There they sat on my shelf, sixteen three-subject notebooks, their spines cracked and worn from constant handling. Each one was filled with my handwriting, front to back, margins packed with notes and asterisks pointing to additional insights I’d squeezed into every available space. Universal laws. Metaphysical correspondences. Crystal properties. Chakra alignments. Moon phases and their energetic signatures. Pages and pages of what I believed was sacred knowledge.
For years, those notebooks were my pride. They represented hundreds of hours of study, dedication, and spiritual seeking. When doubt occasionally whispered at the edges of my consciousness, I would look at that stack of journals and think: How could all of this be wrong? How could sixteen notebooks full of carefully documented information not represent real knowledge?
The weight of those notebooks felt like proof. The sheer volume felt like validation.
I was so wrong. And yet, I was also right about one thing: those notebooks were indeed the key to everything. Just not in the way I thought.
The Comfort of Accumulation
Looking back now, I can see what I was really doing with all that writing. I was building a fortress. Every time I transcribed another universal law, every time I documented the metaphysical properties of rose quartz or the spiritual significance of repeating numbers, I was adding another brick to a wall that protected my worldview from scrutiny.
The act of writing itself felt sacred. My hand would move across the page, translating concepts from books, YouTube videos, and blog posts into my own neat script. The physical sensation of filling page after page created a powerful psychological feedback loop. I wasn’t just learning, I was creating something tangible. Something real. Something that took up physical space in the world.
And my ego loved it.
My ego loved being the person who knew about energy healing. Who could explain the law of attraction. Who understood the vibrational frequencies of different foods and thoughts. My ego fed on the feeling of having special knowledge, of seeing beyond what “normal” people could see. Those sixteen notebooks were proof that I was deeper, more spiritually evolved, more in tune with the universe than the average person scrolling through their mundane lives.
When friends or family questioned my beliefs, I could mentally point to those notebooks. I might not have said it out loud, but the thought was always there: “You don’t understand because you haven’t done the work I’ve done. You haven’t studied like I’ve studied.”
The notebooks were my credentials in a spiritual path that offered no formal education, no peer review, no objective verification. They were the receipts for my investment of time and energy. And I needed them to be meaningful because I had invested so much.
The Cracks Begin to Show
But here’s the thing about building your worldview on a foundation that can’t be tested or verified: the cracks eventually appear. And when they do, you have two choices. You can patch them over and reinforce the walls, or you can investigate them honestly.
For a long time, I patched. Every contradiction got explained away. Every failed manifestation was because I hadn’t aligned my vibration properly. Every time the promised signs from the universe didn’t appear, it was because I needed to be more patient, more trusting, more faithful.
I wrote those explanations in my notebooks too.
But then something shifted. I can’t point to a single moment when everything changed. It was more like a slow leak that eventually became impossible to ignore. Maybe it was the crushing weight of trying to maintain constant positive thinking while going through genuinely difficult circumstances. Maybe it was noticing how predictions from my favorite spiritual teachers never quite manifested the way they described. Maybe it was the exhaustion of trying to decode every coincidence as a message from the universe.
Or maybe it was simply that my authentic self, the part of me that existed before I adopted this identity, finally got tired of being silenced.
When the Evidence Speaks Against Itself
One day, I pulled out my notebooks. Not to add to them or to review my spiritual insights, but to actually read them. Really read them. I wanted to go back to the beginning, to remember why I’d been so convinced, to reconnect with that initial spark of discovery.
What I found shocked me.
Reading through those notebooks with fresh eyes was like watching a documentary about someone else’s descent into a belief system. I could see the progression so clearly. The early notebooks were full of tentative questions and genuine curiosity. But as the pages accumulated, something changed. The questions disappeared. The curiosity hardened into certainty. The open-minded exploration became rigid doctrine.
I saw patterns I’d never noticed before. The same concepts repeated over and over in slightly different language, as if repetition would make them more true. The circular reasoning that started with an assumption and then used that assumption to prove itself. The cherry-picked examples that confirmed what I already believed while conveniently ignoring anything that contradicted it.
And the contradictions. Oh, the contradictions.
