SELF-LOVE

There are simply no shortcuts here.

For example:

1. How can you learn how to love yourself more when your mind is literally at war with itself?
2. How can you learn to love yourself when you hate what you see in the mirror?
3. How can you learn how to love yourself when your environment is positively toxic and depressing?
4. How can you learn how to love yourself when you have no positive role models?
5. How can you learn how to love yourself more when people label you as being selfish and neglectful?
6. How, how, how?

While I don’t profess to know all the answers, I do know that there’s no magical wand that suddenly makes you more self-loving.

After being on this path for years, moving from literal physical self-harm to a daily self-compassion practice, working through a lot of my deep-seated trauma, and helping others to do the same, I’ve had some big realizations and breakthroughs.

What is Self-Love?

In short, self-love is the practice of unconditional compassion, forgiveness, acceptance, and respect for yourself – all of your beautiful and wounded parts included.

When you love yourself, you take care of yourself, honor your limitations, listen to your needs, and respect your dreams enough to act on them.

When you love yourself, your happiness, health, and fulfillment are all of the supreme importance because you realize that by loving yourself, you’re also able to love others more wholly and fully.

18 Profound Benefits of Self-Love

Self-love illuminates, improves, and deepens every aspect of life. Here are some of the many benefits of learning how to love yourself more:

1. More tolerance of your flaws and weaknesses
2. Heightened self-confidence
3. Increased self-forgiveness
4. Healthier mindset (and less self-sabotaging thoughts)
5. Improved ability to discover and fulfill your personal destiny
6. Increased love, acceptance, and compassion for yourself
7. More love, acceptance, and compassion for others
8. Improved relationships
9. Better friendships
10. More satisfying work life
11. More authentic connections with people
12. Enhanced joy and gratitude for life
13. Increased playfulness, creativity, and spontaneity
14. Higher levels of self-trust
15. Healthier and wiser choices
16. Increased access to new opportunities
17. Improved mental health (and less anxiety + depression)
18. Deeper access to one’s Soul and spiritual path

I could probably go on for another few pages. But these are the most immediate benefits that come to mind.

Perhaps what is most satisfying about learning how to love yourself more is that it opens your heart, giving you access to your deeper, truer self – your Soul.

Why is it So Hard For Us to Love Ourselves?

The short answer to this questions is that most of us were raised in a society (and likely a family) that failed to teach us about self-love.

All throughout our early lives, we were taught how to read, write, calculate, build, theorize, study, and analyze life. We were taught how to say “please” and “thank you,” as well as what was acceptable and unacceptable to others and society at large … but most of us were never educated in one essential dimension of life: self-love.

Something that continues to shock me about my own upbringing was the distinct lack of emphasis on growing healthy self-acceptance and self-worth.

As a child I never can recall being taught the value of loving oneself, setting healthy boundaries, knowing how to say “no” and “yes” when you mean it, and learning to take care of yourself. Instead, I was taught how to be a good martyr; sacrificing my mental and emotional health for the needs of others. And while I don’t blame my family (because they were a product of their own times), I can see how neglecting to love myself led to a cascade of mental, emotional, and physical problems.

If you were raised in a culture and society similar to my own, you were probably conditioned in a similar way to “put others before yourself” and not give much consideration to your own needs.

Typically, self-denial and self-sacrifice are the two main values taught in our childhoods and continue to be elevated as the markers of a “kind, caring, and worthy human being” to this very day.

Unfortunately, what I learned later in life was that these two values (self-denial and self-sacrifice) taught me nothing more than the profound emotional and psychological pain of being a self-imposed martyr with no real understanding of how to take care of myself – or others for that matter!

The result of not being taught the value of self-love in childhood and adopting the socially acceptable guise of being a martyr is depression, bitterness, anxiety, resentment, and profoundly flimsy self-esteem.

However, even though you may not have been taught how to love yourself growing up, the door of opportunity is still open to you.

But before we walk through that door, let’s explore one massive myth associated with self-love (and perpetuated by the same society that taught you to be an externally-focused martyr).

Is Self-Love Selfish?

Every now and then you may hear explicitly stated or implied that self-love is selfish.

Perhaps you live in a family that condemns any form of self-care and celebrates toxic self-sacrifice and martyrdom instead. Or maybe you work in an environment where self-love is scoffed at or seen cynically.

Whatever the case, it’s important to nip this massive misconception in the bud.

Self-love isn’t selfish. 

Why? Because without taking care of yourself, you are incapable of truly taking care of others.

Self-love actually benefits other people, not just yourself. When you’re able to genuinely love and accept yourself, you’re able to love and accept others much more fully.

To use an analogy, how can an empty cup be used to quench the thirst of another? It’s impossible. Likewise, it’s impossible for us to give love if we haven’t first filled ourselves. Simple.

It’s a well-known psychological fact that mistreatment of yourself results in the mistreatment of others. As professor of educational psychology Kristin Neff writes:

Self-compassion involves treating yourself with the same kindness, concern, and support you’d show to a good friend. When faced with difficult life struggles, or confronting personal mistakes, failures, and inadequacies, self-compassion responds with kindness rather than harsh self-judgment, recognizing that imperfection is part of the shared human experience.

So the next time you start feeling guilty for dedicating time to yourself or caring for your own needs, remind yourself that by practicing self-love you’re actually strengthening your ability to love others. 

What Science Says About Self-Love

Numerous studies have shown that learning how to love ourselves is beneficial.

Here are some examples of findings that have been discovered:

• Self-acceptance is the key to living a happier life 
• Self-compassion results in making better health decisions 
• Self-kindness results in less anxiety and depression
• Self-compassion reduces the stress that leads to procrastination 
• Self-care can help you reach your goals 
• Self-love can support you through adversity 

Contrary to popular belief, learning how to love yourself isn’t new age woo woo – it is actually one of the smartest decisions you can ever make in your life.

The Dark Side of Self-Love

Yes, learning how to love yourself more might feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

But it’s not always sunshine and roses.

The truth is that most people may not in truth want to support you (however, there are some exceptions, so hold onto those people!).

Not only that, but society at large will continue to bombard you with toxic subliminal messages, such as:

1. You have to make people like and accept you.

2. You have to put other’s needs above your own all the time with no exception.

3. You have to conform to the status quo and fit in.

And when it comes to the people around you, you might pick up on this unspoken message:

4. You have to be unhappy and discontent – just like us. 

The reality is that most people don’t like being truly happy: instead, they prefer comfort, stability, security, and control.

Why? Because safety and predictability is the most comfortable way to live according to dominant sociocultural standards.

Unfortunately, the childlike mindset of needing to seek safety is precisely what makes (most) people so hesitant and blatantly (or subtly) resistant to support your self-love journey.

You Become a Threat: 

 

When you walk the path less traveled, you directly contradict what others have invested so much of their lifetime effort into: cultivating comfort and mediocrity.

Inevitably, you become a threat.

By challenging people to reconsider their choices, actions, and mindsets through your behavior, you unintentionally trigger self-doubt and therefore fear in others. And very few people are brave enough to honestly look at themselves and change.

At some point we have to face the (rarely mentioned) truth that when you start practicing self-love, you become a social heretic. You stick out. You stop fitting in. You cease being one of the misery-loves-company crew who thrive on self-pity and cynicism.

And suddenly this puts you in a very uncomfortable position, a position where you have to choose between taking the narrow path, or the wide and easy path.

Some of us give up. Others of us persist, but end up withering away under the weight of social pressure. Both of these struggles are totally understandable and normal. Thankfully life gives us many choices to bounce back and reorient our paths.

For those of us who do manage to get back up and continue on that winding path, it’s inevitable that we’ll find ourselves pushing against what feels like a never-ending onslaught of “you’re not good enough,” “you should be like us,” “you aren’t worth it,” “you’re so selfish.”

But it gets easier with time and practice, I promise.

Loving yourself, truly and deeply loving yourself in this era, is a breathtaking accomplishment.

In fact, I’d say you deserve a downright party thrown in your honor just for having the guts to walk this path!

How to Prevent Others From Dragging You Down

As we’ve just explored, you’ll inevitably be faced with people who disagree, disapprove of, or outright challenge your desire to make self-love a way of life.

