Hello again!
If you’ve not done so already, please do read:
In today’s exploration, we’re going to look at WHY these two paths of being normal just better, or being as extreme as possible are BOTH going to take us out of alignment with truth.
Let’s look at all the ways in which these paths are obfuscating the truth, so we can find our way to something much more reasonable, sustainable and ultimately something that feels better overall, even if it’s not the big, exciting, transformation we were hoping for in the beginning.
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The Truth Doesn’t “Sell” And That’s Why Very Few Are Selling It
At the end of the day, no one wants to say the truth.
Many have not really experienced the truth either.
So many preach the two ways of ‘healing’ that we have been looking at - and if you look at all the ‘popular’ teachers right now, chances are you can distill their message down to one of the two angles we’ve discussed - you can be ‘normal’ and have it all or you can be extreme and transcend - and this is usually because they themselves believe what they are saying.
This is why we see so many ‘fallen’ gurus - or teachers who hide their true lives, their true struggles or twist what they are experiencing to seem so much more magical or transcended than it really is.
This is why we see the constant cycle of ‘I was struggling just like you, I found the answer, here’s the answer and now my life is amazing my cultural standards/I am transcended in some way, disappear for a while, come back with new vulnerable/relatable share, new program - lather rinse repeat’ or again why we see people ending up being ‘exposed’ as being abusive, inauthentic, hypocritical or otherwise just living a life other than what they are presenting.
Because they are as deeply invested in believing that what they are doing is right as the people following them are.
Now it’s not the intention of this article series to identify whether people are intentionally ‘gifting’ via KNOWING that what they are saying isn’t true and ignoring that, or if they really believe themselves - because I feel like in each situation there’s likely a mixture of things going on. The point of these posts is to bring awareness to the patterns, how they may be affecting US, why we may be susceptible to them and how we can navigate getting OUT of these dynamics if we ever find ourselves in them.
The reality is, very few of us want to hear the truth that true awakening/healing is not about being normal, nor is it about total transcendence.
It’s more complex than that.
Generally speaking, when we are really on a healing/spiritual path, what we find is:
We do have to give things up and become weird to a degree.
We are going to find that there is some benefit in realizing that what’s normal, what’s celebrated in our culture, what’s sought after as ‘success’, what we are taught is going to satisfy us and bring us pleasure are, in many ways, a product of a toxic system that is actually CAUSING us the pain we’re in on many levels. We’re going to have to part with certain behaviors, ways of thinking, ways of relating to the world and to ourselves and in so doing we ARE going to find that our perspectives are opened and we start to see life, ourselves, success and fulfillment through a new lens.
We’re going to find that it’s not just about ‘giving up pleasure’ or ‘being different’ for the sake of it. It’s not about rebellion or TRYING to ‘be good’ in some hypothetical way. Rather we’re going to come to see that there are many things about ‘normal’ culture that ARE harmful, that are making our lives worse, that are contributing to the suffering of ourselves and others. We’re going to come to see how destructive our definitions of Western Success truly are, and that finding peace and balance requires that we DO extract ourselves in ways that may make us…odd.
We aren’t going to do this for the sake of it. We aren’t just giving up pleasure so we can feel virtuous and we’re not rebelling just to rebel.
There may be phases where we have to use discipline to separate ourselves from what we’ve been brought up to see as normal, times when we have to do things that are uncomfortable and don’t really make sense to us from our current perception, where we DO have to let go of what’s normal and considered ‘right’ by the norms of society before we really FEEL like doing it, before we see the benefits and before we understand the REASON why letting go of these things helps us - but again hopefully we are doing this from a place of self love, compassion and care.
Hopefully we are doing this from a place of wanting to take breaks from what’s normal so that we can find out and feel out for ourselves what is TRULY helpful and TRULY harmful by giving ourselves contrast. Hopefully we are doing so not from a place of believing that everyone else is stupid or flawed, but from really wanting to UNDERSTAND.
