How Jesus Saved My Life.

My Testimony of Being Born Again.

IN THE BEGINNING.

I didn’t grow up with any kind of religion or faith.

I had a relatively solid, stable suburban upbringing. My parents are still together to this day and I have fond memories from childhood, but we didn’t have God.

I got baptised as a baby, but this was more a perfunctory act to appease my grandmother than any spiritual conviction from my parents.

It’s safe to say I lived a secular and non-spiritually focussed life up until my teenage years.

‘NORMAL’ TEENAGE LIFE

Then when I was 14, a youth group came to our school and myself and my friends got involved for a couple of months. It was more of social thing for us, somewhere to hang out on a Friday night, but while we were all recovering from our Slurpee drinking competition the crew would speak to us about Jesus.

One night, one of the youth group leaders invited us to church and I had an incredibly powerful encounter with the Holy Spirit. During worship my whole body was on fire and I was sweating profusely feeling the power of God. When the pastor invited people to raise their hand give their life to Jesus - I did.

I don’t think I had any conscious idea what that meant but I did know something very real was happening and so I responded. To be honest with you, I don’t remember exactly what happened after that, but I think it would have been only a few months later that my friends and I had completely forgotten about church, God and Jesus and I was well and truly living the ‘normal’ teenage life – binge drinking, experimenting with drugs, partying and boys.

My parents were none the wiser about what we were getting up to behind their backs. Sexual promiscuity was a big thing for me as a way to get love and validation and my first experiences with boys were far from safe, loving or respectful and I would go as far to say they were abusive at times, but in a world where it’s normal for a young girl to learn about her sexuality from magazines and music videos I didn’t really know any better.

ENTERING THE NEW AGE.

When I hit 18 years old my interests began to change.

I had begun to become fascinated with human behaviour and psychology and had an increasing hunger to explore the world and everyone and everything in it.

It started with a book on quantum physics that blew my mind open to the fact that we were not just fleshly beings but there was an immaterial and interconnected aspect to this universe. This began a spiritual quest that led me down all kinds of paths, ecstatic dance, breath work, tarot, channelling, archetypes and reading all kinds of books about magic, energy and manifestation. I also attended Vipassana Buddhist meditation courses.

My hunger and fascination only increased and I dove head first into all things alternative spirituality. I ended up signing up for a year long transpersonal art therapy diploma where we met every day to dive into our inner worlds, our psyche and our feelings. We did lots of rituals and therapeutic processes to explore our ‘shadow side’. In the same year I discovered the world of Neo-Tantra and sacred sexuality which is what really began to draw me in. Tantra was all about finding healing and empowerment through sexuality, and with my own relative wounds and insecurities in this area, it was the perfect fit for my trauma.

At the end of a full-time year of tasting all the flavours of the new age banquet, I had a full blown psychotic episode where I didn’t sleep or eat for weeks and resulted in me being hospitalised and diagnosed with Bipolar. For a few months I was experiencing all kinds of mania; high levels of sexual promiscuity, delusions of grandeur, intense feelings and often quite dark and disturbing visions. At the time, and for many years later, I believed this experience was my kundalini spiritual awakening, despite my close family, who were with me through it all, being severely traumatised by how unwell I was. I had adopted the belief that this was my shamanic initiation and I simply had to learn how to harness and channel all this power and energy I had.

Once out of the mental health system, my hunger for more tantric and ecstatic experiences did not slow down and I began attending more and more training and workshops. I began to travel over the world tasting and trying more and more things from all kinds of teachers and practices, having all kinds of experiences with all kinds of people. My body was suffering with continual bladder infections and always having some kind of death and rebirth spiritual or emotional breakdown or breakthrough process, yet still I continued to go deeper and deeper believing that I was becoming more transformed, healed and empowered.

BECOMING A CULT LEADER.

I came back to Australia after all this exploring, determined to become a leader and teacher in this field myself. I began working in the industry offering tantra sessions with random men off the internet for money and then created a big sexuality festival called Sex Camp where others would come and satiate their hunger for all things sexual and spiritual.

The intention of everything I was doing was for people to become more empowered, free and liberated human beings. I saw the mundane mainstream world as being rigid, conditioned and shut down and myself as the leader of a more emotionally, spiritually and sexually liberated world.  I began to get a name for myself by sharing my vulnerable feelings, inspired thoughts and passionate opinions online and eventually Dancing Eros came to be.