In one notebook, I’d written about how we create our reality with our thoughts. A few notebooks later, I’d written about surrendering to divine timing and trusting the universe’s plan. How could both be true? If I was creating my reality, whose plan was I surrendering to?
I’d documented that everything happens for a reason and that there are no accidents, while also writing about how to manifest specific outcomes and change my life circumstances. But if everything already happens for a reason, what was I trying to change?
I’d filled pages with the law of attraction principles that promised I could have anything I wanted if I just vibrated at the right frequency. Yet I’d also written about karma and past life debts that needed to be repaid through suffering. Which was it? Could I attract anything, or was I bound by cosmic debts from previous lifetimes?
The notebooks that I thought contained knowledge were actually a map of my own confirmation bias, my wishful thinking, and my desperate need to believe that I understood how the universe worked.
The Ego's Last Stand
When I started seeing these contradictions, my ego put up a fierce fight. It suggested explanations: “You just need to understand it at a deeper level.” “These aren’t contradictions; they’re paradoxes that your rational mind can’t grasp.” “You’re being too analytical; you need to feel it with your heart.”
My ego reminded me of all the time I’d invested. All those hours of writing. All those notebooks. Was I really going to throw all of that away? Was I really going to admit that I’d been wrong for all those years?
The ego tried to reframe my doubts as a test. “This is your dark night of the soul,” it whispered. “Push through it and your faith will be stronger.”
But something in me had shifted. Maybe it was exhaustion from years of contorting my thinking to make it all fit together. Maybe it was the weight of living inauthentically, constantly performing spirituality rather than actually growing. Maybe it was just that I was tired of being scared, tired of worrying about negative thoughts attracting negative outcomes, tired of the constant vigilance required to maintain belief in a system that didn’t actually work.
Whatever it was, I made a choice. I stepped back and let my ego throw its tantrum without me. And in the space that opened up, my authentic self finally had room to speak.
What My Notebooks Really Revealed
When I read those notebooks without my ego’s narration, I saw something different. I saw a person who was genuinely seeking meaning and understanding. I saw someone who was dealing with real pain and uncertainty and who desperately wanted tools to make sense of it all. I saw curiosity and hope and a real desire to grow.
But I also saw how that genuine seeking got hijacked. How the New Age community offered simple answers to complex questions. How it provided a sense of control in an uncontrollable world. How it promised that suffering was optional if you just understood the right spiritual principles.
I saw how I’d used spiritual concepts to avoid facing hard truths. Instead of processing grief, I convinced myself that loved ones were now my spirit guides. Instead of acknowledging my lack of control, I told myself I was manifesting everything in my life. Instead of accepting uncertainty, I looked for signs and synchronicities that gave me the illusion of cosmic guidance.
The notebooks showed me something crucial: the difference between information and knowledge, between accumulation and understanding, between belief and truth.
I had accumulated an enormous amount of information. I could explain the seven hermetic principles, detail the properties of dozens of crystals, describe various energy healing modalities, and quote universal laws. But none of that was knowledge in any meaningful sense because none of it was verifiable, testable, or consistently applicable.
Real knowledge can be questioned, tested, and refined. It welcomes scrutiny because it’s built on evidence rather than faith. What I’d written in those notebooks didn’t meet that standard. It was a collection of unfalsifiable claims, circular reasoning, and concepts so vague they could be interpreted to mean almost anything.
The Paradox of Proof
Here’s the profound irony: the very thing I thought proved I was right, those sixteen notebooks, became the evidence that I was wrong. But they could only serve that function once I took my ego out of the driver’s seat.
When my ego was in control, it saw what it wanted to see. Volume equaled validity. Time invested equaled truth. Complexity equaled profundity. My ego interpreted my dedication as proof that the beliefs must be correct, because why else would I have invested so much?
But my authentic self could see clearly. It recognized that sincerity doesn’t equal truth. That you can be deeply committed to something and still be wrong. That time spent believing something doesn’t make it real.
My authentic self could acknowledge something my ego never could: I was deceived, but I was also complicit in my own deception. I chose belief over skepticism because belief felt better. I chose certainty over doubt because doubt was uncomfortable. I chose a spiritual framework that made me feel special over acknowledging that I was just a human being trying to make sense of a complex and often random universe.
