What Is a Spiritual Journey? An Insider Guide to Transformation

Every life eventually asks one unavoidable question: Who am I, really?

That question marks the beginning of a spiritual journey—a passage from the known into the unknown, from outer identity toward inner truth.

While each traveler’s path is unique, the underlying architecture is universal.

We outgrow one self, descend into shadow and healing, and return with deeper wisdom.

This inner odyssey mirrors Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey and appears in nearly every wisdom tradition.

In this in‑depth CEOsage guide—part of the Spiritual Psychology & Inner Practice Hub—you’ll discover the three evolutionary stages of transformation, the signs you’re genuinely progressing, and the hidden blocks that halt growth before awakening begins.

Let’s dive in …

What is a Spiritual Journey?

A spiritual journey is the process of getting to know ourselves, healing ourselves, and realizing our true nature.

While a spiritual journey will be perceived differently depending on an individual’s religious orientation (for example, a Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, or secularist), the stages one goes through are relatively the same.

That is, while the experience of the spiritual journey may vary from individual to individual, it will still follow a universal structure, as we’ll see below.

Under ideal conditions, the spiritual journey to realize our true nature would be a natural and organic process. However, these “ideal conditions” rarely, if ever, exist. As such, heroic effort is usually needed to “complete” this journey.

Photo by Yanny Mishchuk

Three Triggers That Begin the Journey

The “call to adventure” that initiates one’s spiritual journey can come from numerous sources.

1  Personal Crisis

With a personal crisis, there’s usually an intense emotional upheaval that rattles the individual to their core. This type of crisis may include:

• Getting divorced
• Losing a loved one
• Being laid off from work
• Getting diagnosed with an illness
• Losing the battle against an addiction

Whatever the crisis, the old programs running within one’s ego structure get disrupted, allowing something new to emerge.

2  Desire for Growth

As we’ll see below, the initial stage of the spiritual journey often coincides with an interest in self-discovery. Initially, the focus is frequently on self-improvement, self-growth, and professional development.

While this self-discovery phase is not necessarily “spiritual,” it’s often still a sign the individual has said “Yes” to their adventure.

As they come to know their personality, something else will likely emerge within them that will command their attention to delve deeper into understanding themselves.

3  Inner Calling

Other times, an internal tension begins to rise spontaneously from within. Something deep within the individual starts bubbling up from the unconscious with no external, preemptive cause.

Here, an inner calling triggers one’s quest. It’s as if something deep inside us is searching for an understanding of ourselves, personal meaning, and the nature of existence itself.

This quest for meaning can lead to existential angst and create a crisis of meaninglessness. In some cases, it leads to existential depression that plunges the individual into the pit of despair.

These existential bouts often occur at midlife (“midlife crisis”). Christians frequently refer to this existential angst as “the Dark Night of the Soul.”

Shrouded in darkness, the individual, whether realizing it or not, is trying to return home to themselves. But they may not yet realize that they have initiated their spiritual journey.

Photo by Isaiah Guillory

Nine Signs You’re on the Path

So, how do you know you’re on a spiritual journey?

1. Discontent: A cloud of discontent grows within you. You’re realizing that the material world just can’t be all there is. Many of the things you once valued now seem empty and pointless.
2. Search for Meaning: Instead of just chasing fleeting pleasures and dopamine hits, there’s an internal directive searching for something more meaningful (even if you don’t know what that is).
3. Existentialism: You often find yourself thinking about topics like meaning, purpose, or metaphysics (beyond the physical). You might experience melancholy or depression of an existential variety.
4. Sensitivity: You may feel more “raw” or sensitive than you ever have before. Your interactions with others may be less enjoyable now. Consequently, there may be an impulse to isolate yourself.
5. Upheaval: You are feeling progressively ungrounded, as if the world you knew is falling away, and you can’t seem to get your footing with what is real.
6. Identity: You are starting to realize you’re not the person you thought you were, but you’re unsure who you are or what it all means.
7. Willingness: Whereas before you sought perpetual comfort in distractions and the material world’s regular programming, there’s now a renewed willingness to explore more challenging topics, lean into discomfort, and see where it leads you.
8. Truth Hunt: You find yourself reading lots of spiritual books from various traditions, as if you’re hunting for the Truth.
9. Synchronicity: You may be experiencing meaningful coincidences (“synchronicities“), as if some hidden hand is guiding you in a particular direction.

Now, let’s turn our attention to the specific spiritual journey stages.

