I am a Gnostic Nun today, meaning, devoted to God, chaste, contemplative and all things associated with general ‘nunnery’ I suppose. But I never arrived at this place out of obligation or rules. In fact quite the opposite. I took the path of Divine Rebellion… And little did I know it would lead me here. To the softest, sweetest love. The greatest romance of my life. The river of eternal peace and joy. Mona Lisa’s smile.

I grew up in South Africa as part of the Lebanese diaspora, and my family line is from Mt. Lebanon. Blavatsky wrote about this mountain, many have. It is home to the Druze people, the one’s who call themselves the ‘knowers’ and have preserved the Egyptian mysteries since the 11th Century. 

Of course I had no knowledge of this as a young girl. I come from a long line of priests. Mostly Catholic but then my Father, out of his own hurt by the church, broke away and became a Charismatic Christian. This collective amnesia we’ve all gone though, my family line went through it too. All but forgot the deeper mysteries and the truth of who we are. Finding an uncomfortable solace in dogma and religion.

Although I discovered many beautiful things in the church community, by the time I reached adulthood, I found myself in a highly fractured, anxious, compulsive and unwell space. 

This was because God was framed as a Being outside of me. Jesus was perfect, but I was a bag of sin and all I could do was pray to him to save me. I didn’t realise at the time, but this is a very spiritually damaging ideology, because it takes the agency of ‘wellness’ away from the individual. There’s a diagnosis for this problem and it’s called ‘religious abuse’ or ‘religious trauma’.

Years of bending the knee and praying to God to save me from my suffering was obviously not working. So I took back my agency and self responsibility. I left the church and spirituality entirely and focused only on tools and techniques that actually worked. My path became one of efficiency. 

I went into cognitive behavioural therapy and this helped unlock my self awareness. I learnt how to question the source of my feelings and perceptions and not just agree with the ‘wounded ego’ within. 

I started an invaluable somatic therapy called Trauma Release Exercises. We hold trauma deep in our nervous system and when I surrendered to the wisdom of my body’s biological mechanisms, the level of energetic release and healing was unsurpassed. 

I started practicing Meditation, Kundalini, Pranayama, and Yin. All these Yoga forms showed me I have the power to shift and move energy in my own body. Through these ancient spirit sciences, I rediscovered the control panel to my own wellness. 

When I became aware of unhealthy patterns in myself,  I learnt how to take that awareness into physical change through a practice called QEC (Quantum Energy Coaching). A simple neurological process that helped me rewire false core beliefs into positive ones, shifting my personality, and by effect my reality.

Over six years of intensive recovery I mended the great rift of Abrahamic dogma within myself. My body was no longer a carnal, deceptive adversary who was not to be trusted. She was in fact the source of my liberation. My recovery was a process of coming home into my body, her instincts, intuition, authenticity of emotion, radical self-acceptance and trusting her voice above any other noise. Year after year, with her loving guidance, I took on the hard task of releasing attachment after attachment, unhealthy pattern after pattern… A devoted pursuit to the expansion of my own peace and wellness. Until…

One day in August 2019, completely unexpectedly, I had a massive and inexplicable Kundalini or (Spiritual) Awakening. After many years of avoiding all things spiritual, I had no idea that my efficient path of self-regulation and recovery tools was going to lead me straight back into the arms of God. I had no idea that the path of self-recovery was actually the path of enlightenment.

But this God is nothing like the one I knew in religious dogma. That one is a false god but this One, is as true as truth itself. This time it is a Divinity I know personally, within me. A love that permeates beyond dogma and institutions.

My kundalini awakening led to an escalation in integration of the self. I opened into my Shamanic capabilities, and the spiritual experiences that I had and I continue to have are deeply real and personal. It’s a visceral, experiential and undeniable connection to the Supreme Creator who dwells and speaks from my heart.

Beatific? For sure, but it was also a hallway of inner mirrors. An increased face-off with my inner demons or ego illusions. A carnival of my own pathologies. The Kundalini energy is no walk in the park. One can easily get stuck in their own sense of power. The fire of the creative, sexual energy and one’s own burning desires can easily be mistaken for true North. When in fact, it’s the climax of the movie of your life and a face-off with your deepest ego desire. What you believe is North, is usually South. And the thing you want the most is not the thing God wants to give you.

Can you let that foundational attachment go? The one that gives you a false sense of safety? The one that you would be lost without? A Kundalini Awakening is like going through ‘crunch time’ with the self. It’s make or break and thankfully I had 10 years of recovery tools to help me through the process. 

It was a heightened journey of continuous surrendering. She asked me to give Her every, single ego identification. At first I thought she was taking them from me, but then I came to realise that I couldn’t take my eyes off Her. The path was so purifying. Each time I threw a false identification on to Her ego pyre, I was liberated into a higher state of being. Less of me and more of She. 

So I became the Reluctant Heroine for a while. Knowing each time I had to do it. Throwing a part of myself onto Her fire through gritted teeth and a burning cigarette. Spitting at how incredibly immense the suffering and pain of evolution feels. But on and on I went, like a stroppy toddler. She was eternally patient, but firm at times, like when she sent bees and wasps to sting me on different chakra points and give me a kick in the ass. 