The Red Flags Were Always There
Reading back through those notebooks, I was struck by how many red flags I’d ignored or rationalized away. They were there on almost every page, if only I’d been willing to see them.
The vagueness of the concepts that allowed them to be unfalsifiable. The way spiritual teachers spoke with absolute confidence about things they couldn’t possibly know. The promised transformations that never quite materialized. The goalposts that constantly moved when results didn’t appear. The explanations for why the laws didn’t work (you didn’t believe hard enough, you had blocked energy, you have karmic lessons to learn) that put all responsibility for failure on the believer while giving all credit for success to the system.
I’d written down so many testimonials and synchronicities, but I’d never noted all the times I looked for signs and found nothing. I’d documented the hits but never the misses. I’d recorded the times things worked out and attributed them to manifestation, but I’d explained away the failures as my own spiritual shortcomings.
The notebooks were a record of motivated reasoning. They showed me finding what I wanted to find and interpreting ambiguous experiences in ways that confirmed what I already believed.
Rebuilding on Firmer Ground
Letting go of those beliefs was harder than adopting them had been. The New Age worldview had become part of my identity. It shaped how I understood myself, how I made decisions, how I related to others. Releasing it meant facing uncertainty without the comforting structure of universal laws and cosmic plans.
It meant admitting I didn’t know why bad things happen. That I couldn’t control outcomes with my thoughts. That most coincidences are just coincidences. That the universe isn’t paying special attention to me. That life is often random, unfair, and devoid of hidden meaning.
Those realizations were humbling. Sometimes they were painful. But they were also strangely freeing.
I didn’t have to maintain constant positive thinking anymore. I could acknowledge negative emotions without fearing they would manifest negative outcomes. I could face difficult realities instead of spiritually bypassing them with platitudes about everything happening for a reason.
I could direct my energy toward actions that actually made a difference instead of trying to align my vibration or decode messages from the universe. I could build real skills instead of assuming the cosmos would provide. I could face uncertainty with honesty instead of false certainty.
And paradoxically, letting go of the belief that I understood how the universe worked opened me up to genuine wonder. Not the manufactured mysticism of New Age thinking, but actual awe at the strangeness and complexity of reality.
What I Kept and What I Released
I want to be clear about something: not everything from my time in New Age spirituality was wasted or harmful. The practices of meditation and mindfulness had real benefits, even if the metaphysical framework around them was unsupported. The focus on personal growth and self-reflection served me well, even if the specific methods didn’t work as advertised. The community and sense of connection were real, even if the shared beliefs were not.
What I released was the magical thinking. The assumption that my thoughts directly shaped external reality. The belief in invisible energies that could be manipulated. The conviction that I had special knowledge about how the universe worked. The idea that there was a cosmic plan and I could understand my role in it.
What I kept was the genuine seeking beneath all of that. The desire to understand myself better. The commitment to personal growth. The practice of reflection and mindfulness. The recognition that meaning is something we create rather than something we discover.
I still journal, but differently now. I write to process my thoughts, not to document universal truths. I ask questions instead of recording answers. I acknowledge uncertainty instead of claiming knowledge I don’t have. I follow where the evidence leads instead of starting with conclusions and finding support for them.
A New Relationship with Those Sixteen Notebooks
I still have those notebooks. They sit on my shelf, a reminder of a journey I needed to take, mistakes I needed to make, and lessons I needed to learn.
Sometimes I look at them and feel embarrassment. All that time. All that certainty. All that effort directed toward something that wasn’t real.
But more often, I look at them with compassion. I see someone who was doing their best with the tools they had. Someone who was seeking meaning in the face of suffering. Someone who wanted to believe they had more control than they actually did. Someone who was willing to do the work, even if they were working within a flawed framework.
Those notebooks represent a version of me I’ve moved beyond, but they’re also the evidence that made moving beyond possible. They’re the documentation of my own journey from belief to skepticism, from certainty to humility, from ego-driven seeking to authentic growth.
My ego wanted those notebooks to represent mastery and knowledge. My authentic self recognizes them as a record of learning what doesn’t work, which is its own form of valuable knowledge.
