Hello Love!
For the next few weeks we’re going to be looking at the MAIN two ways modern/mainstream self help/spirituality/personal growth/wellness teachers and influencers obfuscate the TRUE healing/growth/transformation path - convincing us that we should be expecting the path to look like something specific - something specific that is not actually TRUE to what the real path is - so that when our path doesn’t look like that, even when it’s the RIGHT path for US, we think we are doing something wrong and so that when our path DOES look how they say it should we believe we are doing something we actually aren’t.
This obfuscation of reality, this being told that what is actually OUT of alignment with truth IS the truth leads SO many of us down rabbit trails that continually promise to bring us transcendence, success and happiness - while delivering on none of these promises. Then rather than us being able to see that it’s because the PATH is wrong and we have been convinced of something that isn’t true - we either blame ourselves for not ‘doing it right’ or we get convinced that we need to do the path MORE or HARDER or in a more extreme way - keeping us in a perpetual state of distraction and pain.
I feel like this is a REALLY important thing to look at, so that we can identify for ourselves when we’ve gotten into a spiritual spiral. When we’ve been sucked into an attractive, seductive and comforting modality or method that is only going to leave us high and dry over and over again - or worse - will leave us suffering MORE than we were before.
I want to point out what the REAL path of growth, healing and transformation looks like, as well as the two main categories of false paths that we’re likely to see when we are seeking for the truth - so that we can be better at identifying what’s ACTUALLY going to serve us in healing and what’s only going to take us farther from that goal.
So let’s take some time for the next few weeks to do a deep investigation into these two false paths, how they manifest, how they pull us in, why they are so attractive and how we can start to recognize them for the false-paths that they are, while also developing an understanding of what the TRUE path looks like, so that we know what to expect and aren’t thrown this way and that be all the false expectations that come with the path being obfuscated from us.
The First False Path
If you’ve been in the spirituality/personal growth/personal development spheres for a while, you’re likely aware that there are MANY teachers out there who are in the business of telling you what a spiritual path is, what it looks like and what you can expect if you are to walk into a spiritual life yourself.
Many of these spiritual influencers (for lack of a better word) are people who, generally speaking, seem to walk with one foot on both sides of the reality paradigm.
On the one hand, they seem to be living lives that *most* people would consider to be successful, attractive and desirable. Many of them have wealth or at least have the appearance of wealth, many of them are conventionally attractive, many of them participate in current trends, many of them have book-deals and have been platformed on popular platforms, have large social media followings, run retreats and masterminds - and generally speaking seem to have lives we’d sort of all want to live - just with addition of talking a lot about God, the Universe and the belief that they are being Divinely guided all the time.
Now again, I know this is a generalization and that it may be a little hyperbolic - but I think you can understand what I’m saying here.
On the flip-side, we have some spiritual teachers who are maybe a little bit lesser known, who are maybe slightly more ‘off the beaten path’ in terms of their dress, how they live and the kinds of things they teach - and in order to make up for that ‘weirdness’ they teach that following their path will lead you to a place of TRANSCENDENCE. They claim to be in a place where they no longer suffer or struggle with thoughts, with having an ‘ego’, with having negative emotions or experiences. They say that going their way has led to a kind of life where they don’t deal with the struggles of human-nature - and that THIS is the promised outcome of following them. You may end up looking/living in a way that doesn’t fit the mold (and for a lot of us that’s an attractive call). Many of these people are ‘anti-establishment’ and teach that part of the path involves disconnecting from society as we know it and this is part of the draw - taking yourself out of ‘the system’ in some obvious way so as to ‘transcend’ the matrix and become more human/super human. We will look at this second category next week. For now we are going to explore the first.
In my opinion, this is leading a lot of people to a state of confusion.
Many spiritual teachers are selling you an ideal of a ’spiritual’ lifestyle that’s not really in alignment with truth - but rather feeds into a fantasy we have in our current paradigm.
With the first group, what is being shared is really the message that to be spiritual does NOT mean you have to become a weirdo freak. You will be able to keep all of your regular habits, you will be able to keep your friends, your social activities, your ‘normal’ ways of de-stressing and unwinding.
You don’t have to give up what are to you, the most pleasurable things right now - but rather can simply figure out a way to fit these things INTO that expanded, spiritual life.
‘Look at me, I still do normal things, just like you, participate in the pleasures of the world, but I am getting better results because I am ‘spiritual.’
They are showing that you can still be wealthy, likable, on trend and successful in all the most socially acceptable ways - and that in fact the more ‘spiritual’ you are, the more materially you SHOULD be experiencing ‘abundance’ and this rise in social status that comes with material success.
This idea speaks to the fear in us that if we truly take on a spiritual/health path, we will lose all of what we see as pleasure right now, and will become total freaks who everyone judges.
It speaks to the fear that we will have to give up wealth, luxury and individual success if we walk a spiritual path.