The Hero’s Journey: The Cycle of Departure and Return

The Hero’s Journey Framework

As we covered in this Spiritual Growth guide, a spiritual journey follows the quintessential hero’s journey framework illuminated by the late mythologist Joseph Campbell.

Campbell discovered this “monomyth” structure by studying the religious stories, myths, and legends from a wide range of traditions throughout recorded history.

Although Campbell’s framework has 17 “steps,” the core of the hero’s journey has three main stages:

1. Departure: Accepting the Call to Adventure
2. Initiation: Trials and Tribulations
3. Return: Synthesis and Integration

First, let’s quickly run through each of these three stages before we apply them directly to one’s spiritual journey.

Stage 1: Departure

In the departure stage, the hero leaves the safe world where things are known and enters the unknown. Here, we depart from the “conventional world” of the status quo and enter a “special world” that is largely foreign to us.

Stage 2: Initiation

In the initiation stage, the hero faces many ordeals. These trials and tribulations illustrate that the journey isn’t easy or safe. The journey can be dangerous. Defeat in battle is possible. One encounters friends and foes during this stage. The hero also meets a sage-like character with supernatural aid.

Stage 3: Return

In the final stage, the hero returns home with battle scars, having endured the trials and hardships of the initiation phase. The maturation process, shaped by revealing experiences and life lessons, transforms the hero internally. That is, the individual who began the journey is no longer the same.

Stages of the Spiritual Journey

Three Stages of the Spiritual Journey

Now, let’s take this essential 3-part structure and apply it to the spiritual journey specifically.

These three development stages are:

1. Departure: Self-Discovery
2. Initiation: Self-Healing
3. Return: Self-Realization (Returning Home to the Self, or God)

But first, let’s clarify our starting point before the spiritual journey begins…

Our Social Masks

Before we begin our journey, we wear various social masks that Carl Jung referred to as personae.

When we identify with our social masks, we might say things like:

• I am an athlete.
• I am a parent.
• I am a lawyer.
• I am an artist.
• I am a [insert your religious affiliation here].

The point is that we identify with various masks and roles as the core of what we are.

It’s not that there’s inherently anything wrong with, for example, identifying yourself as a “Christian wife and mother of three children,” or an “ambitious executive and talented athlete.” But these are just external labels.

They represent roles and ways in which you interface with the external world. However, these social masks do not reveal your core personality—who you truly are.

All of our personae and self-identities are shaped virtually exclusively by prior programming and conditioning from the external world. In Campbell’s language, these social masks are part of the “ordinary world.”

To begin our spiritual journey, we need to examine the individual behind these social masks.

And with that, we move on to Stage 1 …

Stage 1: Self-Discovery (Departure)

In accepting the “Call to Adventure” of our spiritual journey, we begin the self-discovery process.

Here, we get to know our conscious self, or the personality in its current form:

• What do you value?
• What do you truly stand for?
• What are your greatest strengths and weaknesses?
• What are your fears, desires, dreams, ambitions, and goals?
• What’s your personality type (for example, your Enneagram type)?

This initial stage involves taking a personal inventory of one’s life. This self-discovery phase is driven by:

• A desire to know yourself,
• A curiosity about what you’re going to discover, and
• A prevailing sense of purpose.

Personal growth takes center stage in this initial phase of the journey.

Stage 2: Self-Healing (Initiation)

While getting to know your current personality is part of the process, this initial inquiry is still an exploration of what’s mainly conscious and known.

The second phase of our spiritual journey is where things get messy. In this alchemical process, we begin a deeper exploration of the unknown—the stuff buried inside of us (the unconscious). As such, the genuine ordeals, trials, and tribulations begin to unfold.

In this stage, we explore our past and get to know the archetypes (or parts) within our psyche. Even though we consciously don’t recall many events from childhood, it’s all recorded within our field.

During this stage of the spiritual journey, we unearth childhood traumas. These traumas created divides within our psyche that need healing.

Modern neuroscience demonstrates that trauma reshapes neural pathways responsible for emotional regulation and self‑connection, yet these same circuits show measurable plasticity through integrative practices.

In this stage, the focus is on self-analysis, inner observation, cultivating understanding, and self-healing.

Stage 3: Self-Realization (Return)

The final stage of our spiritual journey comes after we bring the splits in the psyche to consciousness and address them. A lot of the stagnant psychic energy caused by trauma and repression is released and returned to us.

