Hello again!
In case you missed it, please do go back and read the first post in this series.
Today we are going to dive deep into the SECOND category of obfuscation we’re going to find in the spirituality/health/wellness world - the path of extreme practices that are promised to lead to TOTAL transcendence of human pain and suffering.
This second category of obfuscation is deeply dangerous in a lot of ways, sometimes even more so than the first we one explored last week.
Within these total transcendence teachings, we are going to find that there is a LOT of room for SERIOUS damage, indoctrination and imbalance that really can and does destroy lives.
The promise that we can transcend our pain fully if we just ‘do enough’ of an extreme practice, if we just cut off the rest of the world enough, if we simply buckle down and go farther and farther and farther into the work is so incredibly enticing that a lot of people get sucked in, get really harmed, and don’t even see that they’re being harmed. Sometimes until it’s too late.
So let’s dig into this transcendence narrative, why it’s harmful, why it’s attractive and again how it leads us OFF the path of truth so we can recognize it when we see it and get out or avoid it altogether.
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The second False Path
On the other side of spiritual transformation/healing you will no longer experience normal human suffering.
The next big promise that a lot of spiritual and also wellness influencers preach is the idea that when you really do this path ‘right’ - on the ‘other side’ You will ‘transcend’ your problems/humanness to the point where you are only pseudo human.
They promise ‘abundance with ease’ - ie. you no longer have to struggle with money like everyone else because the universe will simply pour riches on you if your vibration is high enough.
They promise ‘freedom in the body/from food’ ie. you won’t have to deal with your physical ailments anymore, the body will be in a state of light, perfectly functioning bliss 24/7 and hey, you may not even have to EAT FOOD anymore! They promise that you can get to a place where you heal fully, and then because you are so aligned and attuned to reality you won’t suffer anymore physically.
They promise that you will ‘find your purpose’ i.e. find work that will feel like bliss 24/7 and in this all of what you offer to the world will feel like ease, people will love it and love you, creation will be effortless and you will ALWAYS feel like you have your place in this world. You will never struggle with boredom, having to grow or do something uncomfortable again and you will never, ever have to face being poor because you are living your purpose and shining so bright everyone will just beg you to let them give you a million dollars for your services. You will FEEL that sense of purpose and belonging that we all long for, and you will feel like your life has meaning - finally free from the existential dread that most of us feel around not doing, being or having enough. That it’s possible for everyone to have a passion that can be monetized in our system for high amounts of return as though our system is inherently set up to reward ‘authenticity’.
They promise ‘Emotional Mastery’ to the point of again, being in a state of bliss all the time.’ Ie. getting to the point where you simply no longer suffer with anger, sadness, resentment, regret, negative emotions of any kind, feelings of inadequacy, feelings of doubt or any other emotional state that isn’t ‘high vibe.’ Or at the very least if you do ‘slip’ into one of these emotional states you will be so well versed in how to get OUT of that state, in how to get back into your high vibes that it will barely be a blip on the radar. You will be poised, prim and proper - emotionally stable at all times, never losing your cool and always able to see the bright side of any and all situations. You will see how everything is ‘for you’ and thus will never feel like life has gone wrong ever again.
They promise ‘conscious relationships’ ie. relationships where there is no more turmoil, no more fighting, no more resistance - and sometimes total sexual and relational openness and freedom that NEVER leads to any kind of negative emotion ever again. There will be a perfect love that has both or all parties playing their perfect role all the time, so everyone always feels heard, loved, supported and validated, never having to look within for these things when their partner/s inevitably fall off script. They promise that you can have total mastery in relationships as well as complete fulfillment in a perfect partner/partners. That you can perfect yourself to the degree that no one ever treats you poorly or hurts you again because you’re no longer a vibrational ‘match’ to poor treatment. That you can find full and perfect love and feel complete in that for the rest of your life.
They make promises of ‘being in such a high vibrational state all the time that bad things simply stop happening to you’ ie. all of your troubles, all of your conflicts, all of your struggles and everything you have worked so hard to ‘fix’ in your life that you are currently starting to feel hopeless about will simply fix themselves/vibrate out of your life. They will go away, because you have ‘transcended’ them in some way through your ‘healing/cleansing/vibrational jumping/quantum leaping’ work.
They promise that if you cleanse enough, do spiritual practices enough, discipline yourself enough, become detached from the world enough or emotionally masterful enough that you will one day be rewarded with a life that is no longer a human life. A life that no longer contains any struggle, effort or suffering of any kind. Not even pain will be there, only bliss and wise all knowing.
The Toxic Rhetoric That Sucks Us In
Along with this often comes a lot of talk about how ‘special’ the people who ‘get it’ are. There’s often a lot of narrative around how asleep, dumb, unenlightened, unaware and unintelligent the rest of the world is. There is very commonly an overt or covert shaming, blaming and judgment of people who aren’t following the lifestyle/path that’s being promoted and there will be a LOT of comparison to the outside world, how horrible it is, how sick/sad/broken everyone else is - and this will be used as ‘evidence’ for how this other method is so much better. It’s not ‘THAT’ and therefore it’s GOOD.
There will be a sense of being in the ‘in group’ that’s created, and this further incentivizes people to stick with the doctrine and practices - even when those practices start to fail to give results. The fear of losing the connections and the praise/approval (either direct or para-socially) of the leader becomes a driving factor in sticking with things because our need to feel connected and like we fit somewhere is so deep and profound, and because we are often coming from a place of feeling really rejected and misunderstood in the first place in order to be attracted to these extreme protocols.