Dancing Eros was a conscious erotic dance course where we would explore all these different feminine archetypes to find sexual, spiritual and emotional liberation. We believed the work was going to change the world, that it was a ‘shamanic entity’ that had channelled through me and it had its own desires and visions for humanity and we had been chosen in a way to serve and devote ourselves to it.

Dancing Eros got popular and it got popular fast.

It came on the scene at a time when another wave of the empowered goddess movement was ripe to bloom and I happened to catch the wave and be thrust into leading what quickly became a beast of a movement with a life of its own. 

Many of the practices had a cathartic and emotional release focus and we would do all kinds of rituals to express and channel these different sexual archetypes to access our feminine power.

I would have times when I would be completely overtaken by them, believing what was often abusive, aggressive, reactive, highly emotionally unstable behaviour was me expressing the collective pain body of the repressed ‘Wild Woman’

I’d dance erotically for random men in our rituals, believing we were healing the world of repressed sexual shame and by embracing our conscious “sl*ts”. I remember after one ritual, crying the whole time being full of repulsion and disgust and being completely unable to walk and speak.

However I would regularly disregard my morning after vulnerability as a result of my conditioning that I just needed to be liberated, rather than the fact that I was actually doing something that wasn’t good.

I taught all these things to so many others as well; if that was you - I am so, so sorry.

I truly believed I was on the cutting edge of consciousness, pushing past mainstream repressive norms created by the matrix of society and leading and teaching others to do the same.

Behind all the spiritual narcissism and bravado; deep down I was incredibly broken and insecure. Anyone that got close enough to me personally or professionally were privy to how unstable I was. I was not a well person at all, but the power of this business entity and my own public figure status seemed to prop me up and keep me going.

Hundreds and hundreds of women came through the course becoming more and more devoted and enamoured with the work as community built around it like wide fire. I was full of pride and kept myself safe on a pedestal, yet deep down I felt very alone and unworthy of love.

THE COLLAPSE.

Although the business was getting more and more successful, I was getting worse and worse; regularly by hitting some kind of emotional, mental, physical burn out or collapse.

The stark difference between what I was teaching and my own personal life and struggles was becoming more and more obvious and I began to slide into a mental, emotional and spiritual breakdown.

I had always been highly sensitive to things. There were times it was so acute I would be unable to be left alone for 20 minutes without having a panic attack. I felt disease was riddling my whole body and I was a complete mess, unable to function.

By now though, I had a whole team around me who were passionately devoted to this entity that was Dancing Eros. I had trained multiple teachers who were teaching in different parts of the country and the world and a huge community who cared deeply about this work and it continuing on with its mission on the planet – and so we pressed forward.

From this point on though, I never felt peace about Dancing Eros. It seemed to be getting more and more complex; we had started to teach the work to help men access their feminine side, I was adding more and more archetypes and levels to try to get to this place where I felt like I could stand in integrity with it being propagated and shared with the world at a global scale. There were always dramas or things going on in the community or the team. Something just was not right.

I constantly swung between this feeling and sense to end the whole thing to having team meetings where we would be making plans to change the world, determined that the show must go on.

After a year of this struggle and me not really able to produce for the entity the way that I used to, the business hit a financial crisis, power dynamics were exposed and most of the team scattered. The cult had collapsed and my own complete brokenness was revealed beyond question.

During this period of slowly cleaning up the massive mess that I had created, it was becoming quite common for me to spiral into even darker places. I would be unable to get out of bed for days and going into really, really dark holes of mental and emotional torment, a mix of chronic addictions, anxiety and depression, overwhelmingness, despair and shame.

I can’t count how many times I said “I just want to die” and really in my heart meant it.

We kept going with the business but I knew something was off; I didn’t know exactly what I was continuing to try to do. Was I trying to improve, heal and transform myself or tweak and transform the work itself to find peace with it? Some days I’d be flying thinking the phoenix had finally risen from the ashes and I was having a rebirth back into the unapologetic badass superstar I was destined to be, then I’d be collapsing again into a depressive broken mess where I felt so much shame about my past choices and who I was.

It was this constant cycle between the two, another death and another rebirth, like a never ending spiritual process hamster wheel.

There were so many reasons and explanations I had for this that many others around me perpetuated and supported too.