The self we were before is now seen as the false self. It was a set of concepts based on prior conditioning and programming. We can fully see that now. In observing this, we stand separate from it (as the witness). It’s still there, but we are certainly not that.

Having transcended the prior two stages, we integrate all of this psychic material and hold to the Center, stabilizing within ourselves.

Now, we can return home to the Higher Self, Spirit, or God (depending on your background and worldview).

Ultimately, “the Return” is to our true nature, unconditioned and ever-present.

Photo by Jordan Heinrichs

Ten Common Spiritual Blocks

The spiritual journey can be treacherous. Like any true adventure, it isn’t safe, and success is not guaranteed.

Some individuals fall into various spiritual traps that can divert the quest for years, if not a lifetime.

While not all of these spiritual blocks and traps will be relevant to your particular journey, it behoves us to be mindful of them.

Potential spiritual blocks and traps include:

1. Falling for the Spiritual Bybass
2. Reinforcing the Fundamentalist Mind
3. Repressing Your Fear of the Unknown
4. Succumbing to New Age Programming
5. Leaving Grandiosity Unaddressed
6. Holding onto Pride (The “I Know” Syndrome)
7. Maintaining Low Intrapersonal Intelligence
8. Playing the Victim-Perpetrator Game
9. Lacking Discernment
10. Avoiding Genuine Practice

Let’s examine each spiritual block in more detail.

1 – Falling for the Spiritual Bypass

A spiritual bypass, also called spiritual materialism, occurs when we use spiritual concepts and practices to avoid unresolved emotional and psychological wounds we need to confront.

Essentially, we attempt to skip Stage 2: Self-Healing and go right to Self-realization.

We are wired to seek relief from pain. In this case, we try attempt to avoid the pain entirely. Spiritual ideas of “love, light, and transcendence” can anesthetize discomfort better than drugs or distraction. Meditation can even become a subtle form of emotional repression.

The bypass keeps trauma sealed below consciousness while projecting an “enlightened” attitude above it. Over time, this causes a further split in the psyche while genuine growth is stagnant, if not regressive.

Authentic spirituality is not flight from pain but transparency to it. Instead of avoiding the mess, dive into the discomfort.

Get to know your shadow. Confront your inner demons. Challenge your closley held beliefs. Understand the nature of your trauma and the source of your emotional triggers.

The descent into shadow is the initiation that the ego resists, but it’s the way forward to the Self.

2 – Reinforcing the Fundamentalist Mind

The fundamentalist mind is the psyche’s attempt to stabilize chaos through certainty.

When confronted by the vast unknown, the ego clings to dogma or absolute rules, mistaking rigidity for truth.

Fundamentalism isn’t limited to religion—it infiltrates science, spirituality, politics, even “rationalism.” Its hidden motive is safety: obeying a closed system spares the anxiety of not knowing.

Psychologically, absolutism functions as a defense against fear and meaninglessness. It converts doubt—a necessary ingredient of growth—into an enemy to be exterminated.

The mind builds walls of moral superiority (“I know the truth; others are lost”) that fracture perception and isolate the individual from direct experience. Behind every rigid belief is an unexamined wound that can’t tolerate paradox.

Freedom begins where certainty ends. The antidote is inner observation—watching each “black‑and‑white” thought arise without gripping it. Real intelligence lives not in what we know, but in what we’re willing to question.

Photo by Sander Mathlener

3 – Repressing Your Fear of the Unknown

Fear of the unknown is the hidden current running beneath most rigid belief and avoidance patterns.

When consciousness approaches territory without a map, the nervous system interprets uncertainty as danger.

The ego’s survival memory equates control with existence: if I can name it, I can manage it. When that control dissolves, panic substitutes for presence.

Rather than face this abyss, many numb it through distraction—information binges, constant productivity, spiritual platitudes.

Yet growth requires entering the mystery unarmored. In Jungian terms, the “unknown” is the unconscious itself—our unrealized potential as well as our buried pain.

The work isn’t to abolish fear but to lean into it—to feel it without interpretation. Each moment of openness dissolves a little rigidity in the mind’s shell.

Only when we allow life to remain unpredictable do deeper forms of trust awaken. Mystery, once feared, reveals itself as the womb of wisdom.

4 – Succumbing to New Age Programming

The new age trap is spiritual consumerism disguised as liberation.

After rejecting conventional dogmas, seekers often adopt a subtler form—chasing “high vibes,” cosmic downloads, ascension protocols, light workers, or perpetual positivity. We might call it the “love and light” game.