Hopefully we are taking a step back from things and learning to let go of things in a natural way, in a way that feels self supportive and in a way that is helping us deprogram from the harms of our society - not in a way that’s just placing blame on something and not in a way that’s just giving things up for giving things up sake.
We want to separate ourselves from harmful systems and ways of being that are ‘normal’ to us, so that we can start to see the actual EFFECTS of these things, and so we can see the pain that may be buried under these habits that comes up when we let them go.
THIS is the obfuscation of BOTH the ‘normal and successful’ and the ‘transcend through extremes’ path - they take us AWAY from ourselves and continue to have us focus on the authority of someone or something outside of ourselves.
THIS is the reason BOTH paths lead us away from truth.
They both separate us from ourselves, our lives and our reality - and THIS is why they can’t ever work.
The purpose of detaching from what we normally do isn’t to take pleasure away from ourselves. The purpose is to give ourselves space and time to figure out what’s actually helpful, what’s actually harmful, what conditioning is ruling our lives, what’s true in real reality, what isn’t and how we can find BETTER ways of being than the ones we’re being sold as ‘normal’. We remove our coping mechanisms and other ways of keeping our actual thoughts, feelings and emotions suppressed again not to be ‘good’ or to harm ourselves, but to give ourselves an opportunity to dive deeper into what’s REALLY going on.
We DO have to do things that make us ‘weird.’ But not in a self punishing way. In a way that honors and validates that what’s normal is actually harmful in a lot of ways, and that we aren’t going to find the freedom we’re looking for by continuing to invest in the same system that’s causing us our pain. We take a step back from normal so we can sort out what’s actually helpful and what’s only causing us more pain.
We take the painkiller away and thus FEEL the pain of our out of alignment living. In that feeling the pain, we also then have access to the wisdom that will guide us towards aligned life. There will be times where we have to give up the substance, the numbing, the stimulation, to see the roots of our pain. We have to feel that pain and allow it to teach us. It hurts, for a while.
Then we find new, healthy ways of finding joy and pleasure in life that create a situation where you genuinely don’t WANT those old coping mechanisms anymore. We will get to a place where we have a whole new relationship with what used to bring us pleasure and what we used to see as ‘normal’ - through a transformational process.
It’s not about trying to be ‘spiritual’ while staying the same as everyone else, nor is it about being contrarian for the sake of it.
There’s a PURPOSE in letting go of normal. There’s a process to it. It will be slow, it will be progressive and it will be tailored to what YOU need from where YOU are. There’s no one-size-fits-all - and it’s not about giving up all the conveniences of life and moving to a commune somewhere. The fear that a lot of us have. It’s not about swinging to some extreme way of life - it’s about slowly deconditioning ourselves from what’s expected, so we can figure out what’s actually in alignment for us, where we are now, and so that we can make changes OVER TIME as we learn more, see more and grow more in our awareness.
The Path WILL Make Us Weird, But Not In The Ways We Think It Will
We are going to find that the more we take on this path of transformation in a truly AUTHENTIC way, our DESIRES shift. Our curiosities are going to take us in new directions. One step will lead to another and to another.
You are not doing it for any ‘holier than thou’ reason - it’s just a genuine way of being. You find your joy in simpler things. In evolution and growth. In experimentation and play. You still have physical pleasures - they are just different than the average person now.
So you are going to end up being ‘weird’ on some levels. This is pretty much inevitable. To live in a way that is truly in alignment with health, growth and our humanity, we can’t be ‘normal.’ Because normal is so deeply rooted in anti-humane ways of being. This again is something we see more and more as we go along the path. It’s something we have to ALLOW ourselves to see SLOWLY, one step at a time, one small move at a time, because otherwise it will just be overwhelming and unpleasant in a way that it really doesn’t HAVE to be at all.
