3 Spiritual Ideas I Was Getting Totally Wrong

I feel there is a rapid escalation of my growth happening. I am learning now – and suddenly – that I took in some considerable spiritual misunderstandings over the years and had thus accidentally integrated some harmful ideas into my life! 

The realization of this has been both gentle and profound. Less like a blindfold being torn off and more like it being fairly quickly dissolved off of my skin, before I could consciously articulate what was happening or what I was beginning to see. I want to reflect on some of my misunderstandings here, as I begin to poke around in my life in a new way, in hopes that they may be useful.

1. Selflessness

This is an older one, but probably one of the most dangerous ones I originally misunderstood. At a very young age, I equated being selfless (which I also equated with being ‘spiritual’) with self-denial and an over-emphasis on others. I had a very sincere desire to serve, but in doing so, I’d often completely betray myself. It also obstructed my capacity to be truly connected with my heart and grounded in my body. It made me very sensitive to the needs of those around me, but I could – and still can be – quite unsure of what my own desires are.

I now am more clear on this: the greatest service you can first give to the world is your own joy and your own alignment. From there, your contributions are magnified, and, only then can you be sure that you are acting from a place that is in harmony with everyone’s highest good (because yours counts!).

2. Suffering is necessary

I am sort of embarrassed of how long it took me to realize that this is not the case. I believe in a loving, benevolent Universe. So how did I manage to align myself with this belief? This idea has played a rather unconscious and pernicious role in my life. I would constantly stay in really difficult situations (being overworked; deeply unfair relationships; accommodating other peoples’ schedules even though they created disharmony in my body) and justify it as Learning A Lesson.

• I thought a relationship where I was regularly treated unkindly was a lesson in forgiveness.

• I thought being overworked was a lesson in hard work.

• I thought accommodating others at my continual exhaustion and detriment was a lesson in adaptability.

And in some ways, they were. But I don’t think that these were the primary, most empowering lessons to learn.

I see now that each of these circumstances, which eventually put me into a state of despair, were highlighting my own, repeated abandonment of self. They showed me where I was not listening to my heart or my body. And I suffered as a result. It’s clear, as well, that forgiveness, hard work, and adaptability can be learned without subjecting oneself to continued abuse, fatigue and frustration.

So, I now remind myself often (as my own beloved Life Coach first reminded me!): Growth is mandatory, suffering is optional. If you are like me, and sometimes equate growth/progress with hard work, reflect on whether you are engaging in self-abandonment or even self-punishment. Ask yourself, what is the most loving, caring thing I could do for myself? Sometimes, the precise situation cannot change right away (as much as we might want it to), but how can you bring tenderness, gentleness, compassion to it? Where can you find some love, spaciousness, outside support, hope?

I promise, there are so many ways to learn and grow that do not require you to feel stuck, trapped, or powerless. Get yourself feeling free and feeling in your power; there are other ways to learn.

That is what I ended up learning most through my suffering.

3. How to ACTUALLY let go

This is genuinely a funny one to me. I’m amazed and so amused by how poorly I misunderstood this, and I don’t think that the language surrounding this act of emotional processing is much help (at least not to me!).

‘Just let it go’. I heard this so often. Friends, family, and other well-meaning comrades have all suggested this noble path with the razor-sharp clarity of Nike’s most advertised advice (Just Do It). I knew it was the ‘right’ thing… but I had no idea how to make it happen. 

Where is the instruction manual!? What do you actually ‘do’ inside?

An accompanying visual is often a tense fist; to let go, you simply unfurl whatever you were holding inside. Your anger/sadness/etc was camping out in there and when you just stop holding on to it, it flies off like a bee, buzzing away and freeing you from its vibration and stings.

I had no idea how to actually replicate this concept in my own body. I would visualize (best I could – I have total aphantasia!) a process akin to this and feel largely the same afterwards. Or, I’d feel some immediate relief, and find not long after, that I had not actually done the job as the mental chatter, defensive or depressive thoughts would be there waiting for their next opportunity. I would also often rush the process because, in real life, letting go only takes a second or two.

