Am I spiritual if all I seem to encounter are no-very-nice things about myself?

Question: I have begun being seriously on my spiritual path and a lot of the time I find myself in a lot of pain often around having to face some not-very-nice things about myself. This isn’t quite what I had expected. I had hoped to come face to face with a more radiant me and to experience a lot of spiritual light. I am not encountering any of this despite meditating regularily and doing my best to live a disciplined spiritual life. Consequently, I am becoming a bit disillusioned.

How am I off beam? Any advice?


Serge’s advice
Well, well well, if you don’t mind me saying, you seem to have a bit of a naïve or romantic idea about what the spiritual path involves, which is certainly not just about sitting on mountaintops basking in radiant light. The aim, I remind you, is not to get ‘high’or to try to feel good (although en route we may experience both). Rather, the aim is to be free, to discover who we really are; the aim is about our trying to return to our source where we can experience our true Self, which is one with all that is. That is the aim. It is about finding our truth.

And this can often be tough, because en route, we need to encounter our untruth, that is, we need to have a clearer idea of the false us, of the ‘pretend’ or the ‘socialised’ us which includes seeing the parts of us that may be arrogant, selfish, inauthentic, etc. And we all have these parts! It follows that unless we can see these aspects of ourselves more clearly, we cannot work transformationally with them. Indeed, this is one of the things that spiritual light, when it comes, often does for us; it illuminates or ‘lights up’ what is untruthful about how we live; it reveals our obstacles or what stands in the way of our being spiritual. From what you say, it appears that this is currently happening with you. If so, it isn’t ‘bad’.

On the contrary. The fact that you seem to be confronting your ‘dark side’ big time, seems to be evidence of your meditation and endeavours towards spiritual discipline paying off. In other words, you seem to be pretty on track. What your problem is, is that you have a rather one-dimensional perspective of what you perceive the spiritual life to be about!

Let me remind you how the late Tibetan lama Chogyam Trungpa Rimpoche described being on the path. He saw it as being akin to ‘Licking honey off the razor’s edge’. Carl Jung also reminded us that ‘We don’t become enlightened by sitting in the light, but by going into our darkness.’ And just as light will illumine it for us, so by going deeply into our dark side, we discover more light.

So my advice to you is to accept what is happening and don’t see it as being the result of some mistake, or you doing something wrong, but on the contrary, as evidence of you doing a lot right, and of you being strong enough to face your dark side. I am sorry if you are currently undergoing suffering, but it really is, at times, a very integral part of the whole purificational process.

I recommend you read that great little spiritual classic, ‘Dark Night of the Soul’ by St. John of the Cross. It may offer you comfort as well as give you some important insights. Also, don’t forget that darkness does give way to light. It is always when night is at its very blackest that the first slivers of dawn begin appearing in the sky. I trust that very soon this will be happening for you.