Here’s how to see the bigger picture and stop them from bringing you down:

1. Realize that other people are scared and in pain

One big element of learning how to love yourself more is training yourself to not take other’s treatment of you personally.

Ask yourself, how can a person who only knows self-sacrifice and self-abandonment give you approval and acceptance? That’s like expecting a baby to climb a mountain. It doesn’t happen, and it can’t happen.

Therefore, what’s the point of getting wound up and unhappy over the people in your life who not only don’t support you but also speak against you? Unfortunately, their very actions speak of their abject lack of self-love. Isn’t that so very sad?

Most people not only fail to possess self-love, but they’re also caught up in an Underworld of fear and pain. Fear and pain are sourced from the illusion that we’re separate from Life – that we’re humans having a life experience, rather than Life itself having a human experience.

Once you realize that people are basically scared and in pain a lot of the time, it takes out the harsh sting from their disapproving stares and mistreatment of you. It also frees up the energy within you to provide yourself with even more self-love.

Once this realization hits you (in the heart, not just the head), you eventually stop reacting to their negativity and start feeling compassion for them instead. And it’s this precise compassion that befuddles them, yet is also sometimes enough to motivate them to try the same path.

2. Realize that how other people treat you is a reflection of how they treat themselves

It hurts to be the only one in your social circle trying to take responsibility for your life. It hurts to be rejected by your friends, family, or both because you’re taking a different path.

Learning how to love yourself more undeniably HURTS BADLY sometimes, and other times it feels blissful and wondrous. But if there’s any lesson you can take away from the way people treat you, it is this: their actions mirror how they treat themselves.

Do you think that a person who mistreats you thinks they’re superior to you? More often than not the answer is a big fat “no.” They mistreat you because they are threatened by you in some way, shape, or form. Unless they are clinically diagnosed narcissists or psychopaths, most people are deeply insecure and fearful, not simply nasty for the sake of it.

The more you go against the grain, the more threatening you become to such insecure people. Understanding this, your ability to practice self-love becomes much easier.

Is it Possible to “Love Yourself Unconditionally”?

Unless you’ve reached a high level of spiritual maturity or some kind of nondual state of Oneness (and even then, such experiences fluctuate), then self-love isn’t generally something that comes naturally. Instead, you must work for it.

As spiritual beings having a human experience, our lives are characterized by highs, lows, and plateaus.

In some periods of our lives, we’ll celebrate who we are and feel confident in our abilities. In other periods (aka., during a life crisis or even Dark Night of the Soul), we’ll feel insecure, ugly, fat, messy, unlovable, and altogether shitty. This is all NORMAL. In fact, you might go through this cycle within one week or even a day!

The important thing here is to embed self-love deeply into your daily inner work or spiritual practice. Then, when the time comes and you’re challenged, you’ll be able to practice mindfulness and awareness. Instead of getting swept up in self-loathing, you’ll be capable of practicing self-compassion. Instead of neglecting your body, you’ll know when to practice self-care.

(And even if you do struggle to practice self-love during these darker moments – which happens to all of us – you’ll be more prone to catching and stopping the tirade of negative thoughts in your mind.)

Yes, you might occasionally experience mystical moments of complete self-love and acceptance – but these are fleeting moments that don’t last. To make self-love and acceptance more of a consistent experience, you have to practice it consciously every.single.day. No excuses!

So the message here is this:

Don’t be upset if you alternate between self-love and self-hatred. Having “unconditional self-love” is an unrealistic standard – it’s normal to go through ups and downs. But the more you practice embracing yourself each and every day, the more you’ll be able to deal with what life throws at you.

Relax.

Give yourself a break.

Remember that “attaining” self-love can be just another thing you use to beat yourself up and feel like a failure. 

So slow down. Go easy on yourself. And as author Matt Kahn writes, “Whatever arises, love that.” These words essentially mean that you can practice accepting and forgiving all things that arise in you, even (and especially) including your insecurity, shame, guilt, and self-judgment.

How to Love Yourself More 

(7 Practices)

Let’s get to the practical meat and bones here. Here are the seven life lessons I’ve learned about how to love yourself more:

1. Learn to be discerning and say “NO, that’s not true”

You’ll hear a lot of blatant and subliminal messages on your path.

You’ll be told that your body isn’t slim enough, your face isn’t pretty enough, your personality isn’t charming enough, making mistakes is unacceptable, taking care of your needs is selfish … yadda, yadda, yadda.

Not all of these false and unhealthy perceptions will be immediately obvious. Some of them will creep into your mind and belief system, and pollute your self-perception. In fact, many of these toxic perceptions probably have already.

Not many people talk about discernment when it comes to learning how to love yourself more.

“Discernment” is largely a dull-sounding word, but it is SO important. For instance, how can you tell truth from lies without learning how to be discerning?

To learn how to be discerning you need to question everything. Yes, this can be tiring, but it’s worth every ounce of your effort. Why? The answer is that being discerning will help you to sort through a lot of mental rubbish, antiquated beliefs, and harmful ideals.

Learning to say “NO, that’s not true” or ask, “Is that actually true?” helps you to discover what the truth actually is. And the truth is always grounded in love (but again, you will have to discover this for yourself).

The more discernment and therefore clarity you have, the more you’ll be able to support and care for yourself.

2. Be your own best friend

Are you your own mortal enemy?

If most of us spoke to others the way we spoke to ourselves, we’d be universally hated!

You’re with yourself 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, and you are with yourself through all the glory and all the pain. Doesn’t it make sense to be best friends with yourself? Wouldn’t that make your life so much easier?

To practice self-love, it’s important for us to consciously change our relationships with ourselves, and treat ourselves with compassion and consideration just as we would with a best friend.

So my question for you is this: how close are you with yourself? Do you give yourself pep talks as a best friend would? Do you treat yourself to fun and exciting activities you love? Are you there to hold your own hand when things get messy?

If your answer is “no” or “rarely” or even “sometimes” it’s time to do things differently. Explore what it feels like being your own best friend. What one activity can you do this week that honors this philosophy?

3. Change the way you perceive your flaws

As spiritual teacher Jeff Foster puts it:

Don’t judge your sadness, your depression, your feelings of unworthiness so quickly, and don’t judge the sorrows of another, for you really don’t know what’s best for anyone, for you really don’t know more than life itself. That which you reject (in another or in yourself) may actually be much-needed medicine, a misunderstood teacher, inviting you to a self-love deeper than you ever thought possible. It may be a threshold guardian, a gatekeeper of a forgotten kingdom!

Instead of seeing our guilt, jealousy, anger, fear, and sadness as a terrible curse, see them as opportunities to grow. Realize that everyone struggles with these universal human emotions. We ALL feel insecure at times, and that’s perfectly okay.

I remember how difficult it was for me to change the way I perceived my imperfection. Every time someone pointed out a flaw of mine or criticized me in any way, I would feel depressed, angry, and defensive.

One day, my partner said, 

“Instead of getting all sad and mopey, why not see this as an opportunity to grow?” 

To be honest, I wanted to punch him in the face right there and then. But after a few months, I thought “what the hell!” and gave it a try.

What a vast difference it made to my life! Instead of getting defensive, I would feel the sting to my ego but another part of me would feel gratitude, gratitude for the chance to grow.

So give this mindset switch a try. See what happens when you start perceiving your imperfection as an opportunity to grow. See what happens when you meet inner challenges with gratitude.

4. Practice loving all that arises and healthy self-judgment

Critical self-judgment is the antithesis of self-love. The core reason why we struggle so much with self-love in the first place is that we judge and reject ourselves.

Don’t get me wrong. Self-judgment isn’t always a bad thing. We need to be able to measure up our ability to achieve certain tasks at work, as well as understand our strengths and weakness to make smart choices. Not only that, but self-judgment can actually save our lives (e.g., deciding not to drive after judging that we’re too drunk) and it also prevents us from being assholes if we need to change our behavior.

But, here’s the thing. Self-judgment becomes toxic when it’s used to negatively minimize, bad-mouth, shame or otherwise harm ourselves.

Unfortunately, most of us are in the habit of misusing self-judgment. Thanks to our conditioning as children, it’s actually socially acceptable to be abusive toward ourselves because that’s what everyone else has been doing for a long time.