Here were just a few of them:

• I had an immature masculine side and needed to access my inner man.

• I had a wild dark feminine that needed to be free of rigid patriarchal structures.

• I was going through an extended Saturn return or some other astrological influence like the moon, eclipse, mercury in retrograde.

• I had a chakra imbalance that needed clearing.

• That I was sabotaging and scared of my power.

• A dysregulated nervous system due to birth trauma.

• My human desing type.

• Needing more Dragon energy, mother energy, father energy, queen energy – some archetype initiation or imbalance.

And the list goes on and on and on and on….

I began to look to other leaders who were thriving and boasting about their success and their gifts in the same way that I was all those years ago and I found myself pleading to work with them, sometimes for free because they ‘saw my potential’ and wanted to help and sometimes I’d dish out large amounts of money I really didn’t have.

I suddenly was at the bottom of the new age spirituality and personal development food chain and I was the one desperate for an upgrade and willing to do whatever it took or spend whatever I had to get back to the top!

GOING BACK TO CHURCH.

One of the beliefs I held for many years was that we were going to revolutionise the sexuality industry by creating these ‘conscious’ spiritual sexual temples (i.e. strip clubs and brothels) that worshipped the feminine and turn that industry into something sacred.

At some point in my research on this I became quite fascinated with the big mega churches like Hillsong and seeing the power of such a huge movement we would visualise these huge temples and concerts to worship our own version of God.

Likely sparked from all my market research, a few friends and I decided to check out a local church one morning. As soon as I walked into the building I remember feeling that same presence and power of God that I had felt when I was a teenager. As I looked around the room at all the people eyes closed, arms in the air worshipping God, I knew I was witnessing something real.

I had been in hundreds of rituals over the years and in that moment all of that paled in comparison to what I was now witnessing around me in these people. I remember personally feeling quite awkward and vulnerable myself in the space. I didn’t know the God who they were worshipping and praising, and to be honest, it made me feel something that wasn’t so familiar for me; Humility and Peace.

Although I don’t remember anything that was said that day, I knew I had experienced something real and it stuck with me. I began to listen to Christian worship music and God became more and more a part of my life in the background of everything else I was still doing.

God was really starting to come into my life. I found I rarely felt any true peace, healing or transformation in my own practices and the modality that I was teaching, nor to the philosophies and values of my colleagues and community.

The only time I was truly finding peace was riding my bike along the beach near my house and singing along to worship music. I’d sometimes have the most incredible anxiety or torment and then I’d listen to a song about Jesus and I would feel calm.

God had also started to come to me in other ways, through pictures I was painting, through songs and through poems I was writing. I even started trying to bring him into Dancing Eros. His presence in my life was increasing and a relationship with God was forming in the background and bringing me a comfort like nothing else was.

WHEN GOD FINALLY SHOWED ME THE TRUTH.

After that, the battle between this kind of peace and torment was becoming even more obvious.

Up until this point my spiritual belief and theology was that everything was God, that we all had equal parts of dark and light inside of us and evil was simply a projection of our own shadow side that we needed to own and integrate.

One night, while I was in another one of these frequently visited ‘dark holes’, I suddenly had this thought come to me that evil existed and that there was something very dark inside of me. This was a completely new revelation for me. This revelation came in a flash and it rocked me sideways. I begun to urgently write this poem about Evil and proceeded to walk around my home reading this poem over and over again.

This may sound kind of crazy to some of you, but hear me out.

As I stood in my house loudly proclaiming this poem about evil with so much boldness and authority, it was like I was speaking to the demons that had been tormenting me for so long and telling them ENOUGH! Eventually I stopped and I had that same familiar peace wash over me and I knew in that moment I was ending my business the next day.

Up until that point, this decision had always brought me great stress and torment as I wrestled with this still small voice that said end it. I had felt owned for so many years by it, I often had this sense of being dragged around by that business, like something had been holding me down and stopping me from getting out and finally whatever that was had lost power. At that point I didn’t have conscious awareness of what was going on but I finally had peace to be obedient to it.

The next day I did.

At our last business meeting I felt the prompting to play a Christian worship song to close our meeting and myself and the remainder of the team went around the circle and gave our closing word for the journey– the word I kept hearing in my head was Sanctification.

