“For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him. And He is before all things, and in Him all things consist. And He is the head of the body, the church, who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in all things He may have the preeminence.”
Colossians 1:16-20 (New King James Version)
During my time in undergrad, one of my favorite sayings was “EVERYTHING CONNECTS,” so much so that I had those words hanging in my dorm room for the next three years. It would be the saying that would help me somewhat make sense of the moments in my life that felt so random. Even when things didn’t seem to correlate, because I knew deep down we were more than what we could see – the physical – then that meant that there was a deeper purpose to our existence. Something that connected every person, every soul, together. For a long time, I thought of that something as consciousness. If trees and fungi could speak to each other through their roots, then, like the nature we exist in, we must also have an unseen network that connects us all, that helps us understand the ancient wisdom our ancestors had obtained and that colonizers stole from us.
I thought consciousness only existed in one form, and not three, because I didn’t have the revelation that, like the Godhead is three-in-one (God the Father, Jesus Christ the Son/ Messiah, and the Holy Ghost/ Spirit), we are three-in-one (the flesh where sin-consciousness exists, the soul where self-consciousness exists, and the spirit where God-consciousness exists). I was missing critical information to understand the laws of the spiritual world, and was only given snippets of the truth to keep me deceived from the truth of Jesus Christ.
My desire stemmed from my indignation at the lack of justice I saw in the world. I wanted justice to arise in the world, and it influenced how the spirituality I clung to continued to grow into something that seemed to have more depth, but really was resentment and entitlement dressed up as spiritual enlightenment. I was influenced by the various ways of achieving enlightenment – nirvana according to Buddhism, balancing the divine feminine and divine masculine according to Daoism/ Taoism, or seeking oneness with the universe, named “Brahman” in Hinduism.
I believed in a mishmash of spiritual realities because I kept seeing the same patterns emerging over and over, viewing the different themes and the symbols used to be just that – a conversation with what I deemed to be the universe. I had denied the reality of Jesus Christ in my life because of my religious Mexican Catholic upbringing. My life felt so out of control, having been told over and over about the different systems working against me – from corrupt capitalism, to white supremacy, to limited gender norms, to sexuality feeling forced, to religion being just another tool to control – I had fallen for the oldest deception in the world: that we had misconctrued God through these systems and that Satan wasn’t real. The trauma from broken relationships – pain from friendship breakups, being sexually assaulted by so-called “friends,” and the growing distance in my family – all had tainted my view of reality. Yet, for the first time in my life, I felt I had real answers because I had encountered spiritual language through all the spiritual practices I was delving into. Unfortunately, this is how deception seeps in. You think you find the truth because you see yourself as the highest form of understanding that truth.
I wasn’t aware that this was really just a band-aid dressed up as healing that I decided to embrace to help build myself back up again. I was aware of my brokenness and my need for healing. But instead of looking towards God, I looked towards myself, and an inner divinity that really was another name for narcissism. I thought I was filled with God-consciousness, but really I was filled with self-consciousness painted with spiritual language due to the demons I was calling on (that I thought were pure, that they were spirit guides, and that it was my higher self).
While I built up my soul on deceit, because that is what the new age is, my spirit-man was completely dead and suppressed. That is, until Jesus stepped in and baptized me with the Holy Spirit. The truth was that, yes, we are in a deeply spiritual world, but the only way to truth wasn’t by awakening the third eye, but rather through surrendering to the sovereignty of God. I didn’t have to look towards a future higher self; I had to look at the Lord, who is Alpha and Omega, so I could see my destiny in Him clearly, and so I could understand that by abiding in Jesus, who is pure eternal love, I am seated in Heavenly Places by faith alone that He gifted me (Ephesians 2:6). I cannot boast for the spiritual sight I have now, like I did in the new age, because all of it is just a gift from the Lord that I did nothing to deserve. All I did was embrace truth, which is Jesus, and in turn, He gifted me clarity, understanding, and wisdom (John 14:6, James 1:17)
Years later, in 2021, I was in a relationship that was both loving and toxic – unhealed wounds, suppressed emotions, and poor communication skills would be stirred up when our understanding of reality differed – we only had the grace we had built up based on our own strength, which wasn’t true grace at all. He believed only two genders existed. I saw myself as a non-binary femme person. I denied my womanhood because of how others had sexualized me growing up due to the shape of my body, because I saw how masculine people held authority and respect I seemed to lack, and because of the delusion I was put under after practicing these other spiritual practices, which led me to believe I was only energy, and that our bodies were merely meat suits. I had dressed up my self-rejection with beautiful flowery imagery based on these alternative spiritualities that made me seem deep, but really just covered up pride, entitlement, fear, and lots of trauma. I wanted to be only “love and light,” yet because I saw myself as such a “watery” person, I believed I would be consistently
SARAÍ MERINO VEGA 