One powerful – but not necessarily easy – practice, is learning to love all that arises within you. When I write “love” what I mean is embracing and accepting the comfortable and uncomfortable things within you.

As writer and teacher Matt Kahn explains:

Instead of trying to shift your feelings, just love the one who can’t stop feeling. Instead of trying to resolve each fear, simply love the one who’s always afraid.

Instead of trying to not take things personally, just love the one who came here to make like personal. Instead of trying to prove your worth, simply love the one who feels worthless, lost, ashamed, and alone.

Instead of trying to leap forward in evolution, just love the one who feels left behind. Instead of having something to prove, simply love the one who came here to play.

Instead of bossing yourself around and measuring your progress through spiritual obedience, just love the one who refuses to listen. Instead of trying to believe, simply love the one in doubt. Instead of trying whatever you attempt, just love the one who needs permission to be.

Whatever arises – love that.

This seemingly ‘simple’ acceptance practice actually takes a lot of effort and can be strengthened through daily practices such as contemplation, mindfulness, and meditation. You can apply this philosophy to anything in life – even the inability to love all that arises is an opportunity to forgive and accept yourself!

However, as a side note, acceptance must be balanced with judgment. If we’re physically abusive toward our partners, for example, we obviously don’t want to “accept” that behavior – that would be spiritual bypassing and a blatant misuse of this self-love concept.

Serious self-judgment of our actions needs to be brought into the picture, particularly when we’re being toxic or harmful toward others. In this case, judgment can actually be a form of self-love that prevents us from further hurting others, and therefore ourselves.

5. Learn the art of self-care

Most of us are terribly disconnected from our bodies, minds, hearts, and Souls.

We live in a world that encourages us to be externally-focused and outwardly driven.

On the other hand, learning how to love yourself is about going in the opposite direction and taking your energy and directing it inwards.

There are endless ways to practice self-care. I explore 39 different ideas in my self-care article, but to get you started, I recommend starting with your body.

Spend time each day connecting with your physicality and explore what you need. Perhaps you’re tired and need more sleep, maybe your muscles ache and you need to do some stretches, or you might even need a good nutritious meal.

These practices may seem simple, but they send a very direct and powerful message to your conscious and unconscious mind that you are worthy of being cared for!

6. Be your own advocate and stand up for yourself

Being your own advocate means exploring what your needs are and respecting them, which is a form of self-love.

What is non-negotiable or a deal-breaker in your life? What are your deeply cherished values? What are your boundaries? Standing up for what you believe in is a form of self-respect.

To be your own best advocate, a good place to start is exploring what’s making you feel unhappy, depressed or overwhelmed in your life. What lines are being crossed? In which areas do you feel used or taken for granted? What makes you feel unsafe?

You might like to explore these questions in your journal (and if you don’t journal already, check out my how to start journaling article to get started).

Remember that being assertive about your needs and values isn’t a synonym for being an obnoxious asshole.

You don’t need to be loud, angry or emotionally reactive to be an advocate for yourself – that approach will backfire very quickly.

Instead, healthy assertiveness is about honoring yourself while at the same time being respectful towards others. Some mantras or affirmations that you might like to repeat to yourself to practice healthy assertiveness include:

• “I calmly and firmly honor my needs.”
• “I respect my needs in a gentle and assertive way.”
• “I allow myself to say no clearly and respectfully.”
• “I honor my needs, values, and feelings always.”
• “I create clear and consistent boundaries that protect my energy.”
• “I have the right to defend my needs and desires.”
• “I am clear but kind about my personal boundaries.”

You can also take these mantras or affirmations and create some of your own!

7. Explore the core beliefs that keep you small

First, I want to start by saying that exploring your core beliefs is DEEP work. Although it may not seem like it at first, diving into the dark nether regions of your mind is an act of self-love.

Excavating your core beliefs (i.e., the main ideas you have about yourself) can and will transform your life if you know how to do it properly. For a more in-depth overview, check out our core beliefs and shadow work articles.

For the sake of clarity, I’ll give you a few helpful examples of core beliefs. Common ones include “I am bad,” “There’s something innately wrong with me,” “I’m not worth it,” “I’m unlovable,” and “I’m irrevocably broken.”

There are many ways to uncover and change your core beliefs. One practice I have recently discovered is how powerful the use of a mirror can be.

Stand in front of a mirror in your house and designate at least ten minutes to be alone and undisturbed with yourself. Then, simply look at yourself. Gaze into your eyes. What emotions and thoughts emerge?

Mirror work is one of the most direct and dynamic ways of uncovering your self-talk and core beliefs. Pay attention to inner dialogue that sounds like the following: “I look so ugly,” “This is stupid,” “There’s something wrong with me,” and notice what type of thoughts and feelings you keep having. 

Then, enfold your body in a hug, look at yourself and say, “It’s okay, I am here for you, I accept you” (or whatever feels the most loving and authentic to you). Write about your experience in your journal afterwards to help integrate the experience.

21+ Empowering Self-Love Quotes

 I’ll leave you with a few more perspectives on learning how to love yourself from a variety of writers, thinkers, poets, psychologists, and mystics.

Take a few moments to contemplate what you read and let it sink down into your blood, bones, and marrow.

Sometimes a simple word, sentence, or idea has the power to spark deep epiphanies that can create gentle yet large ripple effects in your life:

Do you want to meet the love of your life? Look in the mirror.

– Byron Katie

 

Compassionate toward yourself, you reconcile all beings in the world.

— Lao Tzu  

 

To love oneself is the beginning of a life-long romance.

– Oscar Wilde  

 

You have been criticizing yourself for years, and it hasn’t worked. Try approving of yourself and see what happens.

– Louise L. Hay  

 

The more self-love we have, the less we will experience self-abuse. Self-abuse comes from self-rejection, and self-rejection comes from having an image of what it means to be perfect and never measuring up to that ideal. Our image of perfection is the reason we reject ourselves; it is why we don’t accept ourselves the way we are, and why we don’t accept others the way they are.

– Don Miguel Ruiz, The Four Agreements 

 

Your problem is you’re too busy holding onto your unworthiness.

– Ram Dass 

 

When I loved myself enough, I began leaving whatever wasn’t healthy. This meant people, jobs, my own beliefs and habits – anything that kept me small. My judgement called it disloyal. Now I see it as self-loving.

– Kim McMillen 

 

If you can discover your essential beauty, in spite of all your problems and imperfections, you are on the way toward well-being. A preliminary step is simply to accept yourself with all your failures and imperfections. You must get the ego out of the way—the thought that you are so exalted that in your refined state you would be perfect. Acceptance is the beginning of genuine and honest self-love, a requirement for perceiving your own beauty.

– Thomas Moore, Dark Nights of the Soul 

 

You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe deserve your love and affection.

– Anonymous 

 

You alone are enough. You have nothing to prove to anyone.

– Maya Angelou 

 

Loving yourself isn’t vanity. It is sanity.

– Katrina Mayer 

 

Being true to who we are means carrying our spirit like a candle in the center of our darkness. If we are to live without silencing or numbing essential parts of who we are, a vow must be invoked and upheld within oneself. The same commitments we pronounce when embarking on a marriage can be understood internally as a devotion to the care of one’s soul: to have and to hold … for better or for worse … in sickness and in health … to love and to cherish, till death do us part. This means staying committed to your inner path. This means not separating from yourself when things get tough or confusing. This means accepting and embracing your faults and limitations. It means loving yourself no matter how others see you. It means cherishing the unchangeable radiance that lives within you, no matter the cuts and bruises along the way.

– Mark Nepo, The Book of Awakening 

 

Self-love isn’t always so poetic; sometimes it’s a nice big triple backflip kick in the ass. You’ve got to call yourself on your own nonsense; on the incredibly efficient way you can be self-destructive.

– Steve Maraboli 

 

And I said to my body, softly, “I want to be your friend.” It took a long breath and replied, “I have been waiting my whole life for this.”

– Nayyirah Waheed 

 

The relationship with yourself sets the tone for every other relationship you have.

– Jane Travis 

 

I now see how owning our story and loving ourselves through that process is the bravest thing that we will ever do.

– Brene Brown 

 

Self-love, self-respect, self-worth. There is a reason they all start with “self.” You can not find them in anyone else.

