Laundry

“The quality of your life is always decided by how you experience life, not by what life offers you.”
— Sadhguru, Inner Engineering: A Yogi’s Guide to Joy

When I was younger, the world shimmered with love. It radiated with energy and bloomed with divinity in every crevasse. I would walk into a grocery store and feel overwhelmed—not by the noise or the chaos, but by the sheer miracle that it was created by people. I’d look out my window at the morning trees and tears would well in my eyes. It was a spiritual experience to be able to walk. There was love everywhere. Radiance. Life offered itself to me in the language of light.

And then, one day, it was gone.

The sunlight still poured through the green canopy. The birds still sang. But the radiance… had disappeared. No abundance. No awe. Just what was. The world I once saw through a sacred lens now appeared flat, cold, and unfamiliar. Nothing had changed, but I felt so separate from life’s essence, like Luke Skywalker in that terrible movie Star Wars: The Last Jedi. It wasn’t that life had changed. I had. The love I had once forged from the depths of my suffering—through the trenches of hell—was nowhere to be found. And I thought: What was it all for? All the pain. All the growth. What did it mean, if it could just vanish? I had relied on this key part of existence to carry myself out of the darkest parts of existence…and now…yeah. Gone. 

This often happens in moments of transformation—especially in those strange, liminal places where we’re not who we were, but not yet who we’re becoming (at least that’s what we think in the moment). Where we grip the beliefs that once saved us, only to find they now weigh us down. But how could they?

I told my father what I was going through. He said,
“Sometimes, we spend our whole lives building a raft. We craft it with care and use it to cross a vast ocean. And then we reach the shore—and we don’t understand why we can’t take the raft with us. ‘This boat carried me so far! Why must I let it go?’”

And we cry to God begging him to give us the tools to find land as we stand on solid ground. 

It took me time to realize that I had been the one creating all that love. I was the source, not just the experiencer. Just as I was the creator of God in my own understanding, I was also the creator of meaning, of beauty, of the sacred. I had poured my being into everything around me—and how beautiful that was. 

But gratitude, too, transforms.

At the time, I couldn’t yet understand that I was forming this love from thin air, sculpting it into the world. I thought that my superpower was being sensitive to the abundance of love on Earth…but what if I could shoot love out of every fiber of my being like…some other popular movie character. I had made love into my new God. And like all gods we create, it had to evolve. It had to grow. And so did I.

And when I finally understood that love wasn’t slipping away from me, but rather nurturing me and my soul, I could breathe again. I was okay. You are okay. Whatever disconnect you have from whatever self you thought you were is a guidance in the direction you’ve been growing in for years – so let yourself grow. Notice the pain. Notice that you feel lost. And go do your laundry. 

With love,
Noah Thomas