The Inner Pilgrimage: What If the Life You’re Searching For Is Already Calling You?
There are times in life when everything can look perfectly fine from the outside, yet somewhere underneath it all there is a quiet feeling that something isn't quite right.
You might have the job.
The relationship.
The house.
The routine.
You may even have built the life you once thought you wanted.
And still, something within you whispers:
There must be more than this.
I have become increasingly interested in that feeling.
Not because I think we should constantly be dissatisfied with our lives, or forever searching for the next thing, but because I wonder whether sometimes that restlessness is actually trying to tell us something.
Perhaps it isn't always unhappiness.
Perhaps sometimes it is misalignment.
When life begins asking bigger questions
I recently recorded a conversation for Soul Sync with spiritual teacher and researcher Michael Dove.
Michael has spent decades exploring spirituality, consciousness and the nature of the soul. His journey has taken him through many different traditions and across much of the world, including almost six years living in India and several journeys into the Himalayas.
But one of the things that stayed with me most wasn't where Michael had travelled.
It was his belief that some of the most difficult moments in our lives can become the beginning of a much deeper journey.
A relationship ends.
A career no longer feels right.
Something we believed was secure suddenly changes.
Our identity begins to shift.
The life we had carefully constructed somehow stops fitting us.
Very often, our instinct is to get everything back to the way it was.
We want the discomfort to stop.
We want certainty again.
And understandably so.
But sometimes the question isn't:
How do I get my old life back?
Sometimes the more interesting question is:
What is this experience asking me to become?
The moments that appear to take us off course
Michael described how disruption can create the impetus to begin searching — to look more deeply at ourselves, our lives and ultimately the nature of the soul.
I found myself thinking about how often this happens.
We tend to imagine a spiritual awakening as something rather beautiful.
Meditation.
Synchronicities.
Feeling connected.
Perhaps suddenly becoming aware of spirit or experiencing something we can't logically explain.
But in reality, awakening can be incredibly inconvenient.
Sometimes it arrives disguised as the very thing we wish hadn't happened.
It dismantles certainty.
It asks us questions we'd rather avoid.
And occasionally, it removes things from our lives that we were absolutely convinced we needed.
Only later can we look back and recognise that what felt like an ending was also moving us somewhere else.
That doesn't mean we need to pretend painful experiences aren't painful.
Nor do I believe we need to find some grand spiritual explanation for everything that happens to us.
But I do think there is value in occasionally standing back from our lives and asking:
What has this changed in me?
What do I see now that I couldn't see before?
And where is my life trying to take me next?
When your soul wants something your mind can't name
Another part of the conversation really fascinated me.
Michael talked about people who know they need to change something in their lives, but can't necessarily describe what the alternative looks like.
I think many people know this feeling.
You know where you are isn't quite right.
But you don't yet know where you're going.
And that space between the two can be deeply uncomfortable.
We live in a world that loves labels.
What do you do?
Where do you live?
What's the plan?
What's the five-year goal?
What are you trying to become?
But what if the next part of your life doesn't have a name yet?
Michael made the point that sometimes the thing somebody is moving towards might not even fit into an existing category.
I love that idea.
Because perhaps we don't always need the entire map before taking the next step.
Sometimes the first step is simply acknowledging:
This no longer feels like me.
That alone can be enormously powerful.
The lesson Michael found beside the Ganges
One of Michael's most extraordinary stories comes from Varanasi in India.
He arrived there in 2020, just days before COVID changed the world.
As tourists and pilgrims disappeared, Michael chose not to evacuate. He stayed beside the River Ganges and gradually became part of the local community.
The disappearance of visitors created very real hardship for people who depended upon them.
Together with friends in India and supporters elsewhere, Michael helped establish Meals on the Ganges, providing food to local people during the pandemic.
And he shared a teaching from an Indian saint that has stayed with him:
The quickest way to enlightenment? Feed the hungry.
There is something beautifully grounding about that.
We can make spirituality incredibly complicated.
We can search for extraordinary experiences.
We can read another book.
Take another course.
Attend another workshop.
Buy another crystal — and heaven knows some of us need very little encouragement there.
But perhaps sometimes spirituality is much simpler.
Notice another human being.
Help somebody.
Be kind.
Listen.
Serve.
Love.
Maybe the spiritual path isn't always about escaping ordinary life.
Maybe it is about becoming more fully present within it.
The outer pilgrimage and the inner pilgrimage
Towards the end of our conversation, Michael said something that ultimately gave the episode its title.
He described life as a series of pilgrimages.
There is the outer pilgrimage.
The places we travel.
The experiences we pursue.
The jobs we take.
The relationships we enter.
The things we build.
The identities we create.
And then there is the inner pilgrimage.
The journey beneath all of that.
The journey towards understanding ourselves.
Towards recognising what feels true.
Towards noticing where we are living from fear, expectation or habit rather than alignment.
Towards the soul.
And perhaps we need both.
Because the outer experiences of our lives often become the very things that reveal what is happening within us.
What does this have to do with a psychic or mediumship reading?
Probably more than you might initially think.
People come for readings for all sorts of reasons.
Sometimes someone wants the reassurance and evidence that can come through a mediumship reading and the opportunity to feel a connection with someone they love in the spirit world.
At other times, somebody comes for a psychic or tarot reading because they are standing at one of these strange crossroads in life.
Something is changing.
A relationship feels uncertain.
A career no longer fits.
They feel drawn towards something but can't quite understand what.
For me, a good reading should never take somebody's choices away from them.
It should help create space.
Space to see.
Space to reflect.
Space to recognise possibilities that perhaps became difficult to see when standing right in the middle of everything.
Because ultimately, your life remains yours.
Your choices remain yours.
And your pilgrimage is uniquely your own.
Perhaps you don't need another destination
We spend an enormous amount of time believing happiness exists somewhere just ahead of us.
When I achieve this.
When I meet that person.
When I earn that amount.
When I finally become the version of myself I think I should be.
But perhaps the question isn't always:
Where do I need to get to?
Perhaps every now and again we need to ask:
What is already trying to emerge from within me?
And maybe that feeling that something needs to change isn't something to be frightened of.
Maybe it is an invitation.
Not necessarily to throw your entire life into the air tomorrow morning.
Please don't blame me when you hand in your resignation at 9:03am.
But perhaps it is an invitation to become curious.
To pay attention.
To notice what feels alive.
To notice what feels heavy.
And to begin listening to yourself a little more closely.
Because the greatest pilgrimage of our lives might not be the one that takes us across continents.
It might simply be the journey that brings us home to ourselves.
Listen to the full conversation:
The Inner Pilgrimage: Finding Your Soul's Path with Michael Dove — Soul Sync.
You can discover more about Michael Dove at michaelmonk.bio.
If you feel drawn to explore something happening in your own life, I offer mediumship readings, psychic tarot readings and combined psychic and mediumship readings, both online and from Bristol.