​When my Dirty became my Divine

I have spent ten years of my life writing about spirituality and it seems I have had enough. I wrote a book about Tarot, I named it Dirty and Divine. My thought was that we are dualistic beings, any investigation of the Divine must, of course, have the Dirty of earthbound humanity within it. How very right I was. So right, in fact that I have crossed over to the other side. My Divine, is now the thing I take as granted. It is the Dirty that requires my attention, my heart, my thought and my words.
 
My spiritual path has been a most wonderful trip. It has taken me from an angsty young adult to being a Woman and now a Mother. It has shown me a path upon which I now tread with so much passion. I’m sane, stable and happy in my skin. My faith and belief in something wonderfully ‘more’ has not shifted.
 
What has altered is my need to pursue spirit to the ends of the earth. I feel that my spirituality has taken on a low burning vibe. It no longer needs to be up front and center. In fact, it’s better that it’s not. It works well as a base, a place I can return, a thing I can hang everything around. It is no longer a thing I need to investigate or calibrate any further. It just is. I just am. My divine, my spirit has become a backdrop; it is no longer the action.
 
That honor is now firmly with the actors of my life. For it is the Dirty, the humanity, the gritty every day that has arisen as being most important. It has taken over and drawn me back into the world. I’ll be honest… When writing Dirty and Divine, I had secretly hoped for visions, angels and empowering manifestation. What I got was real human life. In its most potent form, illness, death and addiction being a horribly strong theme. Whilst my inherent spirituality informed my approach to these moments of life, it didn’t change it. It didn’t make it go away. Yes, perhaps, it made it easier. But again, let me stress this, it didn’t change it. I still had to live through it.
 
That is where my Dirty and Divine collided. In this mix of all that I am, I found myself warming to the Dirty. It is, after all, the juice of a life, the stuff that is tangible, the chaos that is inevitable, the heart that hurts. This is all the purpose, is it not?
 
I have claimed this many times before, though perhaps not really lived it. But I will say it again, because right now it is hearteningly true. We are not here to float off into the ether just yet…
 
Our spirituality can become a distraction. It was for me. I distracted myself until I was well and truly far away from a situation that broke me up. I distracted myself through all measures of marital pain. I distracted myself within the rigors of pregnancy and childbirth. And it was all good, soulful distraction. It had worth, it had merit, it took me to grand inner places, it connected me to myself, to my heart, to my intrinsic worth and spirit. But I am done with that distraction, for the now. I am asking the distraction to take a step back.
 
I am ready again for the Dirty.
 
That is where my personal Dirty & Divine tarot vision quest took me. To live this life, guts and filth and all. Because we must suffer, we must feel ridiculous, inappropriate glee, we must emote, be real and make all the mistakes. We must engage with that which sits beneath our fingers. The divine resides in it all, of course... But the dirt, the dirt, the dirt… Here is where life begins. In this place our precise and personal medicine is formed. In the muck of decisions and repercussions is how lessons arise and become an ointment to be spread for souls to be saved. Within the dirt we are formed, in the grit and grind of the mother who made us. Unconscious, existing, cushioned by a womb we know not of. The dirt is, for now, our home, our point and our frighteningly genius purpose.
 
Dirty & Divine is now available for preorder and released March 2017 by Womancraft Publishing
 
So what is Dirty & Divine? You can read a little here, a lovely free sample of it...
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Bio.
 
Alice Grist is an acclaimed author and a mother of two. Her latest book, Dirty and Divine is released in March 2017. She is currently working on her fifth book, a soulful manifesto to reclaim the feminine, Woman. www.alicegrist.co.uk