It speaks to the fear that if we become spiritual we will lose our connection to ‘normal’ and in this, we will have to figure out a different way of life that isn’t comfortable or familiar to us - and all of this is a big part of what drives a LOT of us away from true spirituality.
We don’t want to lose our connection to normal, and we don’t want to be weird and ostracized.
So we look at these teachers who seem to have ‘it all’ wealth, health, luxury, conventional beauty, friends, community and all the sage one could ever want as they do their cacao ceremonies, pray to the universe and spend their morning chanting and channeling.
This fear of losing what we love and becoming weird is totally justified - for eons those who deeply embrace spirituality have looked to the outside world as though they were having to ‘let go of’ so many things that we find to be the most enjoyable in life - drink, food, sex, parties, ‘sins of the flesh’ so to speak. This looks and seems so scary to us before we have taken a deep journey, because to us these pleasures can feel like EVERYTHING in life. It can really feel that to let these go is to submit ourselves to a life of perpetual sacrifice and pain. To lose them is to lose pleasure itself.
We Fear Being Weird And That's Being Used As A Tool For Distraction
To be weird and different is to lose love.
To lose safety.
To lose connection in general.
To be spiritual is to give up wealth and luxury and THIS is a deep, deep fear that a LOT of us carry - and so seeing people who tell us that not only do you not have to give up on these things to be spiritual but in fact you should expect even MORE wealth and abundance to flow to you when you’re ‘really walking your path’ feels like the biggest safety in the world.
There have been many spiritual seekers who at some point, tips over into living in a way that no longer facilitates their smooth interaction with those around them. They become so radical in their sight, mindsets and knowledge that ‘normal’ life becomes impossible - which leads to deep feelings of loneliness, isolation and of course to being JUDGED and CRITICIZED constantly by a world that is living in a state of relative consensus.
To hear/read that we can be transcended but still ‘normal’ - that we can be getting better results than we’re getting without giving up the pleasures we see as being everything to us right now and without losing our social graces sounds amazing.
So we have many spiritual teachers these days who use their connection to ‘normal’ as their sales-pitch - and what’s more they use their connection to being BETTER than normal in terms of what collective society generally values as their sales point - again to cultivate this idea that spirituality ‘should’ lead to success as culture defines it - giving us an idea that if we are taking a spiritual path and it’s leading us AWAY from collective understandings of success that we must be doing it wrong.
They lead us to believe that happiness truly IS found in wealth, luxury, beauty, connection, acceptance of others and finding our ‘purpose’ in the sense of a job or a conventional relationship dynamic of some sort - and that we should be using our spirituality to ‘manifest’ or ‘create’ these conditions. They lead us to believe that the spiritual path IS the secular path - just with the addition of prayer, crystals and smoothie bowls fit for instagram.
They lead us to believe that the spiritual path is SUPPOSED to look like the creation of the life that everyone is convinced is required for happiness - because of COURSE they do! We are all convinced that these things bring happiness to such a degree that the thought of NOT having them causes fear for most of us - and again, if we can be convinced that taking on a spiritual path in life will lead to MORE of all of this stuff, not less, we are going to be much more likely to buy in - literally and figuratively.
This benefits them, their bank accounts and their ability to feel safe, loved and accepted FAR more than it benefits anyone they are proclaiming to try to help.
This is a big problem, because it’s not in alignment with real reality, and it sets us up to continue to value what has no value, to continue to prioritize what is never going to lead to satisfaction and it tricks us again into thinking that the TRUE spiritual path is WRONG - it obfuscates the actual path and how it unfolds - which means even if we DO start to go down a TRUE path, we will have been convinced that the SECULAR path is what is ‘supposed to happen’ - so when that ISN’T happening on the TRUE path, we judge the TRUE path as WRONG because it’s not unfolding in the way we’ve been told the ‘true’ path is ‘supposed’ to unfold.
The more we’re convinced that the truth path looks like the secular path, the more we are going to reject the true path, because what we’ve been told is the truth is actually a lie and what we’ve been told is the lie is actually the truth. We will be looking for the lie and calling it truth, and we will reject the truth and call it a lie.
This is the danger of obfuscation.
It means that people who are truly on it will think they aren’t, and people who are fully off it will think they are on it. THAT is very dangerous and can lead to years and years of seeking that take us in a direction that doesn’t actually serve our growth, and it can cause us to continually miss the path when it tries to get our attention.
We are going to talk more about WHY this path of ‘if you are aligned you will be abundant and beautiful and successful in a secular way’ message is so toxic and wrong in a later post - for now, just take some time to reflect on the teachers and guides you may be following/be attracted to who are telling you this - and start to think critically about their message, their lives and the actual impact they are having on the world.
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Let’s take a pause here and come back next week for a deeper dive into the second path of obfuscation, the ‘transcendence through extremism’ path.
<3
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