🕯️ Stepping Into the Temple: The Journey to Sanctuary

By Cynthia Diane Morshedi

For the last four years, I’ve been walking a slow and often painful road — a road of reclamation. Reclaiming my energy, my time, my heart, and my vessel. Piece by piece. Scar by scar. And now, for the first time, I stand at the threshold of something I’ve long dreamed of: my temple space.

Not a metaphor. Not a Pinterest fantasy.
A real, living, breathing space of soul — carved from grief, silence, courage, and refusal.

🜃 The Broken Vessel

There’s a truth I didn’t fully understand until I lived it:

You cannot heal while you are still pouring.
You cannot repair your vessel while everyone is still drinking from it.

For years I was cracked open — by trauma, by performance, by expectation. I said yes when I should have said nothing. I answered calls when I should have gone silent. I gave, and gave, and gave — until there was nothing left of me but a ghost performing presence.

People say they get it.
I thought I did too — until I actually stopped.

And that’s when I saw the cracks.
That’s when I met the emptiness.
That’s when the real healing began.

🜁 FOBI: A Revelation

Someone once told me I had FOMO.
That I was online too much — that I must be addicted to the feed, to the scroll, to the noise.

But the truth was this: I didn’t have FOMO.

I had FOBI — Fear of Being Included.

Because inclusion meant being drained.
It meant performance, conformity, extraction.
I was online constantly not out of desire — but because I was required to be.

It was part of the job.
Post daily. Engage constantly. Keep your shop score high or lose visibility.
A lot of people don’t realize how deeply that system affects you.

You don’t just show up online — you’re ranked, scored, used.

And so we started “Instagram wishing,” “Pinterest pining.”
We could see beauty — but were too exhausted to reach it.
Online presence was not about joy. It became a form of energetic debt.

🜂 I Have Been in the Spotlight

Let me be clear about something:
I am not saying all this because I “never had it.”

I’ve stood in spotlights. I’ve acted in front of crowds.
I’ve held a room, drawn applause, received accolades.

I am not hiding from the light — I am choosing the cave.

The system tells you, “You only say you don’t want it because you never had it.”
That’s projection. That’s illusion. That’s gaslighting.

I’ve had it.
I’ve done it.
And now I know exactly what it costs.

So I’m not here to slow-step people into understanding boundaries.
I’m not going to shrink this message to make it palatable.
I am here to say: If you know, you know.
And if you don’t — you will, eventually.
If you make it to your temple.

🜄 What It Took to Get Here

To be honest, it’s taken everything.

It took severing manipulative ties — even family.
It took walking away from friendships that were never mutual.
It took recognizing that social media thrives on unhealed energy, and saying no more.

People don’t like when you withdraw your energy.
They’ll claw harder. Push buttons. Act confused.
Because your peace threatens their patterns.

But I’ve learned to hold the line.
Not just for a day. For seasons. For cycles.
And this summer, I’m sealing the door.

🜔 I Don’t Want the Stage

Here’s the irony — the moment I’ve longed for isn’t a spotlight.
It isn’t singing on a stage, going viral, or being adored.

It’s this.
A quiet room with candlelight and plants.
A cloak of silence.
A cave of my own.

There are those who thrive in chaos and clicks.
Who love the scroll, the ping, the constant feed.
I’m not one of them. And I never was.

What I want is a sanctuary.
What I need is stillness.
What I deserve is peace.

🕯️ An Invitation to You

If you feel the draw — the ache for a quieter way —
this is your invitation.

Maybe you’ve been pouring from a cracked vessel too.
Maybe you’ve been caught in loops of giving, pleasing, performing.
Maybe, like me, you’re not here for the show — but for the soul.

What would it look like to step into your temple?
To claim your space, your cycle, your cave?

You don’t have to wait.
You don’t have to explain.

You just have to say yes to yourself.
And walk through the door.

If this resonates, I’ll be sharing glimpses from the cave through my upcoming Archive of Light series — not as content, but as artifact. Reflections, fragments, and sacred findings. You’re welcome to receive them. But I will not be engaging. My presence is sealed for healing.

I’ll return at Lion’s Gate.
And until then —
I am in the temple.

🕯️ With reverence,
Cynthia


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