– Unknown 

 

If your compassion does not include yourself, it is incomplete.

– Jack Kornfield 

 

Self-love is the foundation of our loving practice. Without it our other efforts to love fail. Giving ourselves love we provide our inner being with the opportunity to have the unconditional love we may have always longed to received from someone else.

– Bell Hooks 

 

The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are.

– Carl Jung 

 

To be beautiful means to be yourself. You don’t need to be accepted by others. You need to accept yourself.

– Thich Nhat Hanh 

 

I wouldn’t want to belong to a club that would have me as a member.

― Groucho Marx 

 

There are millions of ways to express your happiness, but there is only one way to really be happy, and that is to love. There is no other way. You cannot be happy if you don’t love yourself. That is a fact. If you don’t love yourself, you don’t have any opportunity to be happy. You cannot share what you do not have. If you do not love yourself, you cannot love anyone else either.

– Don Miguel Ruiz, The Mastery of Love

Aletheia

in, LonerWolf

The Hunt of Fate

Fate is cruel, as a lone wolf in the night:

It cares not about your hopes, your dreams,

It disregards your wants and your needs;

For it wants nothing more than to feast.

Night falls in the forest, you are on your own.

From the dark, you hear a chilling howl,

Unaware that Fate is on the prowl;

Your end foretold only by an owl.

It lurks in the darkness, you feel its presence.

Is it the shadow behind your back?

You can feel it breathing down your neck;

You can't yet see it, it is pitch black.

The moonlight shines down, finally you spot it.

A terrifying sight, your eyes lock,

Your heart skips a beat, you are in shock;

The sky filled by a murderous flock.

With its cover blown, the animal gives chase.

You try to run, hoping to escape,

Give it your all, you are in good shape;

You trip and you fall, can't run from Fate.

The beast draws near, running is of little use.

Out of options, unwilling to die,

Might seem foolish, but you have to try!

Back on your feet, it's not yet goodbye!

The battle begins, a test of strength and will.

It's jaws are lethal, claws full of might,

But regardless, you must win this fight;

Someone's blood will be spilt on this night.

The war is exhausting, you're evenly matched.

Eye for an eye is how you two brawl,

A limb for a limb, someone must fall,

Slowly but surely, you will stand tall!

The fighting goes on for hours, if not longer.

It's end awaited by hungry crows.

And finally, with a mighty blow

You manage to overcome your foe!

Fate falls at your hands, the wolf lies at your feet.

You have done it, fought with tooth and nail,

Challenged fate and lived to tell the tale;

I am doing the same...

Kristoph Noleman

Emotional WIFI

Many of us grew up in families where emotional fusion was mistaken for love or closeness. 

In those systems, staying connected often meant giving up parts of ourselves just to keep the peace or win approval.

I use the term “emotional Wi-Fi” to describe the chronic, invisible anxiety that keeps us entangled in old roles—long after we’ve left home. 

When you disconnect from that Wi-Fi, you’re not being cold or cruel. You’re starting the courageous work of self-differentiation.

No contact can be 

an important act of self-care—but 

it is not the final answer.

Healing doesn’t come from distance alone. 

It comes from detaching emotionally, not just physically. 

Because if the dysfunctional family still lives inside you, 

no amount of miles or silence will truly set you free.

Real freedom is when you can choose contact—or no contact—not out of fear or pain, but from a place of calm clarity, grounded peace, and a strong sense of your own Self.

Forced to be ‘strong’ too soon? 

That wasn’t maturity—it was survival.

Were you expected to be self-reliant as a child—emotionally, mentally, even physically?

That’s not strength. That’s the result of emotionally distant parenting.

Here’s how to reclaim your emotional wholeness:

• Stop glorifying childhood self-reliance as resilience
• Acknowledge the unmet needs you were forced to ignore
• Learn to nurture and care for the inner child still carrying the weight
• Stop confusing guilt with responsibility
• Let go of the need to be liked or approved of by everyone
• Start validating your own needs and boundaries

Healing starts when you stop pretending you were fine

And start giving yourself what you never received.

Healing starts when you stop trying to earn love and start giving it to yourself.

A narcissistic family doesn’t reward truth—they punish it.

They didn’t teach discipline—they enforced silence.

They call it “discipline,” but it’s emotional control disguised as love.

Here’s how to reclaim your emotional freedom:

• Stop confusing obedience with safety
• Recognize that silence was a survival strategy, not your truth
• Start embracing your authentic voice without fear
• Stop accepting their toxic narrative about you
• Recognize that their rejection is about them, not you
• Embrace your inherent worth and the love you deserve

Healing starts when you stop shrinking to fit and start expanding into who you really are.

Healing starts when you reject the lie that you're unlovable and start loving yourself fully.

When love is withheld, perfection becomes survival.

Feeling “never good enough” isn’t who you are

Tt’s who you had to be under a parent who demanded perfection and withheld love.

Conditional love isn’t love at all

Tt’s manipulation.

Does your parent’s love feel like a reward for meeting their needs?

That’s not real love—it’s control.

Here’s how to reclaim your emotional freedom:

• Stop chasing approval that was never freely given
• Recognize that perfection was a survival strategy, not your identity
• Learn to validate and love yourself without conditions
• Stop believing love is conditional on your behavior
• Learn to recognize manipulation disguised as affection
• Reclaim your self-worth, independent of their approval

Healing starts when you stop measuring your worth by their impossible standards.

Healing starts when you stop trying to earn their love and start loving yourself unconditionally.

Healing starts when you stop allowing their actions to define your self-worth.

You can’t heal the emptiness left by toxic parents by returning to the same source.

It will never be enough.

The well is dry, and it’s time to stop going back for water.

Here’s how to reclaim your emotional freedom:

• Stop seeking validation from the source of your pain
• Learn to fill the emptiness with self-compassion and boundaries
• Reconnect with your true self and stop relying on others to heal you
• Stop trying to meet their impossible demands
• Heal from the emotional neglect you endured
• Learn to validate your own needs and reclaim your peace

Healing starts when you stop returning to the same toxic patterns and start filling your own well.

Healing starts when you stop trying to fix them and start focusing on healing yourself.

Grieving the parent you’ll never have is one of the hardest,

Yet most necessary steps in breaking free from the toxic family fantasy.

Here’s how to reclaim your emotional freedom:

• Let go of the hope they’ll suddenly change
• Mourn the version of family you never got
• Begin creating your own peace, truth, and identity

Healing starts when you stop waiting for love that was never freely given.

Jerry Wise

I applaud your courage for taking a stand against disrespect and abuse. It’s not an easy thing to do because more often than not you stand alone. The yes-person and cowards are not going to support you. They are comfortable with the existing conditions or in alignment themselves with the dysfunction and your truth will rock the reality they have chosen to live in.

Whether it's a parent, sibling, friend, or family member, do not allow a destructive person to drag you down a hole for the rest of your life.

My name is Summer Reign, and I’m a survivor of abuse from a toxic mother. I don’t have a degree on this topic, rather firsthand experience. I will share what I learned during years of professional counseling and my personal experiences with abuse. If you believe you’re a survivor of toxic parenting, I hope this book will provide answers. Children of a toxic parent or parents can live happy and healthy lives, but the first step to healing is recognition.

 

Summer Reign

in,Some of the Most Poisonous People Come Disguised as Family: How to Distance Yourself From Toxic Family

Inner Work

Freshidea

 Inner work is at the very core and foundation of the spiritual wanderer’s journey.

Without it, we’re wasting our time.

There can be no purging, healing, transformation, and balanced awakening without inner work.

The most worthy path (in my opinion) is inner work. It complements, empowers, and enriches everything you do in life.

When you commit to inner work, you’re turning your pain into power like a true spiritual alchemist. Naturally, inner work leads to creating authentic, bone-deep change in the world, little by little.

What could be better than healing, evolving, finding true joy and freedom, stepping into your power, living in harmony with others, and sending beautiful ripples of change out into existence?

But here’s the thing. Although inner work is such a worthy path, it is also a path we are deeply internally resistant toward.

This subconscious fear of any form of inner exploration is universal. If you’re a sincere spiritual seeker who wants to do the work, you’ll need to understand it well (and I’ll cover that here today).

