Spiritual Awakening vs. Psychological Maturity
Exploring the gap between spiritual teachings and unresolved shadow patterns.
Psychological maturity and spiritual realization are not separate. In fact, as far as I can tell, they depend on one another.
You cannot truly transcend what you haven’t yet come to know. You cannot fully realize the Self, as in, awaken to what you are beyond mind, without becoming deeply aware of the structures of mind itself. And yet, in much of the modern spiritual world, we’re taught to dis-identify from the mind before we even understand what it’s made of.
In the wake of New Age ideology, where “enlightenment” and “awakening” have become buzzwords, I find myself asking again and again:
What does that even mean?
What is enlightenment?
For years, I considered it to mean a total dis-identification from ego, thought, identity and therefore, a kind of freedom. A state of oneness and unity with the fabric of reality. Of resting in the unconditioned.
But the more I’ve observed, the more complex that definition has become.
Because I’ve encountered teachers and sages considered to be “enlightened,” who also struggle with substance addiction, sexual compulsions, and sometimes even emotionally manipulative or controlling behaviors.
And so I ask again… what is enlightenment? Is it the same thing as awakening? Is it a moment? A state? An identity? And perhaps more importantly… how can someone be “enlightened” and also unconsciously harming people?
From what I can tell, awakening often refers to the experience of perceiving life without the filters of the conditioned mind; sometimes momentary, sometimes sustained. Enlightenment, in contrast, is often treated as a kind of abiding awareness.
A final state of being.
But I’m not sure that idea holds up.
Because many teachers are thought to be enlightened and yet have addictions and complexes. In order to have a compulsive addiction — to sex, power, control, alcohol — one must still be merged with the thinking mind, still identified with a wound and living through a distortion.
Which makes me wonder, can someone be fully dis-identified from the ego and still be bound by it?
I cannot rationalize an answer outside of: I don’t think so.
From what I understand, we cannot become free from the mind if we don’t understand it deeply and thoroughly. We must know its structure and see through it viscerally.
Thich Nhat Hanh spoke about this often: the importance of understanding our inner formations. Bringing enough presence and awareness to gently and patiently witness what’s really there before dis-identification.
And what I see in seekers and teachers alike is a tendency to rush that process; to notice a neurotic or painful thought, and then immediately try to surrender it. Let it go. Move beyond it. But in my experience, and from my admittedly limited understanding, that doesn’t seem to lead to freedom.
Because if we don’t understand the illusion, we can’t truly dis-identify from it.
We’re still caught in it… just pretending not to be.
I think of it like this:
It’s like planting a seed you were told was lavender, and waiting for purple blossoms, but one day, a tomato plant grows instead. You don’t need to argue with it or reason with it. You don’t need to pretend it’s lavender. The moment you see what’s actually growing, your relationship to the plant changes. You stop tending it for what it was never going to be. The illusion dissolves through recognition of what is.
The mind works in the same way. When we see clearly what it’s doing: what it believes, what it’s protecting, what it fears, and the inaccuracy of all of it — our grip on it naturally loosens.
Freedom doesn’t come from spiritual detachment alone. It comes from seeing clearly enough that the detachment happens naturally. We don’t need to make surrender happen. When the root is seen and understood, the grip of it softens on its own.
I believe the reason we behave in unloving ways is because something inside of us is still believing something untrue. If our nature is love, if our source is love, then anything that isn’t love must be coming from a distortion of perception. And that distortion, when traced deep enough, always leads to fear.
Even when it doesn’t look like fear on the surface, that’s what you’ll find at the root: a terrified part, believing a story within the mind and refusing to face it head-on.
So no. I don’t believe we can meditate or surrender our way out of illusion unless we’ve seen the illusion first. Unless we know what we’re actually surrendering.
You can try to let go of a painful belief or limitation,
but if you don’t know what that belief is,
you’ll end up trying to surrender it again and again,
as if it keeps coming back.
But it was never seen and understood in the first place. It didn’t really go anywhere.
Let go of the resistance to seeing it.
Let go of the resistance to knowing yourself.
That’s what opens the door.
Spiritual realization cannot be embodied by bypassing the mind. It must be understood so clearly that it’s flawed logic can no longer run the show.
I don’t want to see another generation of seekers high-tailing their way into spirituality thinking it’s a means to hopefully skip the inevitably painful and disorienting dissolution of self-identity that will come if they are to continue climbing this mountain.
When avoidance is the approach, we just end up with ego’s becoming more concretized with their newfound sense of spirituality and superiority, but still engaging in all of the same egoic behaviors and defense mechanisms as before… only now, they’re more suppressed and present in a soothing voice wearing linen.
Psychological maturity and spiritual realization aren’t separate. They’re the same unfolding, from two sides of the veil. And the veil gets thinner every time we’re willing to look at the thing we’ve been afraid to see about life, mind and ourselves.
