Hi Friends 🙂
Today I want to write about something that I struggled with for a good long time, and that I see so many others out there struggling with.
I want to talk about spiritual striving, spiritual bypassing, spiritual self hate, spiritual teachers and teachings and why it is so important to let yourself actually be where you are on your spiritual path.
Now, in our world of technology, spiritual masters and people who have reached elevated states of consciousness have the power and ability to broadcast their understandings, insights and general vibration out to the masses. Anyone can post a youtube video, write a book, share their experiences on social media - information about spirituality and higher states of consciousness is now so mainstream it is almost 'normal' to talk about.
On the one hand, this is pretty cool. It shows that we are a community of people who really do want to 'awaken,' who want to learn who we really are, and who want to come home to our truth - that we are ultimately fully loveable individuals who are a part of a greater, all connected whole of love.
That you are God, I am God, everything is God, and that we are all simply fractals of the whole that is God. (or Universe, or source, or light or whatever language serves you best)
However, this mass spreading of concepts, states of consciousness, levels of perception is also fucking with us. Big time.
There are three main reasons why I feel that trying to listen to spiritual teachers from their mountain top experiences is not a great idea. There used to be mystery schools for a reason. Here are my thoughts, and I hope that they can serve to make you feel so much better about being exactly where you are on your path.
We All Want Out Of Pain:
Generally speaking - not everyone, but a lot of us - come to the spiritual path via some incidence of pain or suffering in our lives. We are looking for answers to life's big questions. We are looking for something to help make the pain go away, or at least something to EXPLAIN why the pain is there.
We are a society so petrified of any 'negative' emotion, that we use spirituality in large part to justify how we are feeling or as a way of escaping how we are feeling. Other times we use spirituality as a set of rules and instructions for how to act and behave so that no one will know we are suffering or in the hopes that one day, if we do all the things we are supposed to do, we will transcend that pain.
Now, with this I hope you can see that I am clearly speaking from personal experience. I have been 'spiritual' my whole life, mostly because I was in so much emotional pain. In my youth Christianity was the perfect remedy for what I was facing. It gave me the sense that all of my pain and suffering was going to earn me a nice shiny room in heaven. That it was not all for not. It gave me a reason to believe that I would one day be out of pain, and also that I could help those who were suffering in life to find relief - if they just believed with me.
Then later as I moved away from strict Christianity, my spiritual path was still a never ending rabbit hole of techniques and teachers and disciplines that asked me to jump through hoop after hoop with the promise that eventually the pain would go away. I jumped with great enthusiasm. Again because there was the promise of getting out of pain on the other side.
Now that I hold space for others on their healing and life paths, I see the same desire expressed in them. They come to me with some hope that I have found the answer to getting out of pain.
The way I see it, there is absolutly NOTHING wrong with wanting to escape pain.
In the long run, this desire to get out of pain (or the desire to transcend this life, or become your highest self or become enlightened - whatever you want to call it) is the fuel that will power your journey for the first while. This desire to move out of where you are to a better feeling place is important and useful.
It will be the thing that gets you up to meditate at 6 am.
It will be the thing that gets you to binge watch Ram Das on youtube.
It will be the thing that powers you to continually flood yourself with new ways of thinking, being and acting that will help you to see that there are other ways of doing things than what most in this world are doing. It will help you transcend the mundane life that so many people believe is all there is.
The desire to transcend pain will drive you into your inner world.
Right into the centre of your pain.
Isn't that a paradox?
Basically the spiritual seeking that is being powered by your desire to escape where you are, is going to push you farther and faster into your present moment, into your present emotions, into your present state. Because that is where your healing takes place.
So know if your pain gets WORSE as you travel down your spiritual path, you have not gone off course. Know that the inclination will be to try something different, do this thing, listen to this or that teacher instead - you will think you got it wrong every time your pain deepens rather than is relieved, and you will look for the individual or teaching or technique that actually has the answer for how to get out of this pain.
And everything you try will drive you back to that same place.
For a reason.
The spiritual path is not about getting you out of your pain. It is not about getting rid of your pain. It is not even about HEALING your pain (because on the highest level of reality, your pain is already healed) It is about leading you into YOU. It is about taking you deeper into yourself. It is about bringing you face to face with that pain, on order that you may see it for what it really is.
That pain is you.
That pain is all the aspects of yourself that you have rejected. That you have denied. That you have deemed unfit for your love.
Every spiritual path should bring you back to this. That is why it hurts so much.
So there is nothing wrong with wanting to escape the pain, and there is nothing wrong with coming to spirituality as a way of escaping or explaining or reducing pain.
Nothing at all.
Just know that you will find eventually that the most beneficial spiritual path for you is the one that helps carry you THROUGH your pain to the other side. The one that gives you the tools to face what is going on inside of you, and helps you feel that you can and you will survive it. The path that supports you learning to love your pain, rather than run from it. The best path for you is the one that you choose to stick with to help see you through your pain.
A good spiritual path will take you into the eye of your pain, rather than taking you out of it.
It is not about escaping pain, because pain is a natural and important part of your growth journey on this planet. No one escapes pain, not even the enlightened being son this planet. They are just in a state of alignment with themselves and life so much so that the pain does not phase them.
THAT is what you want. Peace with pain. Not escape from it. Because your growth, for now, is dependant on the pain.
Let this digest, and we will discuss the second problem with spiritual Gurus next Monday 🙂
And of course as always, let me know what you think!
<3
