dad brought me on a trip here when I was 15, and I was enamored by how much I enjoyed it and the consciousness scene here, not to mention the amazing weather. All of it felt much more resonant than my life in NY.

We sat in the Tom's cafe on Abbot Kinney and he facilitated me through a founder visioning exercise about my new business idea and what I wanted my life to look like. And I realized in that moment that I wanted it to be with him.

I came back to NY sad, because one of the Akashic records readings Clifton gave me mentioned we'd be going separate ways soon because we had different missions. And after this trip, that became too much to bear. Instead of enjoying our time together, I had that thought burning in the back of my mind, clearly triggering the abandonment wound and creating heaviness. I had just gotten clear on the vision I wanted to create in my life and the kind of partner I wanted, and suddenly I felt so alone and unsupported in it.

When I got back, my body just caught up with all the extreme changes I'd made over the past 3 months, from going completely vegan in 1 day, to doing all the various cleansing rituals and healing practices I was doing. I was shedding through many layers and everything was being purged out through my skin. I broke out in hives that lasted a couple of weeks, acne, even a foul odor when I was doing my deepest detox. Don't be such an extremist like me! Sometimes less is more :). Clifton continued help me remotely, facilitating my business vision through his signature Foundry Process methodology.

At this time I also got the pulse that it was time to leave my nursing job. I asked the universe to show me a sign when it was time. I've always considered myself someone who responds more to signs in my physical reality that are undeniable, more than the unseen. So In April 2019 I was in the bathroom on my unit and saw the sign saying "Non-Invasive Cardiology" which was usually hanging up, laying on the floor. I knew this was the sign I was asking for. I used my remaining vacation time and put my notice in.

My unit had a "moving on" party for me to celebrate my next chapter. I really loved working with this crew so much and knew I'd miss them. They asked me what my plans were. They knew I was seeing someone and that it was long distance, they knew I wanted to put more energy into building my business and I had my other per diem nursing job in integrative health so we'd still see other around the hospital. Many were excited for me. Some were like what are you going to do next? What you don't have an plan? The truth was, I didn't really. I just knew I had some savings and that I'd keep my other per diem nursing nursing job at least once a week while I figured things out.

What I've found is that when you're making a bold life decision, especially one that involves a lot of unknowns and not a high level of certainty, people's relationship to the unknown and uncertainty comes up in their reactions to your news — a lot of it is projection of their own relationship with uncertainty and either their discomfort with it or excitement about it. What I didn't know then that I know now is that if it triggers you, that's worth exploring within you if part of you has those beliefs too and are just projecting it onto them to bring to your conscious awareness.

I held off on sharing this news with some of my family members for that reason, because I know many would project their doubts, concerns, hesitations about taking risks and their relationship with the unknown onto me. Afterall, I was leaving behind my steady, secure 6-figure+ full-time job, new promotion, retirement benefits, healthcare, dental and paid time off benefits. That decision would not compute well with my Eastern European immigrant family, that's the definition of success in this country. And I don't blame them. No one in my immediate family has ever started a business before or walked away from their job until they retired.