The Heart Under the Floorboards
[Level 1: Transitional] Vulnerability is terrifying, so why am I here writing?
I’m crying while writing this. Not from a bad day or anything like that.
It’s because I need to write. And nothing’s coming today.
But why do I feel so compelled to write instead of taking a break?
Especially when I’m completely sober?
Especially when I’m running up a mean sleep deficit?
Especially when I’ve been writing basically every day for the past 4 weeks?
Especially when I keep getting ideas that I’m not ready to share out of lingering fear?
I have a working theory on that.
When longing overflows
I had a recent realization that I covered in What Saying Yes to God Means (Level 3). The TL;DR is that I could no longer hold back what’s been building up inside me for the past several years.
But what I’m still unclear on is: why? And why now (as my supportive, but understandably confused spouse was asking)?
I don’t know if it’s a factor of:
no community (sangha) to exchange my evolving ideas with (do I dare try my luck with Reddit?)
my experience deepening to a point that I can no longer just brush it off as a casual hobby (it was SO hard to just jump right into morning standup after something as mind-bending as the realization I had in When Being Becomes Doing, NOT the Other Way Around hit me right beforehand)
a genuine growing desire to want to share something in the chance that it’s useful to someone else who’s struggling
Or is the answer to why and why now something more... insidious?
the spiritualized ego trying to distract me from being with more doing (HMMM... this one honestly deserves its own follow-up post)
trying to make my spiritual journey meaningful outside of my own life by making it my “duty” to share
something I still don’t have the awareness to realize because the ego is REALLY GOOD at self-preservation
It’s SO GOOD at self-preservation, in fact, that it’s been running me ragged fighting for its life while a new one tries to emerge from my depths.
The double life of the “modern mystic”
What I do know is that I’m backed up like the highway at rush hour ever since meditation has become more than just “stress relief.”
My secret “double-life” has been eating away at me. The heart of a mystic is beating under the floorboards... and I can no longer ignore its pounding.
I’m tired of living in shame for what I’m becoming when it’s given my life meaning. I thought I’d only ever be able to manufacture that feeling, cobbling it together from society’s expectations of a “good life.” That only ever made me tired. And like many people, I’m tired of being tired.
Stretched to the breaking point
I’ve been struggling with this double-life for about a year. Looking back at my journals, the strain was visible—and the language I used was painfully consistent.
The day I finally broke and came out of the “mystic’s closet” to my spouse, I wrote a very raw entry in my journal:
What I want to tell him:
“I don’t feel like I can be myself around you anymore. Not because you’ve changed, but because I have... and I know there’s no way to explain that will make you understand. When we made our vows, I kept nothing hidden from you. But a year later when I started turning inwards and digging into my own depths, I found things I didn’t know how to translate into words... and it’s only grown the deeper I’ve looked. And here I am 3.5 years later, feeling like I’m being torn in half by something even I don’t understand, my soul screaming for more than I had ever planned at the start of this partnership. It feels like a betrayal and it breaks my heart because there’s nothing I hate more than lying. But now I’m lying to both myself and you and it’s killing me slowly every day.” (November 20, 2025)
There were also several other prior entries lamenting this struggle:
It’s all so much and I don’t feel like I’m doing enough AND I have to juggle my job and my marriage. I felt like I was getting torn in half between worlds. I felt like something inside me was screaming to do MORE, MORE, MORE!! But then... it dawned on me. My ego was hijacking this whole pursuit. It was trying to overwhelm me, burn me out, and make me give up.
[...]
I feel like I’m being torn in half right now between two worlds: the world I’ve lived in all my life and the one that seems to be shining in the distance beckoning to me like a siren song. (Journal Entry, November 25, 2024)
I’m really struggling to integrate between the two worlds and feel like I’m getting torn in half as a result. It feels incredibly discouraging to be having such strange and deep experiences, feelings, and sensation during meditation and then feeling exhausted, frustrated, and tired at work and in my daily life in general. I know I shouldn’t have to escape to an ashram to pursue this interest deeper, but God I really wish I could. Yet, I can’t help but wonder if I’m just chasing something else again like I chased this current life that I once so aspired and dreamed of having. My life on paper is amazing and yet now here I am pursuing the Ineffable and ready to abandon all these wonderful things I have after 30 years. I feel like a fool. (Journal Entry, June 12, 2025)
...I feel like trying to straddle these two worlds is how I am torn in half. (Journal Entry, June 23, 2025)
You could say after a year of being pulled in “opposite directions,” I snapped like a rubber band.
Breakdown or breakthrough?
One thing I know about the path is that it feels like a constant slow-motion train wreck. My mess of journal entries over the years supports this.
But why make the mess public? Why now?
Because I said “yes” for some magical Nth time?
Because of “Divine timing”?
Because I finally broke?
Because “Vishuddha became unblocked”?
I’m not sure I’ll ever know why now—why, after 3.5 years of keeping this close to my chest, it finally spilled over.
But the writing comes anyway. I was told from within:
It helps no one if you hold it back.
So here I am.
Sharing the thing I was most terrified of being judged for.
Hoping someone out there recognizes themselves in this mess.
Hoping I’m not the only one torn in half by something I can’t explain.
But even if I somehow am... at least I’m finally being honest about it.
The heart under the floorboards wouldn’t stop beating. So I let it out.
If you’re an “undercover mystic”
I can say after trying to hide this for 3.5 years that if you’re truly earnest about this path—if you’re truly being called to go deeper—compartmentalization is not sustainable. When the longing becomes unbearable and the thirst begins driving you mad, you start leaking. It can’t be helped. Hiding the love isn’t possible.
If you’re reading this and thinking “oh God, that’s me”—if you’re living a double life, if you’re being torn in half between the person everyone knows and the person you’re becoming—you’re not alone.
I don’t know if that helps. I don’t know if knowing someone else is going through this makes it any less scary, alienating, or difficult. But this is something I needed to hear even just a month ago. So I’m saying it now:
You’re not broken. The shell (your ego) is breaking.
You’re not betraying anyone by changing. You’re becoming true to your Self.
Waking up is messy, vulnerable, and terrifying... but it’s the most honest thing you’ll ever do.