Walking the Spiritual Path (When the Rest of Your Life is Falling Apart)

There are a great many disciplines that can be considered spiritual practice: meditation, dream work, shamanism, archetypal psychology, Taoism, yoga, Zen, etc. Many devotees of all the various paths have witnessed a similar phenomenon, though. At the onset of the work they experience feelings of inner peace and well-being. Then, suddenly, things seem to fall apart and daily life becomes chaotic. Relationships fracture and fall apart, work falls through, interactions with old friends and associates become strained. Essentially, one's old life no longer feels so stable and reliable as it once did.

During these stressful periods, it can feel as if the spiritual work itself is to blame: instead of bringing growth and enlightenment, it's opened the door for the demons to come swarming in. Actually, what it's done is trigger a natural and universal process that none of us can escape anyway in the long run: the old must be swept aside in order to make room for the new.

Spiritual growth feels so tumultuous at times because it works to bring us in touch with our true selves. So what's the trouble with that? Well, the complications arise because most of us had been operating (at least to a certain extent) through our false or shadow selves before we committed to personal growth through our practice. The false self is the ego with all of its values and ideals that may not be at all in line with our true nature. This means that many aspects of our familiar lives - our relationships, our jobs, our habits and associations - will have been built upon false premises, upon an illusory sense of ourselves and what we want.

The progress that we make along the spiritual path, then, can feel destructive in the short term because it disrupts the way in which we've structured our lives according to ego values. Our souls are expanding, but the old structures are too constrictive and can't hold up to the pressure of that expansion. Inevitably they shatter, and we see the fragments lying all about our feet and wonder if we're just cursed after all. What had we done wrong?

Unfortunately, many people abandon their practice at this point and try to pick up the pieces of their old lives and glue them back together. Sometimes the momentum built up by the Work is too strong to tolerate any falling back upon the status quo. Other times, though, peoples' will can be strong enough to ignore the impetus to move forward - and in these cases they're able to revert back to the way things were. This is unfortunate, because the disruptive periods are temporary and only one part of the process.

The other part - the ushering in of the new - is where the miracles unfold. The loss of one's job leads to a better one. The loss of an intimate relationship make room for a new and more fulfilling partnership. These kinds of rewards can only be reaped, though, if we continue along with our spiritual practices even when we think that everything is falling apart around us. The only things we're really losing are our illusions.