What is Inner Work?

Inner work is the psychological practice of identifying and dissolving the contractions and blockages that obscure your soul’s inner light for the purposes of self-awareness, healing, transformation, and expansion.

When we do inner work, we are shining the light of awareness onto our inner landscape, which is composed of the various layers of our mind: the conscious, subconscious, and unconscious realms.

Your inner self consists of your hidden feelings, memories, thoughts, beliefs, prejudices, wounds, shadows, and other mental and emotional conditions that influence your ability to transform and feel Whole at a core level.

By doing inner work, little by little, you’ll be able to move past fears, limitations, addictions, depressions, and the feelings of unwholeness that tend to plague us as human beings.

Inner Work vs. Soul Work – What’s the Difference?

Inner work and soul work fit together like the yin and yang, both equally enriching our spiritual journeys and working side-by-side harmoniously.

While soul work is about listening to your soul’s calling to surrender to Spirit, inner work is about making the space for that to happen.

In this sense, inner work is the active or yang part of our spiritual path, and soul work is the yin or passive part of our spiritual journeys.

Without the inner space that is created through inner work, it can be extremely difficult to get to a point of receptivity, humility, and openness to deeply resting in Spirit as our True Nature.

Inner work helps to clear out the fog, cobwebs, and blockages that fill our minds, hearts, and bodies, permitting the Light of Consciousness to gradually shine brighter and brighter.

Like weeding an overgrown garden, inner work creates more inner space by helping us to uproot the old conditioned beliefs, stories, dogmas, and wounds that become embedded within us. And like cleaning a dirty mirror, inner work helps us to find more inner clarity, self-love, wholeness, and happiness.

While inner work still operates within the domain of the ego (unlike soul work, which takes us beyond the separate sense of self), it is an extremely important and crucial part of the spiritual path because it helps to create more psychological balance and harmony.

Without ongoing inner work, we can fall into many traps on the spiritual path, causing lopsided growth that results in issues such as spiritual bypassing, nihilism, spiritual narcissism, spiritual materialism, toxic positivity, and other psychospiritual issues that cause suffering to both ourselves and other people.

Signs You Need to Practice Inner Work

If you’re a human being at any place in life’s journey, you’ll certainly need some degree of inner work.

Nevertheless, here are some notorious signs that you need to practice inner work:

1. You feel lost in life
2. You don’t know who you are anymore
3. You feel lonely and like an outsider looking in to the world
4. You frequently get into fights with others
5. You’re always people-pleasing
6. You’re not confident being yourself
7. You have low self-esteem
8. Your thoughts are almost constantly negative and self-critical
9. You feel constantly unmotivated and “flat”
10. You’re going through a Dark Night of the Soul (or spiritual crisis)
11. You suffer from chronic health issues
12. You can’t sleep properly
13. Life doesn’t feel real
14. You feel a sense of hopelessness
15. You feel a sense of emptiness
16. You have fits of intense anger or sadness
17. You believe that the world is against you
18. You struggle to trust others (or yourself)
19. You keep repeating the same mistakes
20. You keep attracting the wrong people into your life
21. You’re self-destructive and self-sabotaging
22. You have a strong drive toward addiction
23. You have many strong emotional triggers
24. You struggle with high levels of anxiety or panic
25. You want to be alone all the time or around others all the time (to escape yourself)

The more signs you can relate to, the higher the degree of inner work you need to consider doing. We’ll explore some inner work paths below.

Of course, keep in mind that many of the above points are symptoms of mental illness. By all means, seek out a professional therapist who can help if you suspect something is lopsided in your psyche.

Inner work is not a replacement for any psychiatric/psychological targeted help. However, it is a vital practice that is just as essential as sleeping, exercising, or doing anything that genuinely helps you at a core level.

Why Most People Are Hugely Resistant to Inner Work

The reality is that most people feel repelled by and hugely resistant to inner work on an unconscious level.

Why and how is this the case?

Well, just look at the world:

We’ve explored the solar system and distant galaxies more thoroughly than the depths of our own oceans. We know more about how things mechanically work rather than the life force that animates them. We know more about fighting and strategizing against the “enemies” outside of us than we know about facing the so-called enemies looming within us.

As psychologist Carl Jung once wrote:

People will do anything, no matter how absurd, to avoid facing their own souls.

The reality is that going deep terrifies us. We’ll more readily go to war and annihilate other people than look within ourselves for the source of our own suffering.

We’ll more readily point the finger of blame at others, life, god, or reality and adopt the victim mentality than dare to give ourselves a good honest look in the mirror.

In some cases, we prefer to die in stubborn ignorance than admit we’re wrong, faulty, fooled, or responsible for our suffering and the pain of others.

Our egos are fragile, neurotic, and power-hungry little creatures. Inner work is like kryptonite to this fabricated ego-self we carry around. Is it any wonder that we’re terrified by it deep down?

Of course, many seekers who’ve undergone a spiritual awakening would give a sly smile at this point and say, “Well I am different.”

Well, no … no you’re not. Sorry. But the reality is that you have an ego just like everyone else. And it’s time to face it.

What Does it Mean to Practice “Inner Work”?

Inner work may superficially look lavish, poetic, and mystical (especially when stylized on places like social media).

But when you get into the heart of it, it’s often a bone-crushing, gut-wrenching journey of blood, sweat, vomit, and tears.

You aren’t playing with crystals and singing cute mantras while doing inner work (although those things can be complementary and help in their own way).

Inner work isn’t Instagram-worthy or something you can wear as an egotistical badge of superiority.

Inner work, in its very essence, is about placing truth and the desire for freedom (Love) above all else.

It’s about allowing yourself to be called out, torn down, burned, and built back up a thousand times over.

Inner work is a process of eternal death and rebirth. It never stops – even after having attained a higher level of consciousness – for when one believes one has “arrived” that is when stagnation occurs. That is when spiritual narcissism thrives and the shadow rears its ugly face.

The Unfathomable Power of Inner Work

Inner work is cyclical. It’s symbolized by Shiva and Shakti’s dance, the ouroboros snake that eats its tail, the cycle of life and death, the yin and yang, and the primordial void that is both everything and nothing at the same time.

When we give ourselves over to inner work, we’re on a quest to embrace the paradox of existence.

We’re on a quest to walk in the liminal spaces, to be willing to both die and be reborn at any moment, and to step into all that we can become.

We’re on a journey to face our most gruesome shadows, to open to our most Divine Light, and to experience Wholeness.

To put it simply, it’s a hell of a ride!

And understandably, people fear that.

It’s much easier to live a mediocre existence. It’s much easier to walk the path others have paved before us. It’s much easier to point the finger at others and neglect taking self-responsibility.

Walking the path less traveled is much more difficult, much less comfortable, and much more demanding. And most people are NOT ready or willing to make that choice.

Yes, mediocrity and complacency provide a morsel of comfort, but it’s this comfort that ironically leads to emptiness, soul loss, and the complete deprivation of anything truly real, truly worth living for.

In essence, the path of mediocrity and complacency = death.

The path of challenge = life.

The Importance of Connecting with Your Instinct and Intuition

Now, there are ways of making the tumultuous path that is inner work smoother and more and enjoyable.

Connecting with your deeper source of power, your inner free spirit, and your wild Wolf essence, is the first way.

When you’re able to follow your instinct and intuition, see clearly, make wise choices, and protect yourself from those who seek to prey on you, the path becomes more clear. You become more spiritually discerning.

Learning to pinpoint where you are on the spiritual wanderer’s journey also helps you to feel more grounded and gain your bearings.

Ultimately, inner work can be joyful and painful at the same time, but remember that no matter how much it may hurt your ego, it is profoundly enriching for your soul. Take comfort in knowing that whatever pain you uncover is a catalyst for deep spiritual transformation.

The very nature of the ego means it will always be against inner work. It is your soul that drives you towards inner work, so listen to the call and let yourself be the phoenix that is burned to ash and then resurrects to a new way of being.

3 Profound Inner Work Pathways

There are many inner work pathways in existence right now and I don’t profess to know all of them.

I can only share with you those I’ve tried, as well as those that have legitimately worked for myself and many others.

