my personal epiphany, my revelation

Tuesday was National Coming Out Day.  I haven't been one to make grand sweeping announcements about my sexuality, probably because my experience of coming to terms with my sexuality in the context of my spiritual identity has been a sacred one.  I knew early on, probably mostly subconsciously, that not everyone would appreciate my reasons for accepting and embracing my experience of attraction or my reasons for sharing my truth with others, so at first I only shared with those I loved and trusted.  I think subconsciously I knew I needed to be able to gradually metabolize what I was experiencing in a safe space, cultivating my own comfort and confidence in self, before sharing my experience of who I am with more than just a safe and close circle of friends and family. 

As I stated earlier, that process has been a sacred one.  The amount of love and spirit that has flowed into my life as a result of opening myself up to others has been completely life altering in unexpected ways.  I experienced a lot of fear and self doubt, disconnect from self and others and from God as a result of keeping myself safely concealed in a dark and isolated closet.  I experience my attraction to men as a very real and natural part of myself, certainly not something I chose.  In trying to shut down that part of myself, I didn't realize how much I was disconnecting myself from...myself.  I learned early on not to trust my feelings or my instincts because I quickly observed from the culture I grew up in that what I did feel wasn't appropriate. It quickly became very easy to start doubting any other feelings or instincts I had, and that's where the disconnect from self began.

From there the disconnect spreads from relationship with self to relationships with others.  Life becomes a game of not letting anyone get too close, for fear that they'll discover the secret.  If you're really determined to keep the secret, you distance yourself from anything you might naturally find enjoyment in for fear of it being percieved as "too gay".  No one is able to know the real you because you've become so disconnected from yourself that you don't even know the real you. 

The disconnect from self and from others naturally leads to a disconnect from the spirit or whatever you find speaks truth to your soul.  I believe my relationship with my Father in Heaven is heavily informed by the quality of my relationships with those around me.  Feeling a detachment from self and others naturally leads to feeling a detachment from God and from truth. 

So I guess it shouldn't come as a surprise that when I decided to acknowledge and accept and embrace the truth of my existence and lean into the dissonance, that I would feel more connected to self.  More connected to friends and family.  More connected to the beautiful gift of personal revelation.  That incredible gift that helps me understand who I am and what I'm capable of.  The truth is though, that outpouring of the spirit is the opposite of what I expected.  The irony is that I was actually already experiencing the worst case scenario that I thought would follow if I accepted and embraced my sexuality as a God given part of me.  I was already living what I was afraid of.  A disconnect from the divine.  Little did I know of the beauty and love, resonance and rhythm that would flow into my life as a result of embracing what I feared. 

The real beauty of my experience is that it isn't just my own and it certainly doesn't just belong to the homosexual.  It's a narrative that belongs to all of us.  As Jay Michealson quotes Olive Elaine Hannant and Chris Glaser in this absolutely beautiful piece from Religion Dispatches, "Coming out is a personal epiphany, a revelation" "a rite of vulnterability that reveals the sacred in our lives--our worth, our love, our lovemaking, our beloved, our community, our context of meaning, and our God."