This path of true awakening, if you want to call it that, will lead you away from certain people. It will lead you away from certain activities. It will have you divesting from systems that are considered what you ‘have to be and do’ in order to be successful/good/approved of in our culture. This is true.
It will do this by leading you BACK to your FEELINGS and what’s ACTUALLY happening in your LIVED EXPERIENCE.
It will do this by guiding you to FEELING. Not following rules of normal NOR following extremes for the sake of it.
This path will likely make you someone who makes others uncomfortable just by being who and what you are at times. You WILL act differently - you will likely, just by living in a way that is aligned with your humanity, break the illusion that what most people think of as normal and as success are necessary, and required for happiness. You being happy without these things makes you an attack on the world that believes they have no power over these things.
You will likely be misunderstood, rejected, a little isolated sometimes and you may even be antagonized in certain situations as people look to defend their world-view against what you’re showing them with your path. You will likely be questioned. Judged. Made a heretic. You will go against culture and that is historically never pretty.
This healing/spiritual path requires that you see how deeply out of alignment culture is, and at some point recognize that in order to keep going on your path, you can’t participate in a lot of it anymore. And that your sheer lack of participation - even without preaching anything - will be seen as an ‘attack’ by those around you, who will then attack you back. You will feel isolated and alone, crazy and loopy - and this is par for the course.
This is because again, most people are living their ‘normal lives’ in a state of pain. They aren’t feeling good. They aren’t really getting the results they want or that they’re being promised by the system. They are in states of shame, blame and loops of self-improvement - trying SO hard to live up to the expectations of normal truly believing that once they do - once they get that promotion, lose that weight, find that partner, become popular and so on - they will FINALLY be free and happy the way they want to be, the way society says they will.
They believe they have the answer to their happiness and that this is found within the system, - that they just have to play by the rules harder, longer and faster and eventually it’s going to work.
When you come in with your alternative ways of being, showing that literally no matter what you do in the system you are going to suffer because the system itself goes against what’s truly good for us - you break the illusion that the answers are there. You break the illusion that the system has the keys and that they just have to do it right. You take away the foundations of security they have been clinging to. And thus, they are going to fight back against what you represent. Because they want to hold onto the idea that what they know is true. That’s their hope. That’s their security. That’s what allows them to sleep at night believing it’s all going to be ok.
When you show that the way to be ok is through letting GO of the system and finding something ELSE - it’s going to scare people. Destabilize them. Make them feel totally insecure - and thus, they are going to attack YOU and judge YOU and look for all the ways in which what you’re doing isn’t really working, all the flaws, all the holes, all the ways you’re not totally happy/liberated/free - and they will use this as justification to ignore you, write you off, judge your path and so on.
We have to be prepared for this.
Not everyone is going to get it, and some people are going to be downright resistant.
And this is a big part of what we fear when we get into this - and why we fall for the people who tell us we can do this work and still be normal.
But it’s just not reality.
Because part of what’s hurting us IS what’s ‘normal.’
So we have to be prepared to let things go, to be different, to not participate in life the way most people do - but at the same time, we don’t have to rush it. We don’t jump into it. We take it one, genuine step of feeling and looking for TRUTH at a time.
It’s Not About Radical For The Sake Of Radical
At the same time, we aren’t going to become something entirely RADICAL either.
Not in an intentional way, and not right away, that’s for sure.
We aren’t going to follow someone else’s blueprint of a radical healing/spiritual path into a way of life that’s so controlled and disciplined that we can’t live a normal life either.
The degree to which we become extreme, when we are on a TRUE path, will be based on OUR TRUE NEEDS and DESIRES. We won’t be following in anyone’s footsteps and we won’t be modeling our path after anyone or anything. There will be nothing we’re trying to ‘live up to’ and no guru we are trying to (consciously or unconsciously) impress.
There won’t be a DOGMA we feel like we’ve ‘found’ that is the ultimate truth - and we won’t be living from a place of believing that everyone who ISN’T doing what we are is wrong, ‘unconscious’ or otherwise foolish.