Here are the top three inner work pathways I recommend on the spiritual awakening journey that can help generate deep and long-lasting change:

1. Self-Love

Self-love is one of the more gentle and approachable inner work paths. But that doesn’t dilute or negate its importance.

Self-love can lend itself to being shallow or unnecessarily self-indulgent (in the wrong hands), but with the right training, self-love can go bone-deep and genuinely transform you at a core level.

For those starting off on the inner work journey, I always recommend self-love as the best starting place.

Without building a good relationship with yourself, the other forms of inner work listed below may be too intimidating, too difficult, or just plain detrimental to your well-being.

One of my favorite forms of self-love is mirror work. Mirror work quite simply involves using a mirror to clearly see your insecurities and fears. It also connects you with the deeper essence of yourself that is full of unconditional compassion, forgiveness, and acceptance (your soul).

2. Inner Child Work 

 

One level deeper is inner child work, a form of inner work that involves examining your childhood wounds, fears, and beliefs.

To differing degrees, we all carry a wounded inner child. Our job as adults is to reconnect with this childlike part of ourselves, excavate old limiting childhood beliefs/fears, reparent ourselves, and integrate this delicate part of ourselves back into our personality structure.

Your inner child is a source of tremendous creativity, joy, spontaneity, love, and wisdom.

However, at the same time, your inner child can be a source of illogical obsessions, unshakable fears, neurosis, self-sabotaging behaviors, and limiting self-beliefs.

Inner child work can rile up a lot of unfinished business, so do this work slowly and carefully.

If you had an abusive childhood, you may feel a sense of disgust or looming fear towards this work (many do) or even toward your inner child.

But as one who had a traumatizing childhood and who has done a lot of inner child work, I can tell you it’s absolutely worth all of the pain, tears, and anger. You need to purge that pain and not let it control you!

3. Shadow Work 

 

At the deepest level of the inner work process is shadow work. This form of inner work is the most complex, elusive, and intimidating of all.

With shadow work, we are literally exploring the darkest places of our psyches that we deliberately suppress, deny, and disown each and every day.

We all know what lurks in the shadows. (Yes, the spine-chilling stuff of nightmares, and also the heartbreaking stuff of tragedies.)

Shadow work is the practice of exploring your inner demons. Within your shadow lurks everything that has been outlawed, deemed ‘taboo,’ ‘bad,’ ugly, and unacceptable by your parents and society. Your shadow self contains all that you are secretly ashamed about and disgusted by within yourself.

Before attempting shadow work, it is absolutely imperative that you practice self-love.

You MUST have stable and healthy self-esteem before doing shadow work. Why you may wonder? Shadow work can easily make you feel a thousand times worse about yourself if you already have poor self-worth. For this reason, shadow work is an advanced form of inner work that is not for beginners.

I also recommend doing shadow work with a professional if you carry profound inner trauma, as it can potentially be re-traumatizing if you don’t approach it gently.

If you’ve had some experience with inner work, I recommend approaching shadow work in a slow and gradual way. Don’t overwhelm yourself, and keep your explorations simple, focused, and short.

Oracle and tarot cards are a great way to begin exploring your shadow (as they are mirrors of your psyche) as well as creating therapeutic art, doing mindful journaling, going on guided inner journeys, and practicing mirror work.

Finally, practices such as somatic bodywork, meditation, mindfulness exercises, self-inquiry, art therapy, dream analysis, pathworking, solitude, shamanic journeying, visualization, and introspection will all wonderfully supplement your inner work.

Where to Start?

If you’re wondering where to start, try self-love first.

If you’ve already attained a certain level of self-love, try inner child work. 

And if you’ve done both, then move on to shadow work.

Ultimately, all three forms of inner work melt and morph naturally into each other.

Inner child work involves a certain level of shadow work, shadow work is a form of inner child work, and self-love is involved in all forms of inner work.

I hope, however, that these distinctions have made things clear to you.

Aletheia

in, LonerWolf

To Change is To Survive, The Wolf understood

The Wolf, it hungered, while you stayed warm,

Bound to its pack, shaped by the storm,

Through frost and through famine,

The Wolf, it did suffer, while The Dog lay secure.

But when disaster did strike, stealing Dog's home,

She was left to the frost, forsaken, alone,

She wandered as prey, and trembled in fear,

Until one day, she saw naught but a pack,

Warm, safe numbers, a home-- one she lacked,

And so she found herself The Wolf,

Mercy, she asked, May I join your pack?

The Wolf, it snarled, when she begged for stay,

Herald The Dog who yearns for warmth!

When she had comfort when we had naught!

The Dog bowed her head, but she could not,

Explain to The Wolf what it owed her not.

The Dog, she wandered, searching for fire,

But the world was not warm as her home had once been.

So she carved her own pack,

Starved through the winter,

Charged into battle, unraveled by the years,

And so came to be, The Dog was assured,

That in her place, The Wolf endured.

What is a Dog if not a fledgling Wolf? 

She'll have to grow wings and fly if she wants to survive. 

The Wolf knows this well; 

For it too was once a lone Dog.

Desconhecido

How to Start Your Spiritual Journey

Freepik

 

There is a candle in your heart, ready to be kindled.

There is a void in your soul, ready to be filled.

You feel it, don’t you?

– Rumi

Let’s begin with the uncomfortable truth:

Most of us in the modern world have resigned ourselves to a cliched existence, indulging in endless distractions.

We go through life with minimal or pseudo-faith and avoid comprehending the emptiness of our lives. We are endlessly haunted by the shallowness of our relationships, neurotic issues, and inescapable loneliness.

And yet there’s so much more to us as a species than what we really know.

You and I carry the most mysterious and magnificent qualities within us imaginable. Yet, we unknowingly guard and protect the greatest gift that is our Souls from the world.

It’s so easy for us to feel meaningless when we perceive ourselves as mere cogs in society’s machine.

The truth is that we are much more than slaves of 9 to 5 jobs. We are capable of creating deeply meaningful, mystical, and fulfilling lives. We are capable of finding our true calling and personal destiny.

For centuries, indigenous people throughout the world have known that to fully explore the depths of the Soul and reunite with Spirit, we must go on a spiritual journey into the unknown lands within ourselves.

Many ancient cultures had Elders and Shamans to encourage and oversee these journeys toward a deeper spiritual existence.

Sadly, these days in our own culture, we have lost such sacred rites and rituals. Instead, orthodox religion has replaced living spirituality with a theoretical god, dismissing, and outlawing personal experimentation and union with the Divine.

On this page, my aim is to help you start navigating your spiritual journey, be a lone wolf, and listen to your soul’s calling to reunite with Spirit.

What is the Spiritual Journey?

The spiritual journey is a personal quest we undertake to reconnect with our Souls, release attachment to the ego, and rediscover our True Nature.

In a nutshell, the spiritual journey is about returning to the Centre of our being: it’s a path traditionally undertaken by saints, shamans, mystics, and sages.

But in this day and age where times have changed, and we’re suffering from collective soul loss, the spiritual journey is open and accessible to all people (and no longer just ascetics, monks, and other holy people).

Indeed, listening to our Soul’s calling of reuniting with Spirit is our deepest longing and highest calling as a species.

12 Signs You’re Called to 

the Spiritual Journey 

(the Ancient Hero/ine’s Path)

People have felt a pull toward something greater than themselves since the beginning of time.

Ancient cultures had many stories that illustrated the journey to fulfilling one’s destiny and experiencing Wholeness or Enlightenment. These journeys are what mythologist Joseph Campbell described as the “Calls to Adventure.“

A call to adventure is something we all experience at least once in life. When we embark on this adventure, we begin the process of gaining self-understanding, reclaiming our precious Soul gifts, and dissolving the blockages that obscure our Inner Light.

The archetype of the hero/heroine discovering their true spiritual nature goes back thousands of years.

The Greeks told the story of Orpheus, who descended into the underworld to rescue his bride, Eurydice, from Hades. The Nordic people had their hero-warrior Beowulf, and the Sumerians wrote of Inanna, who battled her sister in the dark world.

Throughout history, there have been so many stories of individuals who have struggled through hardship to find themselves. But of what importance are they to our path?

Essentially, these hero/ines symbolize our spiritual journeys, that is, leaving everything familiar behind, entering the unknown, encountering numerous unconscious monsters, and finally returning back home with a sense of renewed fulfillment and wisdom.

