Many people part from their spiritual work.
The reasons are long:
- Fear of facing themselves
- Distorted beliefs around what the path is
- Seeking a “safer” path/practitioner etc.
- Money issues–real or imagined
- Desire to simply feel good, which is not realizing spiritual freedom aka enlightenment
- Time issues–mostly imagined since we all get the same amount of time
The excuse list is much longer than this. The ego can find any excuse to stay in resistance to reality.
The two most vague are time and money, which are almost never the real issues; they’re safe ways for an insecure person to say, “No,” without admitting the real issue and run away.
Then, what happens?
Nothing.
Most people stay in their loops and find new ways to self-medicate bad feelings. They grow accustomed to the “medication”–be it meditation, drugs, sex, over-working, hyper-exercising, extreme sports, hot yoga, ecstatic chanting, or whatever makes them feel better.
When people come back to the path, most people have the same issues or show up in greater disrepair.
Once in a blue moon, someone has worked on some of their attachments. It’s usually minimal and only done as much as overt pain forced them to confront themselves.
Once in every 12 blue moons, someone has done significant work. That means they had not left the spiritual path. They had followed it where they needed to go. In surrendering to reality in this way, all of life becomes our spiritual path and spiritual work.
Let’s be realistic here: most of the people who say the above are lying to themselves to hide from the pain of failure.
With all that said, let’s imagine that today is the day you’re really going to return. How will you do that well and not repeat the mistakes of the past?
Worse Off Than Before
I started teaching in 2010.
I know.
That’s definitely in the rearview mirror now.
I’ve seen a lot of people. I have had many students depart, and every now and then, someone comes back.
It hasn’t been pretty.
I’ve seen people in greater states of:
- Despair
- Rage
- Shutdown
- Physical disrepair
- New traumas because the person acting out from unresolved traumas found more people “like them” and they traumatized each other
- Emotional dysregulation
- Avoidance, and more
I’ve even seen people come back with a huge wounded spiritual ego after cult experiences. Now there’s more wounding and a spiritual identity on top of the original ego that usually had a fair amount of wounding with which to begin.
The unconscious spiritual ego is particularly problematic because of the level of certainty it feels it has around God, angels, energies, purpose, truth, and spirituality. It’s a personal kind of dogma that has to be unlearned before anything can start to improve.
Society’s Deep Reinforcing Selfishness
You might want to be optimistic and hope that people figure stuff out on their own or with another practitioner and are doing better. That certainly happens.
But in a society that has so many ego issues and reinforces deep selfishness, it’s hard to hope for such a transformations. The world of spiritual practitioners, helpers, therapists, and more is full of wounded healers wanting to help others with things that they cannot fix in themselves. This is why many of you give up rightfully on some of the work. The people leading have no idea where they are going.
The Problem of Incomplete Spiritual Teachers
I get it.
I’m not one of them, but you’ll have to sincerely apply the tools I prescribe to realize that.
I’m getting ahead of myself here.
Back to the point:
The reality is that when given the chance, human beings will return to familiar behavior patterns, and society reinforce a lot of bad behaviors and suffering.
The way humans think, feel, and act are internal loops, and humans DO NOT want to break free of them. They like the familiarity of them too much, which makes breaking out of them no small task.
We are also relational beings. Breaking out requires other people who will allow you to use different behavior patterns and give you the grace to fail.
10 Reasons Spiritual Awakenings Fail
Because you won’t be very good at first at new behavior patterns like dating, leading a company, expressing intimacy when you have rarely felt it, being a better parent, and so forth. They need practice.
The inner patterns need even more.
Have you found people to reinforce your new patterns and beliefs?
Did you find practitioners and spiritual friends to help you truly transform?
In modern society, that’s really hard, and the spiritual path is full of enablers who help you stay stuck.
Remember, if you can’t do anything differently from your familiar patterns, you’re not spiritually free.
Step 1: Discussing the Inner Spaces Honestly
One of the biggest steps to returning to the work well is honesty. It means “baring your soul” to your teacher.
I know.
So many of you have been wounded by others.
How do you trust?
You don’t.
The first step is faith. I define faith as
Not knowing if a tool will work and doing it to the best of your abilities anyway.
When you work with a true teacher in that way, you then develop trust in the tool, yourself, and the teacher.
Typically why so many people depart is that they didn’t do this in the first place. They weren’t honest about where they were, and they didn’t honestly apply the tools.
The honesty is critical.
Countless people that I’ve worked with don’t say where they really are.
They say that they’re in Chicago and want to get to Cleveland.
I suggest a bus ride for a scenic tour heading East.
Then I find out they’re in a swamp in Florida, and they want to get to the Rocky Mountains.
Then I inquire deeper, and they meant the Canadian Rocky Mountains.
It’s that confusing at times. How does any practitioner help someone if the person won’t say what is really going on?
Yes. This is the type of scenario that shows up again and again.
It’s why people have failed with me, and they’ve failed with others.
Want to get serious?
Time to get honest.
10 Reasons Spiritual Awakenings Fail
Step 2: Doing Your Absolute Best
I mentioned this above, but doing your absolute best is critical.
Your best today won’t be your best tomorrow. It’s not a statement of perfectionism. It’s simply to do your best and continue to take little incremental steps to improve.
Incremental steps are how you’ll break out of your ego, not a gigantic leap.
Waiting for a Big “Ah-ha!” Spiritual Moment
Step 3: Breaking Down the Ego Defenses
People have countless ego defenses. It’s time to name them.
Ego defenses include:
- Pride
- Self-doubt
- Overwhelm
- Anger
- Binge eating
- Doom scrolling
- Constant travelling
- Wallowing in sadness, and plenty of other inner and outer defenses
The practice of coming back to awareness leads to seeing these mechanisms in yourself.
Write them down.
Notice when they fire up during the day.
The more aware you are, the more room there is to make a different choice.
But you’ll have to truly commit to yourself.
That starts by seeing how uncomitted you are.
These realizations lead towards a necessary humbling process, which is part of accepting where you actually are.
Step 4: Learn Humility
Most people who say and act like they are humble are doing an ego performance (the ego performer is one to add to your list to look out for). Humility in this work leads to accepting that you really don’t know yourself.
It includes accepting how much suffering you’re in.
It includes accepting that you don’t know the way and you’ll have to trust your spiritual teacher.
But this isn’t blind faith.
The tools when applied honestly and to the best of your ability show the way. They prove the worth of the teacher.
The incomplete teachers and wounded healers often give you a list of beliefs, but beliefs are not real.
This is one of the reasons why so many people end up returning to me. They went and got a grocery list of beliefs, and then the beliefs evaporated.
The person’s ego remained.
Their unresolved issues remained.
Life continued to be what it is, not what anyone wanted to believe about it.
Let this humble you.
It is through that low doorway that you have to crawl through on your hands and knees that liberation is waiting.