The slogans change, yet the underlying pattern remains: bypass discomfort, inflate identity, and call it awakening.

Psychologically, this trap arises from a hunger for significance coupled with unhealed emotional wounds. Channeling, “manifestation rituals,” or endless energy upgrades promise quick transcendence, but they anchor the psyche in fantasy.

Without grounded embodiment—shadow work, ethical practice, relational honesty—illumination turns into delusion.

Ancient traditions warned of this imbalance: ascent without descent leads to possession by the light persona. True awakening alternates heaven and earth—insight integrated through disciplined presence.

When spirituality becomes entertainment, the path dissolves into spectacle. The remedy is humility: remain curious, skeptical, and rooted in direct experience. Authentic growth trades glamour for grounded clarity.

Gustave Doré, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

5 – Leaving Grandiosity Unaddressed

Grandiosity is the ego’s inflation after tasting power or insight. The moment a genuine awakening or intuition occurs, the ego rushes in to claim authorship: I am special. I see what others cannot.

This subtle superiority feels like empowerment but secretly fractures wholeness. The “Chosen One” narrative replaces humility with performance.

Beneath grandiosity is insecurity—the wounded child desperate for validation.

When unexamined, ambition hijacks spirituality itself: teachings become branding; service becomes self‑advertisement.

Even intellectual pride—believing one’s frameworks are the most advanced—creates karmic stagnation.

The antidote isn’t shame or withdrawal but humor and perspective. Recognize expansion as a shared human possibility, not a personal conquest.

True realization has no owner; it blinds the eye that tries to possess it. When greatness arises naturally through service, grandiosity dissolves into gratitude. The mature soul measures success not by applause but by its connection to the Self.

6 – Holding on to Pride: The “I Know” Syndrome

The most subtle imprisonment on the path is certainty born of knowledge.

After years of practice or study, the mind secures an identity—the one who knows. Pride replaces discovery with repetition. The seeker becomes teacher to self and student to none.

This fixation often follows genuine achievement. Insight hardens into ideology the moment it stops evolving.

The phrase “I already understand that” signals the gate closing; curiosity dies at the altar of experience. I call it the “I know” syndrome.

Behind this stance lies fear—the terror of returning to a beginner’s mind, where nothing is guaranteed.

Pride limits revelation because it obstructs receptivity. The psyche can’t receive what it believes it already contains.

The remedy is devotional intelligence: humility that listens beyond its frameworks. Wisdom isn’t cumulative; it’s alive, shedding its own skin.

Each “I don’t know” reopens the channel. In unknowing, the Self speaks freshly again.

Howard Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences Theory

7 – Maintaining Low Intrapersonal Intelligence

Intrapersonal intelligence is the capacity to observe one’s inner world without distortion.

When it’s underdeveloped, a person can wield immense external knowledge yet remain blind to their own motives, emotions, and contradictions.

Low intrapersonal intelligence sustains the ego’s illusion of control—misidentifying reaction for choice and projection for truth.

Without self‑observation, emotional energy stagnates. The psyche becomes reactive rather than reflective, ruled by moods, defended by rationalizations. This impairs discernment: one cannot steer a ship whose instruments are fogged by denial.

Spiritual seekers with weak self‑awareness often confuse inspiration with intuition and charisma with authenticity.

Raising intrapersonal intelligence starts with disciplined witnessing. Every thought, desire, or impulse becomes data for consciousness rather than ammunition for judgment.

Gradually, pattern recognition replaces self‑deception. Emotional literacy matures into transparency, where honesty and humility coexist. When we know ourselves deeply, external manipulation, ideology, and subtle self‑betrayal lose power.

8 – Playing the Victim-Perpetrator Game

The victim–perpetrator dynamic binds much of humanity’s suffering. In its simplest form: I hurt because of you.

This worldview begins in real pain but solidifies into identity.

Once adopted, every challenge confirms injustice, and genuine empowerment feels like a betrayal of the self‑story. The ego gains moral high ground through powerlessness.

Psychologically, this game externalizes shadow material; responsibility is outsourced.

Yet resentment is a contract with the past—it keeps energy cycling through blame rather than transformation. The other half of the loop, the inner perpetrator, hides guilt and self‑rejection under righteous indignation.

Breaking the cycle requires radical self‑ownership. Seeing both roles within—the one who suffers and the one who inflicts—dissolves polarity.

Compassion for one side without accountability for the other is sentiment; integration requires both.