There will likely be a sense of identity that’s built around the extreme practice that again becomes something we cherish and hold onto. This again provides for us something that we deeply long for in human life - something we can point to and say ‘this is me, this is who I am and this is where I fit.’ When we find extreme ways of life, we often get swept up in what this MEANS about us, and it will often provide so much structure, instruction and guidance for how to live our lives out day to day that it will become something we deeply depend upon to feel like we’re ‘doing life right’, to feel secure, to feel like we know how to make choices and again, to feel like we know who WE are as the wise, smart, woke, aware ones who are ‘really getting it’ compared to everyone else who doesn’t and isn't.
The extreme practice will provide that sense of comfort that we know what to do with our days, we know how to make choices, we know what information to trust and what information to reject, we know how to organize our thoughts, who to connect with and who not to - not even realizing how deeply impactful these protocols become in our basic day to day lived experience.
Again there will be a lot of shaming of anyone who’s NOT doing what we are, who isn’t a part of our ideological group, of anyone who is living a normal life - and there will be a lot of talk about how this protocol is OBVIOUSLY right because it is DIFFERENT from what everyone else is doing. The burden of proof that this protocol works based on merit and results will be obfuscated by the idea that because it’s ‘different’ or ‘the opposite’ of what everyone else in ‘normal’ society is doing automatically means it MUST be good/right/better. Often the practitioners will use anecdotes of success stories as ‘proof’ that their claims are true, and will simply use the fact that people NOT on the plan are getting ‘bad’ results as ‘evidence’ that their plan is the right answer.
From there there will be a built-in assumption that if you aren’t getting results, if the plan isn’t working for you, if you aren’t experiencing the healing/transcendence/growth that’s being promised, that either you aren’t doing it right, you aren’t doing it enough, you need to go to the ‘next level’ or otherwise need to blame yourself. This is part of what’s so dangerous about this second promise.
It sucks us in by making us feel special and unique, it convinces us that everyone else is asleep and broken - often playing into the wounding WE have around our pain/what we’re trying to fix with the protocol and how it’s made us isolated and gotten us judged and shamed by those around us, it provides structure, purpose and meaning to our days, it gives us a sense of identity as well as a community and someone to follow when we are scared or in doubt. It then positions itself as superior to all other ways of life by pointing out the flaws in all other ways of life and using that as ‘proof’ that because this protocol is DIFFERENT it’s inherently BETTER, and it uses the idea that if you aren’t getting good results that YOU are just failing/not doing it enough/haven’t done it long enough/need to go to the next level as the final nail in the coffin of our capacity to critically assess if the protocol actually works or not.
So while we may end up getting rejected by others, while we may end up living lives that appear strange to others, we may lose connection in our real lives and so on - this all seems worth it because we are being told that we’re special, we’re being given security in the idea that we are doing the ‘right thing’ compared to everyone else who is doing the wrong thing, we’re being told that what we are doing is going to fix everything in our lives if we do it well/long enough, we are getting a sense of community AND we are being intentionally separated from everyone else as a way of keeping us connected and loyal to the new group we’re a part of.
This second promise leads to people being willing to do all KINDS of totally extreme, radical things - long fasts, intense meditation practices, hundreds of hours of thought work, paying who knows how much to be in the presence of these teachers and masters hoping that by doing so some of their magic will rub off. It leads to SO much potential for exploitation, indoctrination and separation from friends, family and other supports, which as we know can be a slippery-slope to isolation and feeling like the community/lifestyle is the ONE thing people have - leading to dependency and all the scary things that come along with that.
This second promise of ‘if you do enough you can get RID of all of your suffering’ - leads to the thought that having to do extreme things is a totally understandable means to an end. In fact, with this kind of promise, the more extreme the protocol, the more intense what we are being told to do is, the more we believe it’s going to work. We kind of ‘expect’ the path to be hard, extreme and to make us really different - to the point of looking at anything that could be considered more mild or moderate as being something that couldn’t possibly work.
This kind of promise often leads us down a path of PURSUING extreme practices and getting SUPER deep into the teachings of whomever we’re following - taking on this path of healing or spiritual growth as a new identity.
This is more common in health, healing and spirituality circles than many of us want to see or admit, and again the more isolated, in pain, desperate for answers and solutions and feeling like WE are the problem and thus fixing ourselves is the solution - the more susceptible we are going to be to this second path.
With these two paths, we see the black and white thinking that encapsulates all of this, and we can see where both paths lead to an obfuscation of what’s actually healing and helpful - and we can see how those who are offering these protocols are profiting and building very devoted crowds of followers.
People want something better - and they believe that they must either get it without having to give up anything that makes them feel good now - ie. They want to gain health/awakening while still holding onto their comforts and all that makes life familiar right now OR they want to believe that if they do the work, one day life will simply stop happening to them. That all of the struggle will disappear and we will live a kind of heaven on earth experience where there is only bliss and none of our problems needed to be ‘resolved’ in the sense that we learn how to live WITH life in a harmonious way, but that instead we just get rid of them altogether. As though human life is some sort of test, that our natural functions of eating, relating, working, and struggling to make sense of our world are simply roadblocks to our ‘true’ nature of ecstatic bliss.
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Let’s take another break here, and come back next week to explore in a deeper way WHY these two paths are incorrect and what we can look out for to protect ourselves from getting sucked into them
<3
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