The degree to which we participate in things that may be considered extreme to the outside world will be FULLY grounded in what FEELS GOOD and actually WORKS for us.
We will allow ourselves to SLOWLY move through different modalities and practices - and rather than forcing ourselves to stick to things we continually and perpetually have to use ALL of our willpower to stick to, rather than ‘being on and falling off track’ over and over again, rather than believing that ‘this time I will do the extreme thing and it’s going to work’, rather than doing the extreme thing, getting some results, not being able to sustain the practice because it’s simply impractical long term, losing those results and then getting back on the thing - we will find slow, steady, sustainable STEPS. Steps we can do, sustain and maintain - that we build into our way of life until they feel NORMAL and NATURAL - and then if we feel called, we can add more steps after that.
We won’t be finding a community of others who all live, think and behave how we do/how the guru says we should, becoming increasingly incapable of interacting with others.
ALL of this is a sign that we’re on someone else's path, we’re not on OUR path.
We are being distracted by ‘doing it right’ and we aren’t actually FEELING. We aren’t actually LEARNING. We aren’t actually getting to know OURSELVES - we’re just abandoning ourselves in a new and different way.
We will start to realize that anything super extreme, that requires all sorts of discipline, that gives us that ‘hit’ of being ‘good’ because we ‘do a thing right’ - are all distractions from the true path - connecting with OURSELVES, what we NEED right now, what we are CAPABLE OF right now, and what actually feels GOOD right now.
This is the main obfuscation of the transcendence through extreme paths.
It takes us out of our own experience, and again has us projecting into the future ‘when I am good enough I will get these results.’ It has us abandoning how things feel NOW in exchange for ‘measuring up.’ It has us following RULES instead of FEELING and SORTING THINGS OUT for ourselves via assessing and really questioning our own EXPERIENCE.
It’s the same thing that everyone else is doing - following instructions that are promising to lead us where we want to go if we just ‘do the right thing’ long and hard enough.
We must step out of the mindset that there’s some ‘secret’ path that we can find.
We must step into the idea that OUR steps will be unique to us. So we can take ideas, protocols, suggestions, wisdom and knowledge from others - but we then must figure out how it does or doesn’t apply to us, we must modify it to fit OUR lives and what works for US, and we must CONTINUALLY return to the question - how does this ACTUALLY feel in MY experience?
We will realize that we CAN and we WILL find our own path, our unique path, so long as we are willing to center getting to KNOW ourselves and center getting to know what we need, what nourishes us, what fills us and what motivates us - rather than looking for a ‘thing’ to follow that we think will save us.
We let go of looking for the transcendence path through following a lifestyle, and we lean into our own experience, learning from THAT first and foremost.
We learn that again, the path is about getting to know ourselves and making ROOM for who and what we are at any given moment, and choosing practices and ways of life that SUPPORT that - even if we’re not where we want to be.
No blind following, no ejecting ourselves from our own experience, no extreme for the sake of it.
Rather we learn to embody our own experience, feel it out for ourselves, and do what’s practical and practicable for us as we ARE. Taking what works from others, leaving the rest, never really being a ‘part’ of ONE specific thing at the expense of all others.
Your path will be a patchwork that YOU put together of tools, techniques and protocols that have been adapted to you and where you are - and you will build on this patchwork as the years go by, FEELING your way forward.
You won’t be led away from yourself into the authority of someone else. You will lead yourself back TO yourself.
You won’t be fooled by either path - following culture or following extremes.
These two paths of obfuscating YOU.
You will be practicing coming back to YOURSELF - and THAT is what the REAL path is.
It’s not one or the other - do the most extreme thing or be normal.
It’s something much more magical.
It’s a slow unfolding, understanding, feeling path.
One step at a time.
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Let’s take one more break here, and come back next week for the final installment!
<3
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