For me, a more helpful reframing of Letting GO is to let BE (pun unintended but I am delighted). Don’t try to make whatever is buzzing around or stinging you inside go ANYWHERE. Enter a state of being that feels more (strangely!) like... ‘You can stay here forever if you need to’.

This state of surrender brings the calm you need to be the observer. You are allowing yourself to FEEL without your thinking-mind swatting it around. You are letting it be.

Emotions just want to be felt and acknowledged. You do not even need to make sense of them.

In Tarot for Change, Jessica Dore writes (SO beautifully) that: ‘emotions...simply want what all other life wants: to be born, to have a safe space to express fully, and to die, eventually, as all living things do’ (234)).

So, instead of thinking and working so hard, commit to being the loving space for that emotion to live out its life cycle. I’d add only that the emotion itself isn’t dying but is rather transforming back into its true state: Love!, which is even better.

You can be the loving, safe space where this magical, alchemical process unfolds.

In feeling, ‘you can stay here forever if you need to’, you create space for your emotions to live out their natural life cycle. Your job then is rather in the backseat. Breathe in to your heart. Let it BE within you, BE with it as a loving observer for as long as it needs. BREATHE more and simply stand in the middle of it. 

Eventually, the feeling does fade, but the key is in not needing it to – not making your peace depend on whether the emotion transforms immediately or not.

When we become obsessed or primarily motivated by making a ‘bad’ feeling go away, it is so much harder to process it. We are labelling this expression of energy as wrong, and we don’t want to be wrong by association! This happens especially, in my experience, with anger. It can bring up such feelings of guilt.

In addition, we often think that we cannot handle certain feelings, and want to bypass, ignore, or push them away to protect ourselves. It makes total sense! But by engaging in this really gentle embracing of whatever IS, we see that we are so much stronger and eternal than any passing emotion. It is not bigger than you are. 

As Pema Chödron has said: “You are the sky. Everything else – it’s just the weather” (also quoted by Jessica Dore in discussing the Page of Swords).

Thus, we sort of accidentally learn our own power through practicing this exercise. We feel our eternal nature behind the fleeting storms.

What letting go is to me:

As I shared, ‘Letting go’ always made me think of an opening out to release.

However, a closer physical sensation in my experience is a softening, an embracing. Not a letting OUT but a letting IN – an opening inwards. Let yourself see where exactly the feelings are stirring within you; ask yourself: in which body part do I feel which sensation? Then, let it be there, let it co-exist with your breath. Quantum physics shows that a high-vibration frequency and a low-vibration frequency cannot co-exist in the same space; the lower ones will always, eventually, give way to the higher ones. 

I think there are some interesting political connections to be made in the philosophy of Letting BE / IN (for another post, perhaps).

So, better feelings/images for me: softening, embracing. Sometimes I pretend that emotions are guests in my home and I need to be as hospitable as possible. Sometimes I pretend that the emotion is a river and I’m simply watching it flow, as I stand firmly on the ground. I’m not making anything ‘Go’ anywhere, in fact, I’m staying as still as possible. You might like visualizing it as a plant somewhere inside of you that needs some TLC, and each loving, attentive breath is all the nurturing it needs: sunlight, gentle rains. You’re not uprooting it and chucking it out, calling it a Bad Plant, but nurturing it into a bright and vibrant flower (perhaps ‘let it grow’ instead of let it go?).

Ultimately, emotions are meant to transform, and the more we focus on Getting Them Out, or making them Go Away, the more stuck they may get. Giving them total permission, with your physical softening, your breath, and loving attention, takes the energy out of your resistance. By removing the resistance, they get on with their own job themselves, and move, transform, grow into love.

The ‘letting go’ idea might have worked for you fine, but I thought I’d share the way I’ve come to rephrase it for myself, as it has changed the game for me. And best of all (though maybe not for my ego), it’s so much easier than I thought.

I hope these reflections are useful for any one – if for no other reason than to laugh together at the ways we can, so humanly, misunderstand such things…and I’m sure I’ll find many more along the way!