Here are 12 signs you’re being called to walk the spiritual journey of awakening:

1. You feel lost in life
2. You long for a place that feels like your ‘true home’
3. You keep wondering what your meaning or purpose is
4. You feel like you have a big destiny to fulfill (which is yet to be revealed)
5. You sense that there’s much more to life than meets the eye
6. You’re experiencing strange synchronicities, signs, and omens
7. You’re shedding your old self and you’re transforming, but you don’t know who you truly are yet
8. There’s a sense of nostalgia and nagging longing for something you can’t pinpoint
9. You experience bouts of melancholy, depression, and existential crisis
10. You feel extra sensitive and fragile
11. A lot of what you once valued seems meaningless and empty
12. It feels like the rug has been pulled out from underneath you, and you’re falling into a void

Can you relate to any of the above signs? 

If you can, you’re most certainly being called to embark on the spiritual journey.

The 3 Worlds of the Spiritual Journey 

(Which Are You Inhabiting?)

The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you. Don’t go back to sleep. You must ask for what you really want. Don’t go back to sleep. People are going back and forth across the doorsill where the two worlds touch. The door is round and open. Don’t go back to sleep.

 – Rumi

At some point in life, we all experience the “call to adventure.”

Often, our journeys start when we experience a sudden spiritual awakening, kundalini awakening, or dark night of the soul. Often, without wanting to, we are cast onto the path of inner exploration.

Like you, I have wandered these paths and have, at times, wound up lost and confused. For this reason, I find it useful to map out the spiritual journey in a way that helps the human mind know where it is and where it will go next.

My Andean ancestry speaks of three worlds that we can experience in life: 

1. The Upper World (Hanaq Pacha), 
2. The Middle World (Kay Pacha), and 
3. The Lower World (Ukhu Pacha).

In many traditions and mythologies, these three worlds correspond to the different realms of Self.

The Upper World is the home of Spirit, the Underworld the home of Souls, and the Middle World is the home of the physical body and human ego.

Different practices and techniques are used in each of the three realms to help us spiritually mature and rediscover joy, peace, and nondual wholeness.

Below, I’ll explore each of these three realms with you:

Middle World

Purpose: Personality development

In our everyday lives, we function within the middle world. The middle world is responsible for our ego development, and yet many people on the spiritual path ignore this vital element of inner growth.

Without developing a healthy personality, our spiritual growth reaches a dead end because we are more prone to falling into many spiritual traps and pitfalls down the line (such as spiritual narcissism, spiritual materialism, and more).

In life, we all begin within the middle world or physical realm. As children and teenagers, we go through various years of personality change and growth.

Finally, as adults, we have all developed unique personalities. Yet many of us fail to continue our self-development, getting lost in corporate jobs and the pursuit of money, status, and fame.

The goal of the middle world path is to develop a healthy personality or ego. Tasks involved in this process include the exploration of core emotional wounds, self-love, and the cultivation of authenticity.

A healthy adult ego will be able to love freely, be vulnerable, express creativity, and display empathy towards others – which are vital in every area of life.

We cannot develop a healthy personality by using techniques from the Upper or Under World, such as meditation or shadow work.

Instead, we must use inner work techniques that pertain to ego development and healing, such as assertiveness training, non-violent communication techniques, cognitive behavioral therapy, NLP, and other psychological avenues of self-development.

Under World

Purpose: Soul discovery

Our Soul is the vital, mysterious, and wild core of our individual selves. It is the unique essence within each of us that goes deeper than our personalities.

Think of your Soul as a stream that is connected to the ocean of Spirit. Our Souls contain our destiny, purpose, gifts, and the ultimate significance of our individual lives. To access these deep layers and qualities, we must descend into the Under World of our unconscious minds.

Unfortunately, for thousands of years, our culture has “protected” us from the hardships and dangers of the descent into the Soul. This has been done through the establishment of comfortable, predictable, and clockwork lives that revolve around material pleasures and shallow values.

In fact, thanks to religious thought, the descent into our Under Worlds has been condemned as “evil” and wayward. Only Shamanic cultures and a few Western mystical schools like Hermeticism and Alchemy have dedicated themselves to exploring the Under World.

The descent into the Under World has been so feared and avoided because it is a perilous journey. There is a reason why Christianity referred to this place as “hell.”

Within our Under Worlds lie our repressed thoughts, feelings, desires, traumas, and denied gifts. Often when we descend, or inscend, into ourselves, we come across many demons, ghastly creatures, and other parts of our Shadow Selves that we’ve been unconsciously hiding from.

Yet despite the fact that the Under World journey can be such a harrowing and haunting experience, it is ultimately a powerful odyssey. Only by descending into our personal Under Worlds can we truly embrace our true life calling, talents, gifts, and deepest values.

Under World, or deeper inner work techniques, include practices that allow us to access altered states of consciousness. These may include practices such as lucid dreaming, drumming, shadow work, shamanic trances, breathwork, vision quests, etc.

Upper World

Purpose: Uniting with Spirit

The Upper World journey, or that of the ascent, is what we often refer to as Self-Realization.

There comes a moment in our journey between the middle world and the underworld in which an equilibrium or inner spaciousness forms, allowing us to move up into the Upper World.

For example, it’s much harder to spiritually awaken to the Upper World when our unconscious minds are plagued with deep childhood traumas (that stem from the underworld), trust issues (under world problem), and poor self-esteem (middle world problem).

The practice of inner work is what allows this inner space to emerge because it dissolves the contractions of the ego that hide our True Nature as Divine Consciousness.

We enter the path of ascent up into the Upper World when we learn to surrender our ego identification (known as ego death) and Soul identification.

It’s at this point of the path that soul work is needed – soul work, in this case, refers to doing the soul’s work of letting go, opening, and merging back into its original home of Spirit.

The experience and realization that the personal identity (or ego) is an illusory thought construct, and who we truly are is Infinite Consciousness, is what has been referred to as Self-Realization, Christ Consciousness, Buddha Nature, Nirvana, or Enlightenment.

This shift of consciousness involves our Infinite, Divine, Eternal, and Absolute Nature awakening from the dream of the separate egoic self.

Techniques used to induce this inner shift of being are often found in the mystical schools of Zen, Kundalini, Taoism, Sufism, and disciplines such as meditation, self-inquiry, and yoga.

Note: Unfortunately, many people in the spiritual community believe that spiritual ascension is all that is needed to experience peace and wholeness. As a result, the middle world and under world paths have been cast aside as if they don’t matter.

However, only focusing on your “higher chakras,” cultivating positivity and Oneness with Spirit, creates lopsided individuals. When the darker and more down-to-earth elements of self-growth are ignored, the result is imbalanced and unhealthy individuals.

As such, here on lonerwolf, we try to focus on exploring all three realms (the middle, under, and upper world) to create balance.

Inner Work vs. Soul Work

In the previous section, I mentioned inner work and soul work a few times. But what’s the difference? And how do both relate to the spiritual journey?

Within this website and the work of Aletheia and I, inner work refers to the active exploration, illumination, and dissolution of blockages within the psyche.

Inner work is a psychological process that helps us to heal and find inner harmony and wholeness on a human level.

Examples of inner work practices include the practice of self-love, inner child work, shadow work, body work, and anything that involves actively finding and releasing the contractions within the mind.

On the other hand, soul work is the more passive and receptive process of opening, surrendering, and resting within our True Nature (also known as Consciousness, Presence, Nondual Awareness, and Spirit).

Soul work is, quite literally, doing the soul’s work of remembering and returning back to Source as our Ultimate Home and True Nature.

Examples of soul work practices include self-inquiry, prayer, contemplation, meditation, mirror work, and anything that involves cultivating a sense of being.

Both inner work and soul work are needed on our spiritual journeys to help us both wake up on a spiritual level and grow up on a human level.

To avoid lopsided development and getting possessed by unresolved inner shadows (which can and do arise no matter what level of realization we’ve had), we need to explore both our human psychology and relax into our birthless, deathless True Nature.

Inner work makes the inner space for soul work to take place. Soul work helps to illuminate and sharpen our inner work.

Both go hand-in-hand and are vital allies on our spiritual awakening journeys. As you get familiar with this website and our work, you’ll hear about both inner work and soul work.