Liberation comes when we stop rehearsing injustice and begin reclaiming authority over our response. Freedom is not revenge—it’s release.

9 – Lacking Discernment

Discernment is spiritual intelligence in motion—the faculty that distinguishes truth from illusion, intuition from impulse.

When it’s weak, openness mutates into gullibility. The seeker confuses intensity with insight, charisma with authenticity, and comfort with resonance. Blind receptivity isn’t surrender; it’s negligence disguised as virtue.

Low discernment stems from emotional immaturity. Without a stable center, attention chases whatever promises relief or validation. Algorithmic culture amplifies this state: constant novelty trains the nervous system to mistake stimulation for growth.

But the spiritual path demands stillness before decision—testing every teaching or method inside direct experience.

True discernment integrates heart and intellect: feeling evaluates energy, reason evaluates coherence. When both agree, trust is earned, not assumed.

Discernment doesn’t make us skeptical cynics; it makes us responsible participants in consciousness. Freedom isn’t the absence of authority—it’s the presence of inner authority that cannot be deceived.

Photo by Anway Pawar

10 – Avoiding Genuine Practice

The final obstruction is inertia disguised as insight. Many collectors of spiritual knowledge study endlessly, attend retreats, quote sages—and never submit to consistent daily practice. It’s safer to talk about transformation than to endure it. Intellectual narcissism replaces embodied realization.

Avoidance arises from fear of failure and fear of change. Regular practice dismantles the ego’s control mechanisms; it demands discipline, patience, and daily humility.

Without structure, awakening remains theoretical—a fantasy of freedom without friction. The real temple is time, repetition, and honesty in the ordinary.

Practice is the crucible where insight becomes character. Breathwork, meditation, prayer, or self‑inquiry aren’t rituals of achievement but tools of remembering.

Each repetition engraves awareness into matter. The measure is not how long you sit, but how wholly you show up. When practice and living merge, spirituality ceases to be an activity; it becomes your nature.

Read: The Ultimate List of Spiritual Practices (200+)

Grounding the Journey in Daily Life

To make consistent progress and navigate through the common spiritual blocks we just addressed, you have an arsenal of tools at your disposal:

Conscious breathing: Taking a single slow, deep, quiet, and steady breath can alter your consciousness.

Centering: Sink your awareness into your body to reconnect with your heart and instincts.

Grounding: Forge direct contact while remaining mindful of your surroundings to discharge energetic tension.

Standing: Align our posture correctly, sink the tension through your feet, and allow your internal energy to consolidate.

These types of simple yet incredibly powerful practices are available to each of us.

Used mindfully, intentionally, and consistently, they slowly change the structure of your consciousness. They are trusted allies along your spiritual journey.

The Three Poisons from the Buddhist Wheel of Life

The Three Poisons and Their Antidotes

Along your journey, what the Buddhist tradition calls the “three poisons” will no doubt confront you. These three poisons are:

1. Attraction, greed, or sensual pleasure
2. Aversion, anger, ill-will, or hate
3. Ignorance, confusion, or delusion

These three poisons are represented by a rooster (greed), a snake (anger), and a pig (ignorance). These three animals are located at the center of the Buddhist Wheel of Life (above). This wheel itself represents the cycle of Samsara (suffering).

So, attraction, aversion, and ignorance are at the center of this cycle of suffering; they are the fulcrum upon which the Wheel of Life spins.

How the Three Poisons Hinder Us

All three poisons can, and often do, actively hinder one’s spiritual journey.

Our desires fuel the false self, blocking us from stabilizing and transcending the mind. How to remove greed, avarice, and desire is a common theme in the Wisdom traditions.

Anger and hate represent an unwillingness to release and let go of the past. This type of aversion will also stall growth and healing.

Ignorance and delusion are the sources of most suffering in this world, including self-inflicted negative states.

The Antidote to the Three Poisons

One of the antidotes to the three poisons offered by the ancient traditions is to cultivate virtues.

For example:

• Temperance or moderation keeps greed and desire in check.
• Benevolence or magnanimity deflates anger and hate.
• Wisdom or prudence quells the fire of ignorance.

Additionally, contemplative meditation combined with self-analysis helps one resolve these three poisons.

Ultimately, as you progress to realize your true nature (the Self), the three poisons become less noxious.

Frequently Asked Questions About the Spiritual Journey

Before we close, let’s address some of the most common questions readers encounter on this path.

What are the benefits of embracing a spiritual journey?

