The cold hard ugly truth about spirituality – 8 truths

The cold hard ugly truth about spirituality

There is a lot written by myself and many others about our spiritual awakening here on the planet, how to grow spiritually and how to develop our self-awareness and mindfulness.

These are all wonderful practices and have great value in life.

There are some cold hard ugly truths about spirituality, too, however.

These truths are not about the practice of spirituality itself.  They are more about the results you may find yourself having as you progress on the spiritual journey.

As M. Scott Peck said in The Road Less Traveled

“Life is not fair, but people can choose to be.”

Cold Hard Ugly Truth – realization number 1 – friends and relations will fall away as vibration and awareness shifts

I have heard this from many people on the journey and have experienced it myself.

Luckily I still have some good friends from long ago who are still stepping along on the journey with me.

It’s true, though. If you take the spiritual path, it’s highly likely that you will lose friends and possibly outlaw yourself from family.

There are worse reasons to become the black sheep I suppose – but remember, it didn’t start with you!

From your family’s perspective, they might believe you have either completely lost it or are going against years of tradition or family history.

In some ways, you may well be doing exactly that!

The upside of this hard truth is that you will make many new friends along the way.  You may also discover a whole new concept of what family really means.

I have always loved this quote and am not quite sure where it comes from.

“You may meet people, but you will recognize friends”.

One of my latest mentors looks at it this way

“Family is behavior, not blood”.

 

Cold hard ugly truth realization number 2 – you will gain great insight into people’s motivations

It’s a fact that on the spiritual journey one of the most shocking discoveries is your growth in awareness.  Over time, you will become much more discerning about other people’s true motivations and inner workings.

This is because you are becoming more embodied and not just living in your head.  Sometimes the openings from this perspective can seem overwhelming – the spiritual version of Too Much Information (TMI)!

The aha moments will come thick and fast as you realize why a certain person has acted a certain way.   It is nothing to do with their interest, support, or possibly love for you, sad to say.

This is a really tough one to deal with.

Truth number 3 – if we can choose to see things from the Soul level we will realize that a lot of our perceptions are related to projection

Projecting our wants, needs, and desires onto others, we fill in their gaps for them — whatever those gaps may be.

Focusing on our own needs and side-stepping responsibility, we choose to get what we would like out of a situation by not being real.

A better way is to make the choice to grow and evolve.

Then comes the fateful day when we refocus on our own spiritual path once again and expand our vibration

This changes our picture of our world all of a sudden.

In our relationships, we begin to see the dynamics as they really are and not as we would like them to be.

We see from a higher level of awareness that we are now able to maintain because of our soul expansion work.

Before we could only view the world from the mirror of our own projections.

This can often be referred to as a paradigm shift or spiritual awakening.  It’s a game-changer for sure.

As Maya Angelou always said

“When somebody shows you who they are – believe them”.

Sometimes we have to do a lot of work on ourselves before we can truly believe!

Truth number 4 – the way you view the planet will never be the same again

I remember the first paradigm shift I had.

At age 13 I read one of Gloria Steinem’s books (I was an early reader and my parents let me read almost anything I could get within reason).

I read about certain parts of the world where women were circumcised and even had their genitals sewn up before marriage as a form of enforced chastity.

That was a huge shift for me and definitely a cold hard ugly truth.

I suddenly realized that the world was not as friendly a place for women as I thought it was.

Truth number 5 – you will keep shifting, and everything will change

This shift will keep happening to you in one way or another on the spiritual journey.

Many of us are in group paradigm shifts so at least we are able to hold each other up.

Some examples of current group paradigm shifts are

• a growing awareness that the Food Industry is not our friend 
• the need to change how we use products such as petroleum and plastic 
• realization is growing that photo-shopping the picture of a teenage girl and publishing the images as desirable is a form of abuse
• the #metoo movement
• an awareness that gun violence must become a priority in social politics
• awakening to the damaging nature of patriarchal energy
• becoming aware that not all of those with intuitive gifts have our best intentions at heart.

Truth number 6 – you will meet narcissists and maybe even sociopaths!

There’s been a lot of talk on the internet about the Empath and narcissist dynamic.

The ‘narc’ is out there and seen as preying on Empaths.

The two personality types have a natural attraction to each other and create a symbiotic relationship more damaging to the Empath than the narcissist.

I do believe this dynamic exists and that an open and caring person can be drawn in by another person to do their bidding (especially if somebody has a borderline personality disorder or is an extreme narcissist).

This is really, really tough. Perhaps this time in history is our time to wake up to this unbalanced power dynamic.

Truth number 7 – n my experience, a lot of this has to do with generational energy, specifically patriarchal energy

When I was younger I was fairly self-involved and interested in developing my career fully and earning as much money as I possibly could. I was immersed in the energy of the ’80s and was not interested in anything else.

So you could say I have been a narcissist too.

If we become parents, we need to work on our own emotional development, otherwise, we may spend our days holding back on expressing our emotions or blocking our own personal growth in order to just be there for our children.

In reality, the lessons are much more multi-dimensional than this.

Let’s just say though the adventures heading towards energy balance so that we neither give nor receive too much can be a very painful and tortuous journey.

Truth number 8 – you can never go back

It’s true. Just like Joseph Campbell’s hero’s myth, or Lissa Rankin’s heroine’s journey, we can never go back once the changes are made.

Just like Luke Skywalker can never farm or work in a junkyard again, we cannot lose our new perspectives and experiences gained on the spiritual journey.

We have changed, the river is no longer just a river, the valley is no longer just the valley.

We come bearing gifts, no matter how painful, hard, cold, and ugly the truth is, we are living it now and the gifts change our perception completely.

Sarah is an Intuitive Coach and gives a range of different readings to clients, and coaching sessions too.  Download the free PDF brochure to learn more about the readings she offers, join the client portal to chat with her directly.