I had no idea what this word meant but when I looked it up after the meeting I wasn’t surprised.

noun

1.  The act of sanctifying or making holy; in theology, the act of God's grace by which the affections are purified and the soul is cleansed from sin and consecrated to God.

From there I began listening to that still small voice getting stronger and stronger and I removed myself from all other new age events and festivals I was involved with over the coming months. One by one, I closed the door on each of these things and any affiliation with them. As I did, the same peace and joy I had been experiencing over those years since walking into that church was filling up my whole spirit on a whole other level.

Now, without a question, I knew God and I knew it was Jesus.

I knew He was real in every fibre of my being, that the still small voice was HIM. It was like I could look back on my life and see and feel exactly where he had been. I knew he had loved me all my life and had been waiting for me to love him back and I was finally home with him. It was the most beautiful and powerful experience I’ve ever had, to finally be in the presence of the One who made me.

He then opened my eyes all the way to see the absolute lies and deception that I had been believing and teaching for so many years. He showed me all the things I’d been a part of or experienced, all those traumas from my younger years that had broken His heart and that the path of the hamster wheel of self, the rituals, the processes, the practices all about self were all a deception and an attempt to be my own god and help others be their own god too. It was a false grab for power coming from a deep pain, when really he just wanted his daughter back.

He showed me my pride, my arrogance, my brokenness, my rebelliousness, my absolute desperate need for Him and all my attempts to try to do my life my way. He brought me to my knees.

It was suddenly so clear the trap I had been in that this whole new age world, this satanic spiritual matrix that I thought was giving me freedom and healing, was actually just keeping me more bound up than before.

His presence was so loving, so kind, so forgiving, so peaceful and beautiful and real.

All the torment and the torture lifted and I was home for the first time in my life………. I was home.

A NEW CREATION IN CHRIST.

I don’t know if these words are truly doing justice to what happened over those two days, but it was incredibly real and profound and I have not been the same since.

I didn’t really know anything about Jesus or the Bible when it happened, but I had experienced the true power of the Holy Spirit and that was enough for me to begin to dig deep into the bible and what the gospel actually is and what Jesus had done.

So many things instantly changed within me in a supernatural way and it was like God’s heart became my heart.

I went from being so hyper-sensitive to so full of peace. From dropping ‘f’ bombs every third or fourth word to literally being unable to utter a curse word.

I went from flouncing around the place in tiny little revealing clothes loving getting men’s attention, to having an instant feeling to cover up and dress modestly to not only protect myself but also to protect other men.

I went from being an incredibly desirous person often wanting and lusting after more with an underlying sense of dissatisfaction, to suddenly wanting for NOTHING and having a deep appreciation of the blessings I already had in my life.

I went from being regularly tormented and depressed to feeling so blessed to have another day in this life.

He was all I needed.

I didn’t need all these altars, magical items, rituals and practices anymore to feel in control or at peace. I didn’t need to seek the stars, moons and planets for answers or confirmation. I didn’t need multiple massages and bodywork sessions every month. I didn’t need hours of morning practices and self care techniques to function. I just needed Him and He was enough.

I began to meet so many other born again believers who were so full of the love of God it blew my mind. People who had come out of their own brokenness and darkness; who had committed crimes, gone to jail, been drug addicts, alcoholics, homeless, gangstas, abuse victims, others who had been lost in the new age like me, all who are now living with a deep and passionate love for Jesus who has set them completely free.

I met people who had known Jesus their whole life and had a beautiful faith and were overflowing with his love - people who generously gave so much of their time to me praying for me and pouring God’s love into me without asking anything in return. It was like I stepped into a whole other world where there was not always this exchange for healing or love, it was just people who had freely received God’s love freely giving it away.

I also met people who had experienced incredibly intense religious trauma which made me deeply sad because I knew that whatever they had experienced had nothing to do with this God I now knew and the Jesus I was learning about. If this is you, I am so sorry you experienced that. Many people have used Jesus’ name for their own agendas of power, control and abuse, which is exactly one of the things He came to set us free from.

As I began to read the Bible so much of what had happened to me made sense; Life finally made sense. Spiritual truth wasn’t some nebulous thing that was constantly subject to change. The spiritual truth actually lined up with reality. I could clearly see the love of God in the world. I could clearly spot the works of Satan. The search for truth was over and again and again my questions have been answered as I go deeper into reading, learning and researching. The more I see the changes in myself and others through knowing him, the more I believe Jesus is who He says He is. That He wasn’t just a prophet or an ascended master - that he truly was God walking this earth, that He revealed God’s true nature to humanity, laid His life down and rose again so that those who believe could be fully reconciled and back in relationship to God. So we could walk and live in His light. So we could actually know what love is which is to die to self and live as Christ.