It’s not a question of benefits or worth. One’s spiritual journey is about stripping away what you’re not (the false self) to return to what you are (one’s true nature as the Self).

From the material world’s perspective, a spiritual journey does not provide any so-called “gains.” The ego itself can’t profit from the journey.

As such, if there isn’t an inner calling to “say yes” to this journey, the individual will not make the journey.

Conversely, if the internal decision to accept the quest has already occurred, one way or another, the journey will continue until moksha (self-liberation) is realized.

Are there specific things I need to do to navigate each stage?

While everyone’s spiritual journey is different, there are “best practices” and methods that support each stage.

For a deeper look at these stage-specific practices, see this guide:

The 3 Stages of Spiritual Growth: From Self‑Discovery to Self‑Realization

Do spiritual journeys necessitate a “spiritual awakening”?

Although it may seem that way from reading many online articles, no, it does not.

Some individuals may have a “defining moment” that will be perceived as an “awakening.”

For example, a major life crisis that radically alters one’s perception of reality.

But in many cases, the journey is just a relatively steady progressive process without a singular “awakening” (at least, as the term is most often used).

Can I help initiate someone else’s journey?

Unfortunately, you can not. The “inward turn” must be self-initiated.

If it’s not, the journey won’t be authentic or meaningful. It will just be another thing the individual does to get someone’s approval.

As such, genuine psychological and spiritual development will not unfold.

What if I feel stuck?

There may be many periods of feeling stuck along the journey, and for various reasons. For example:

• Old programming and conditioning try to reassert themselves, as the old ego seeks to regain control.
• Different archetypes from the unconscious possess the individual, taking them down different tracks.
• Fear and the drive for safety and comfort temporarily win over one’s willingness to explore the unknown (discomfort).

If you are feeling stuck, try the following:

1. Accept the feeling of stuckness. There’s no point in fighting this feeling, as it will only strengthen it.
2. Let go of expecting things to unfold in a specific way. Embrace the unknown by letting go of the need for control.
3. Experiment with various grounding techniques and centering methods to see where they lead you.

These methods will often help you get unstuck rather proficiently.

Photo by Zack Silver

Integrating the Journey: Final Reflections

Here are a few reminders:

• Spiritual growth is a natural and organic process, so learn to get out of its way.
• Especially in the early stages, pay attention to what interests you.
• Notice when you instinctively gravitate towards specific spiritual texts and ideas.
• Herculean effort and will are required in the early stages of one’s journey (to overcome prior conditioning).
• Ensure that you directly address negative emotions, such as fear, anger, and guilt, and their underlying causes.
• While the spiritual journey may follow specific stages, everyone’s experience is unique.
• Feelings of loneliness are part of the journey. Resist these feelings, and you’ll suffer. Accept them, and something extraordinary may well up inside you.
• Even though it’s beneficial to learn from others and seek knowledge, eventually, all that comes from the external world is discarded.

And with that…

Realizing One’s True Nature

The ego (one’s current self-identity as “I”) is conditioned by one’s environment from the moment of birth onward.

In contrast, our true nature—the Self or Original Spirit—is unconditioned by this world. It doesn’t need anything this place has to offer, as it’s already complete and total.

The Self sees through all of the illusions (Maya), including all the false identification and contrived concepts that the mind likes to invent and play with.

We must overcome extensive prior programming (what the Taoists call “mundane conditioning”), contrivance, and inertia along one’s journey to the Self.

As such, many never truly engage with the “adventure,” instead staying exclusively in the material domain (what’s known).

But for those who do say a “hearty yes,” eventually, that Herculean effort that supported earlier stage progress becomes a hindrance. It, too, must be discarded.

Now, instead of pushing, pulling, and exerting effort to realize one’s true nature, spontaneously, the Spirit (or Self) guides us forward.

Then, the Return home is near.

Read Next

A Wildly Practical Guide to Seeking Spiritual Guidance (7 Methods)

Spiritual Healers and Their Shadow: A Real-World Guide

Duality and Nonduality Explained: Key Insights from the Nondualists

5 Powerful Meditation Tools to Help You Train Your Mind

Scholarly References

• Konrad, A. C., Miu, A. C., Trautmann, S., & Kanske, P. (2025). Neural correlates and plasticity of explicit emotion regulation following the experience of trauma. Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience, 19, 1523035.
• Larsen, S. (2007). The Fundamentalist Mind: How Polarized Thinking Imperils Us All.