An Existential Crisis Can Lead to Spiritual Seeking Delusions
There comes a point in our lives where we go through an early identity or existential crisis, or a later mid-life crisis. A mid-life crisis often comes when we have reached the perceived peak of our material lives. We may have accomplished the maximum level of our career progressions, our fitness and body are deteriorating, and we may have kids who are now all grown up and ready to create their own lives. Having already achieved our key goals in life of let’s say a stable income, home, desired assets, and an established family of our own, one reaches a crossroads in their life, to ponder where to from here? What do I do now? Is this all there is to life? What am I really doing here? Going through this existential crisis will inevitably lead us to our shadow of nihilism to face the reality of who we truly are.
Although not all existential crisis occurs during the middle of our lives, as they can in fact occur much sooner. This is what happened to me as I went through my own unique existential crisis which peaked at age 33, where I experienced many synchronicities, after achieving my goal of owning my own home. Perhaps I did not set the bar high enough, as I failed to create anymore material goals in my life for me to achieve next. This lead me down the long road of spiritual seeking, becoming caught in varied New Age Religions and False-Light Spiritualities. An existential crisis will inevitably lead us to seeking some form of meaning to our lives, where we can naturally gravitate towards some higher power, and bigger picture outlook on life. However, a Spiritual Ego often develops also during this time, to try to control and assign a larger meaning to this new spiritual path we are on.
On this quest to find greater purpose in our lives, to reach some form of enlightenment, we begin to bypass the real reason for this existential crisis. As we go through a Spiritual Awakening, we experience more synchronicities, more prophetic dreams, deeper meditations, and heightened creativity. This process of Awakening thins the veil towards a non-physical reality where some of us develop the ability to see, hear, or feel into this realm beyond our typical human senses. We may also be able to go a step further and discover a way to move out-of-body, exploring this non-physical realm with more depth and detail. During this time of heightened spiritual experiences in our lives our Ego loves to identify, label, over-embellish, and create some form of purpose to these occurrences, which fit into our ego’s need for understanding and control. It is not as though these spiritual experiences are meaningless to our life, as they can benefit us and aid in our development. We shouldn’t avoid awakening on the spiritual path overall, as it does act as a stepping stone for our unfoldment and evolution, provided we don’t become lost or trapped in the delusion of our ego’s need to know and direct everything in our lives. However, when our ego does take over, desires to narrate and choose meaning to these experiences beyond what they really are, for show and tell and grandeur, is when the problem manifests. This is where we face our biggest challenge on this path of awakening, as to whether we will continue to side and be caught in the delusion of our spiritual ego, or if we are able to let go of needing to find a higher meaning altogether and remain humble in not knowing, or being able to solve the greater mystery of life.
If we take a step back and reflect on all of the spiritual experiences we have had in our life on this journey, coupled with all the unique occurrences others have shared and created a living from, we discover there is not one individual who holds all the answers, or really knows what is the overall meaning of life, which overrides all other contradictory beliefs. Similar spiritual experiences we encounter with the non-physical realm can be interpreted very differently by the individual who experiences them through their unique filtered lens and past subconscious programming. The infinite nature of the non-physical realm combined with our endless creativity is the reason our ego has unlimited potential to derive different beliefs to these spiritual phenomena we experience. Based on this how can one realistically ever reach a form of enlightenment and spiritual ascension as a human, that consciously finds the ultimate truth and meaning to all of existence, above all others, disregarding those contradictory, yet unique, valid, and true experiences from another? This sounds more like someone who is spiritually bypassing, heading towards a false-god ego complex, who also has a lack of true wisdom.
What could really be occurring on this never-ending quest to seek spiritual perfection and a level of ascension that is greater than our collective humanity? The answer I discovered many years later, after letting go and leaving this new age spiritual path was in fact, I wasn’t looking into the true reason behind my existential crisis in the first place. I was bypassing trying to reach for the branches instead of going deeper within to my roots. I was seeking a false-light and what I believed to be good and positive, instead of entering the depths of my darkness, suffering, core wounds and traumas, and what I perceived as evil within me. Facing our internal shadow, each layer at a time, feeling, experiencing, integrating with it, creates an alchemical transformation that is connected to our Essence. Spiritual Seeking can take us on a path of deconstructing what makes us human. It is a journey of abandoning our humanity in an attempt to find something we perceive as much greater, that is beyond human. Though eventually we have an opportunity to uncover the humility in our error to assume this is the true destination for us in this life. It is rather a journey that often brings us full circle towards grounding us back into this reality, into this body, and to simply being human once again. However, this time we are now more realised, we are now embodied and present, so we can create and live a life that is truest to our essence, to our truth, to our nature.
Our awakening journey back home to the beginning first occurs more at an individual level, though eventually extends out to our connection to a collective level of humanity. We can now see the whole of humanity for what it really is: the good, the bad, and the ugly. We see the very best it can be, and the very worst. When you become wholly present to your life and yourself, it is unavoidable to experience a broken heart many times over; to be cracked wide open to reveal your vulnerability and innocence. Instead of distracting ourselves with addictions and coping mechanisms, we experience a deeper intimacy with life. We experience it all, the highs and the lows, the joys and the terrors, the beauty and the pain it all brings. The everything that life is, the all that it is, altogether, all at once. If we attempt to avoid the negative aspects of life, we cut ourselves off from the joyful aspects also. To be truly alive means we must show up to our lives. To be all in. We need to have the courage to simply be all of who we really are. It is easy to judge and reject the negative aspects of humanity as something separate from ourselves, that we want to avoid or escape from the matrix of our enslavement by the powers that be. And yet the true Latin meaning for the word ‘Matrix’ is in fact ‘Womb’. It is a place of creation, where beyond the illusion of fear and separation from our true selves it keeps us safe, so we can slowly remember and continue growing, until we are ready for our rebirth to wherever is next for us. It is a Matrix far greater than a prison of our enslavement. It is rather Cosmic and Universal in Nature. It is a construct and catalyst we are needing at this time, so we can transform and evolve in this Earthly Womb, beyond what we have ever been.
The ‘Puer Aeternus’ is the eternal child within us that at some point we need to let go of, so we can go through the rite of passage of entering our spiritual adulthood. No longer bypassing the shadows of life, no longer seeking a false-light, no longer being a victim of life. Instead we learn to take full responsibility for the life we create. No longer in servitude and worship of an external higher power to direct our life. A spiritual parental figure we are needing to depend on at that time to make our lives easier, without being accountable to all that life is. Holding onto our underdeveloped eternal child aspect within us, will hinder our psychological and spiritual development, and inevitably lead us to more suffering in our lives. If we successfully go through the natural ritual and cycle of growing up, by abandoning our spiritual dependency, eventually the inner-child integrates back within us, as our journey comes full circle into our later adulthood. This is when our creativity can truly flourish, as we become more embodied and grounded into this life. We reach our spiritual adulthood, where we are wiser and more present to life, more integrated, individualized, connected, and whole, so we can finally embrace simply being human after all.