Until I found myself in the mountains of Kashmir in October 2021 holding dearly onto this one last thing. “My precious,” as it were. My deepest desire and illusionary trauma. This is different for everyone, but for me, it was the fantasy of Divine Love with a human. Living in the romantic ideation of a love that would eventually come one day and fulfil all these parts of me. 

I had known I was a priest for some time but I hadn’t yet equated that with being a nun. I had been given a mantra by a Sufi Master and was saying it 100 times a day for 40 days. The last 10 days happened to line up with the Hindu celebration of Navaratri. A 10 day festival celebrating various aspects of the Great Mother or Durga Ma. 

During those last 10 days of my mantra, coinciding with the celebration of the Great Mother, I felt Him, in me, me in Him, put a ring on my finger. I googled the word ‘Brahmacharini’, the Hindu equivalent of a ‘Nun’, and fell asleep in the eternal and ethereal arms of my Beloved. Thinking about the Beguines, those Christian Mystics who turned from physical love to taste of the true elixir.

Giving up this last desire would be the end of me, and anything, the only thing I’ve ever truly wanted. I felt my Beloved pull me closer and whisper from my heart, “Now I see in part, but then I shall see in full.”

I lay enveloped in a thick, deep, red blanket. Cocooned in the womb of my transformation. In the dark I thumbed through the beads of my rosary, whispering my mantra as tears sailed down my face. Each bead as round as the Earth Herself. In the pitch black of my room all I could feel was the sensation of Her smooth roundness between my fingertips. Like seeing Earth as a small dot from far away in space. Floating in the Great Cosmic Abyss with only a rosary to hold on to.

This bead. This prayer. This undoing.

I’m not afraid of the Nothing anymore.

I’d rather have nothing than something.

To find solace in the abyss,

This is the well-spring of life

I am married to my Beloved

And my Beloved to me.

I had an Alchemical Wedding. Up in the mountains of Kashmir, alone in the warmth of my room. The most difficult thing I have ever gone through. A total death of my ego self and deepest desire. 

Only as I write this in retrospect can I speak of the honey I now taste. To live inside the softness of a smile. To be in the feeling of a loving cocoon. Like that subtle, electric bliss that vibrates in the heart when Lovers lock eyes across the room. It is like that feeling. The more I am in it, the more it stays. At One, seeing my Beloved’s face in all of creation. The curious eyes and arched brows of a dog, the chattering of dusk time birds roosting in the Neem tree, the cool kiss of water on my body. The cup of my heart overflows with this Love. The fountain of truth hiding in plain sight. 

It was no easy task but my faith in this True God is what sustained me in those dark hours. Dying to self is a grieving, but through those nights, the knowledge and continuous experience of Her expansion kept me on the course. She never lies. Only my ego lies. Trying to hold on to attachments, afraid of the great abyss and expanse beyond.

Choosing to fall into the black void takes courage. One can only experience the elixir on the other side of loss. 

There is nothing puritanical about this path. I gave myself over to every desire in order to get here. I smoked hash like it was going out of fashion because it helped me cope, and I swore like a trooper whenever She led me back to the ego pyre. 

I had stopped judging myself and my imperfections a long time ago. This is a basic requirement for the Kundalini fire to awaken in anybody. The process is so messy that one cannot have an iota of self-judgment or imposed rules of behaviour. Fck that. That’s not what the True God cares about. 

Asceticism must come from a place of one’s true desire. I slowly stopped smoking, drinking and all those things, because I wanted to. The path of self-denial is tragically dogmatic. I don’t put a show on for anyone, and neither does our True God. Be you, exactly who you are in this moment. Fck obligations, rules, reputation, and expectations. 

The Holy Mother is the other half of God. The feminine aspect who lives in matter. She is the Earth and everything on it. The part of God embedded in the material of our own bodies. She is the shadow aspect of divinity, and She will throw the fck down to live her most authentic life. She is your raw, real, wild self. She is liberated, free, sovereign. She is emotionally authentic, expressive and sensual. She is creative and like a child running through the bottom of the garden, she is living her best and most magical life. 

Becoming that again and letting one’s inner child shine is far from a puritanical and ‘controlled’ process. Enlightenment requires Divine Anarchy. You have to rebel against everything you know and follow the truth of your heart. No matter how many people raise their eyebrows and call you crazy. 

Do you want to be free? Truly free? 

Well then, you’ll need to be willing to surrender your ‘story’ for your life. The one you inherited based on cultural and familial conditioning. You’ll also need to come back into your body and start the process of continuous death and rebirth. Your own private Hero/ine’s journey with the True God. No mediators, no dogma. Just the greatest quest of your life. Full of magic, synchronicity and co-creative expansion. 

Each time you release a pattern you are born again, into something higher, newer. More of your authentic self. 

Once you engage with your inner wisdom and experience this, you will know for yourself. I am a ‘knower’, and I invite you to become one too. 

You are the Guru. 

Yours Glory, 

Christ In the hope of glory. 

Rebel Nun.