The spiritual path has been so richly rewarding for me. It has saved me from my own over-thinking, it has led to an effortlessly beautiful marriage, and it has allowed glimpses into a deeper self that is always whole, unbroken, and okay.
And yet, despite 20 years of dedicated spiritual seeking, and some undeniably transcendent moments, I noticed that certain patterns – the ones that I’m least proud of – showed up over and over again. And after some really raw moments in the last few years, it started to dawn on me that maybe my spiritual path – or at least the way I was approaching the path – wasn’t sufficient.
It seems like the crux of the matter is blind spots. Blind spots – or what is invisible to us – give rise to troublesome patterns that we all have that pop up in times of stress or frustration or fear.
I have spent considerable time with some incredibly wise and loving spiritual teachers, and I got to see that no one is immune to blind spots. I was willing to grant my mentors lots of latitude for being human. They are among the finest people I’ve met. And yet, I was really frustrated with the dynamic that I experienced of being encouraged to look away from those blind spots, or to employ a spiritual understanding to excuse bad behavior. This felt like spiritual bypassing to me, and it brought to the surface my own disappointment, harsh judgment, and anger that jarred me. But – no surprise – all of those emotions had been frequent visitors in my life. So, after leaving my spiritual community (but not the spirituality) in a huff (I said I wasn’t proud of these patterns!), I got really deeply curious about how my humanity and my spirituality could be less at odds.
And, in a nutshell, this quote that I read just a few days ago is the answer I found:
“All great spirituality is about what we do with our pain.
If we do not transform our pain,
we will transmit it to those around us.”
Richard Rohr
In the wake of my inelegant departure from my spiritual community, I rediscovered Ken Wilber, who movingly describes the ways that we can develop and access the different aspects of our selves. He calls it “Integral Theory”, and while his writing is too heady for me, I love this word “integral,” meaning “essential, or necessary for completeness.” Oooooh. That sounds really good to me. And I like even more the shorthand he uses for pointing to the different aspects of consciousness that we can develop or awaken.
Wake Up – Grow Up – Clean Up – Show Up.
There are volumes and volumes written about this, but here’s my quick and dirty summary:
“Waking Up” is all about the spiritual realm, integrating spiritual insights into daily life, living from a sense of purpose and connection to a higher source.
“Growing Up” is about our psychological and moral development. This is all about gaining a deeper understanding of one’s own mind and behavior.
“Cleaning Up” is about understanding and healing the unavoidable emotional blind spots and past traumas that we all experience, and it requires welcoming all aspects of the self, including the habitually unwelcome emotions that lead to our most persistent (and unhelpful) patterns.
And finally, “Showing Up” is about being and expressing ourselves authentically in the world, and asking ourselves how we can be of service to the world.
This framework resonated with me in a deep way, and helped me to realize that without “cleaning up” I will keep bringing the same invisible patterns to everything in my life – my spirituality, my marriage, my parenting, my relationship to money, my always trying to get it right… I will keep being presented with opportunities to resolve the unresolved emotions that live in my body. This, I saw, is part of the spiritual journey to wholeness.
Serendipitously, I found just what I needed to help me begin to “clean up.”
In early 2023 I stumbled across a podcast with a guy named Joe Hudson who was articulating this journey of “cleaning up” in the most inviting way. The more I listened to what he was saying, the more it felt like my whole body was saying YES! YES! YES!
Flash forward a little more than a year later, and I can hardly believe how much these knots of lifelong patterns are softening and unwinding. It’s painful at times, and I’m looking at places in myself that I’ve always looked away from. I’m learning what it means to welcome it all, even the defenses I’ve used my whole life (ummm, hello arrogance!) to avoid feeling the scary stuff (hi there helplessness, hello unworthiness).
I got curious about Joe, and what I found is someone who is deeply grounded in a spiritual understanding, but spirituality isn’t the entry point. He offers an innovative and extremely effective approach to embodied practice to actually transform those things that are in the way of accessing what we’re capable of in our lives. In the spirit of the Richard Rohr quote above, Joe shares a way to transform our pain into greater freedom and deeper connection – to ourselves, and to others.
Here’s the coolest part. The courses I’ve taken from Joe’s organization – Art of Accomplishment – are some of the best designed learning experiences I’ve ever encountered. And I’m the guy who got a Ph.D. in Education and spent a good chunk of my life trying to innovate and transform American education. Lots of research on how we learn best is baked into all of the courses offered (yup, I’ve taken all of ’em), and Joe is actually only a small part of what you get to experience. The global community, the deep connections with other participants that are fostered right out of the gate, the beautiful vulnerability that is the norm, and the I-wouldn’t-belive-it-if-I-hadn’t-seen-it-in-person rapid transformation of most participants, all add up to something that I am endlessly grateful to have found.
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