I one hundred percent believe in the demonic realm now. I’ve seen it, I’ve felt it, I know the power of darkness is very real in this world and we can open up all kinds of doorways through spiritual practices and our own sin that allow things to take up residence in our spirit that are not from God. I realise now so much of me channelling and serving these archetypes or accessing my ‘shadow’ was literally just me befriending demons and welcoming darkness and chaos into my life. I have no darkness within me now and I do not partner with it. This isn’t a spiritual bypass either, I feel more connected to reality and the darkness and pain that is in the world than I ever have before. I just don’t need to live in my own little bubble of bliss away from it all and then speak about love and peace from there. No. Jesus brought the light into the dark world, into the broken places where it was needed and that is what He calls those who follow Him to do.

God is good and He is Love and He is the true light that came into this world. Not the false light of the new age and all that fluffy nonsense, but the true light of the living God.

This year has been a whole other world for me. I am starting life again and feel like a little baby in so many ways. I don’t know exactly what is in store yet, but I do know that whatever happens, I have the foundation of Jesus that is so solid and nothing can shake that. No matter what happens in life He is there and it’s such a joy to just be made more and more into His image.

My new years resolution this year was to know God more and to be part of having others know Him too.

While before my new years resolutions were so often about the SELF, what I wanted and what I was stepping into, every year from now on it’s just all about Him.

What a relief!

We are made to live for the One who made us.

I can honestly say in one year I have experienced more healing and freedom with Jesus compared to 13 years of everything else I tried. I have no shame in saying I needed a saviour, that I was a sinner in complete spiritual bondage bound for hell completely blind and lost and now I see! That I was saved by his grace

Having a personal and intimate relationship with God is the best thing! I am so grateful to know Him. It’s not always easy but it’s true, it’s real, it’s humble, it’s raw and it’s a spirituality that is anchored in reality. I am far from a perfect person and I still have my moments, but my mental, emotional and spiritual wellbeing now is a whole other level of stability and that is not because of anything I did, there was no practice or modality or strategy that did that - it was Him and only Him and He continues to walk with me through all of it.

He is my strength and my guide, my counsellor, my Lord and my saviour and He gets me through everything and every blessing I have is from Him and every gift that I have is from Him and for Him.

Even on the hard days I have never looked back and wished for the life I had before. I will never stop praising His name and all He’s done for me until I take my last breath.

Thank You Jesus, Thank you for Restoring my Soul and Bring me Home to You!

SAVED BY GRACE

If you got to the end of this, then wow congratulations! lol

There are so many more things I could say about the goodness of God and the dangers of the new age but for now I will leave it here. I will continue to be blogging here and sharing online, so if you’d like to follow along then please feel free to subscribe.

It is my deepest joy to be part of other people coming to know God for themselves. I’ve been blessed to see so many people already saved this year, including my own family, and although that is such an intimate and personal thing, please know I am absolutely here to answer any questions you may have about Jesus, about the new age or to pray for you.

Jesus said, ‘And you shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free” and this has truly been the case for me and so many others I know.

To know Him is freedom, to step off the hamster wheel of seeking and to come home to His presence.

If you feel any call to know Him, just ask. Ask God to show you the truth and He will do it. Start to read the bible if you haven’t already, start with the new testament. Ask Questions!

We only have to be humble and willing to open the door to Him knocking and He will reveal himself.

The word ‘saved’ in the Bible literally means to be made whole, to be saved from death and destruction. It is to be set free from the power the devil has over your life and to get right with God. We have all sinned (this means we’ve missed the mark of Gods perfection) but through Jesus we are forgiven and God’s unconditional love is there… waiting to save us, to heal us and make us whole and bring us home to him for all of ETERNITY!

That is my prayer for everyone in the world, for you reading this- to know the epic love that God has for you.

You are His precious daughter or son and He loves you so much!

Call out to Him and He will answer you.

“Ask and it is given, seek and you shall find, knock and the door will be opened to you” - Jesus

Be Blessed xo