The Gift of Being Wrong
There’s something powerful about discovering you’ve been wrong about something significant. It’s humbling, yes. Sometimes it’s painful. But it’s also evidence that you’re capable of growth and change. That you’re not so attached to your beliefs that you can’t revise them in light of new understanding.
Being wrong, and being able to acknowledge it, is a form of intellectual and emotional maturity that our ego fights against with everything it has. The ego wants to be right. It wants the time and energy we’ve invested to mean something. It wants the identity we’ve built to remain intact.
But our authentic self, the part of us that exists beneath our beliefs and identities, is more interested in truth than comfort. It’s willing to face uncomfortable realities if that’s what honesty requires.
For me, those sixteen notebooks became the evidence that allowed my authentic self to override my ego’s protests. They were supposed to be proof that I was right. Instead, they became proof that I was willing to be wrong, which might be even more valuable.
The Message in the Medium
Here’s what I’ve come to understand: the content of those notebooks was flawed, but the act of creating them taught me something important. It taught me the value of documentation, of tracking my thinking over time, of being able to look back and see how my understanding has evolved.
I just needed to apply that practice to something more substantial than New Age pseudoscience.
Now when I write, I write with different questions in mind. Not “What does this mean?” but “How do I know this?” Not “What is the universe telling me?” but “What does the evidence actually show?” Not “How can I manifest this outcome?” but “What actions can I take that have a reasonable chance of moving me toward my goals?”
The notebooks taught me that I’m capable of dedication and sustained effort. I just needed to point that dedication toward pursuits that were grounded in reality rather than wishful thinking.
For Those Still Writing in Their Own Notebooks
If you’re reading this and you have your own stack of journals filled with spiritual concepts, metaphysical correspondences, or New Age teachings, I want you to know I’m not judging you. I was you. I understand the appeal, the comfort, the sense of meaning those practices provide.
But I also want to encourage you to do what I eventually did: read your notebooks with fresh eyes. Not with the goal of confirming what you’ve written, but with genuine curiosity about what they actually reveal.
Ask yourself hard questions. Do these concepts actually work consistently? Are there contradictions you’ve been explaining away? Are you documenting hits while ignoring misses? Are you interpreting vague concepts in whatever way fits your current situation?
Most importantly: is your ego in the driver’s seat, or your authentic self?
Your ego will fight to protect your beliefs and the identity you’ve built around them. It will offer explanations for why you should keep believing. It will remind you of all the time you’ve invested. It will suggest that doubt is a test or a spiritual attack.
But your authentic self knows the truth. It knows when you’re living in alignment with reality and when you’re constructing elaborate stories to avoid facing that reality. It knows the difference between genuine growth and spiritual performance.
Listen to it.
The Freedom on the Other Side
Letting go of my New Age beliefs didn’t leave me empty or without meaning, as I’d feared. Instead, it opened up space for genuine growth. For facing reality as it is rather than as I wished it to be. For building real skills rather than assuming the universe would provide. For creating meaning through my actions and relationships rather than discovering it in cosmic signs.
It also freed me from the exhausting work of maintaining belief in things that didn’t hold up to scrutiny. I don’t have to explain why the law of attraction didn’t work this time. I don’t have to decode synchronicities. I don’t have to worry about negative thoughts attracting negative outcomes. I don’t have to pretend I know things I don’t actually know.
That freedom is worth more than the comfortable certainty my New Age beliefs provided.
The Sixteen Notebooks
They sit on my shelf, those sixteen notebooks, physical evidence of a journey that taught me more than I could have anticipated. They remind me that the path to truth isn’t always straight, that being wrong is part of being human, and that growth requires us to question even our most cherished beliefs.
My ego wanted them to represent knowledge. My authentic self recognizes them as the key to questioning what I thought I knew. And in the end, that questioning, that willingness to be wrong, that commitment to reality over comforting fiction—that’s the real knowledge I gained.
Sometimes the things we create to prove we’re right become the very evidence that shows us we’re wrong. And sometimes, that’s exactly what we need.
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Disclaimer: The information provided in this discussion is for general informational and educational purposes only. It is not intended as medical or professional advice. Only a qualified health professional can determine what practices are suitable for your individual needs and abilities.