5 Phases of the Spiritual Wanderer’s Journey

Roughly speaking, there are about five phases of the spiritual journey (although, of course, there could be many more – but I’m just sharing the phases I’m presently aware of).

I refer to these as ‘phases‘ and not stages because the spiritual wanderer’s journey is not a linear process that has a start and end; it is cyclical. It’s like the moon. It’s a spiraling dance of energy that is ever-deepening and changing – there is no “end,” even after you’ve had an enlightened shift in awareness.

Here’s a visual diagram of the Wanderer’s Journey, which is the spiritual wheel of transformation that we base our work in lonerwolf:

Below, 

you’ll find the five phases ruled by 

the Seeker, Apprentice, Warrior, 

Mystic, and Sage 

archetypes.

1. Soul-searching

(Ruled by the Seeker archetype.)

This phase is divided into the following two parts:

1. The Spiritual Calling
2. Resisting the Path

Summary: Phase one of the spiritual journey begins with a deep craving and longing for something more than mundane daily life.

There may be a sense that life has become a dry, desolate, meaningless, and barren wasteland without some kind of spiritual dimension.

This type of existential crisis can arise spontaneously due to a traumatic situation, mental or physical health issues, or simply due to one’s sensitive temperament.

The result is a search for meaning, purpose, and greater spiritual connection – or what is commonly known as soul searching.

2. Awakening & learning

(Ruled by the Apprentice archetype.)

This phase is divided into the following two parts:

1. Finding Guidance
2. Starting the Journey

Summary: Awakening and learning is the next phase of the spiritual journey. 

Once one has listened to the ‘call to adventure’ and has begun searching for answers, the sense of inner deadness and stagnation lifts. 

The veil is pulled from our eyes. 

We awaken to fresh possibilities, new horizons, and deep insights.

There is renewed hope, ecstatic zest for life, joyful anticipation, and a passion for learning, exploring, and growing. It’s as if the sun has finally emerged from its slumber, and we’re bathed in the dawning light of spiritual awakening.

3. Death & demons

(Ruled by the Warrior archetype.)

This phase is divided into the following two parts:

1. Turning Inwards
2. Facing the Darkness

Summary: As our spiritual journey matures, we eventually face a crossroads. To continue growing, we must enter through the gates of our personal Underworld and face our demons. We learn that the spiritual journey is beautiful, yes. But it’s also demanding.

If we’re sincere about authentic spiritual growth, we need to illuminate our inner darkness, explore our shadow selves, and heal our buried traumas. This death of the spiritual ‘high’ of the previous phase can lead to much fear and confusion.

The result is often an experience of the Dark Night of the Soul, a glimpse of ego death, or even a spiritual emergency where we step out of the ‘sunshine and rainbows’ world into the moonlit world of ghosts and ghouls.

4. Rebirth & reward

(Ruled by the Mystic archetype.)

This phase is divided into the following two parts:

1. Illumination
2. Traps & Pitfalls

Summary: Eventually, we emerge from the other side of the Dark Night of the Soul, existential crisis, or ego death glimpse. We have been to hell and back and we’ve had our hearts ripped open and our minds excavated. But we arise victorious with heart and Soul blazing bright with clarity.

This rebirth and reward phase often results in mystical experiences, moments of Satori (Enlightened awareness), and blissful heart openings.

We may go through a new level of awakening, this time at an energetic level, via an experience known as the Kundalini awakening.

However, this experience is not all love and light. There are many lurking shadows and spiritual traps to be wary of.

5. Illumination & sharing

(Ruled by the Sage archetype.)

This phase is divided into the following two parts:

1. Rebirth
2. Integration

Summary: After the body, heart, and mind undergo this cleansing and purging journey, a deeper level of Illumination may begin to arise within us. We’ll begin to integrate all the lessons we’ve learned, bringing them into our daily lives.

This is the moment where we truly start walking the talk, integrating both the human and Divine aspects of our lived experience. As such, there is a strong desire within us to share what we’ve realized through the grace of Divinity (our True Nature) with those who need support.

We may adopt the role of teacher, guide, creator, or mentor – or otherwise, embrace new ways of helping others through the power of creativity.

Perhaps the key defining quality of this phase is a strong connection to one’s True Nature and sometimes a non-dual shift in awareness. There’s an intimate, inner-lived experience of the Divine as one’s true face, authentic essence, and ultimate home.

Again, the above five phases are by no means linear or static – they are cyclical and ever-deepening. Gradually, we discover that we are Life itself and that what we have longed and searched for has always been right here, right now!

How to Start Your Spiritual Journey (7 Steps)

Everyone’s spiritual journey is unique, ever-changing, and ongoing.

There is no single point at which we stop this inner transformation. In fact, the whole mistaken idea of reaching a state of “perfection” really only equals death and stagnation.

And what happens when things stop growing and flowing? They become lethargic, break down, rot, and disintegrate.

While the demands for constant growth and evolution may be difficult to handle at times, they are necessary grit for the inner pearl to develop.

If you wish to find truth, peace, profound love, deep freedom, and your ultimate home, beginning your spiritual journey is not only important but crucial.

Understandably, you might feel a bit intimidated and lost, not knowing where to start. As someone who has been on the spiritual journey for a long time and who has devoted their entire life’s work to the inner call, here are my tips:

1. Be gentle and go at your own pace

It’s normal to feel overwhelmed and a little inundated by the influx of information when first beginning your spiritual journey. My advice is to go slowly, be gentle, and go at your own pace. You don’t need to know every tiny detail of every field of wisdom ever created. (I know it’s tempting!)

Besides, everything that you’re learning about is already within you. Yes, you have all the answers you need at a Soul level because you are an expression of the Divine at your core. Everyone else is just a mirror of that.

So cut yourself some slack. The key is to go gently but deeply – that is how you will learn and grow the most.

2. Tune into the deepest yearning of your heart – your holy longing

• What is it that you truly, deeply yearn for, above all else? 
• What is the most ancient longing of your heart and Soul?

There are a myriad of reasons why people enter the spiritual journey, many of them stories created by the mind to build a better-looking ego.

But beneath the desires of the mind, what does your heart want? Your heart is the doorway to your Soul, and your Soul is a unique expression of Spirit. So listen to your heart’s yearnings.

How do you listen to your heart? 

One of the best ways is to place a soft hand over your heart, let all thoughts go, and drop into a sense of stillness. 

Then ask yourself, “What is it that I truly, deeply yearn for, above all else?”

Do you long for peace, truth, freedom, love, happiness, healing, or something else? There are no right or wrong answers. The heart wants what it wants.

But be aware that the mind may jump in and try to concoct a bunch of ideas, artificial longings, and idealistic stories. What you need to do is listen for the still, small, quiet voice within that responds with gentle clarity (not the loud, anxious, and abrasive voice of the mind).

Finding your holy longing will provide you with the fuel and compass to direct your spiritual search.

Instead of being outwardly led by the egoic self, you’ll be inwardly led by the heart and Soul. You may even find that as you progress through your spiritual journey, your holy longing will evolve and mature. Let it!

3. Pay attention to philosophies, tools, or practices that intrigue you

Once you’ve figured out your holy longing, simply pay attention. Notice what spiritual fields, ideas, philosophies, and practices call to you that relate to your deepest calling.

The spiritual journey doesn’t have to be something dry, monotone, and repetitive (unless you want it to be). This is a quest that can be playful, joyful, and passionate.

In fact, you’ll likely get the most out of your spiritual path if you approach it from this heart-centered place.

Neuroscience has proven that we learn the most when we’re having fun – so find your bliss. Walk a path with heart. This is the path you’re meant to be on.

4. Go deep-diving

One of the main issues that often arises on the spiritual path is a certain kind of spiritual materialism or spiritual window-shopping.

Jumping from practice to practice can be useful at the beginning (to become familiar with the territory).

But if we get into the addictive habit of finding the “next and best” spiritual practice, tool, workshop, etc., we are doing ourselves a great disservice.

We are not only approaching spirituality with a materialistic mindset, but we’re also avoiding the fundamental purpose of the spiritual path: to discover our True Nature.

Once you’ve done some dabbling here and there (this might involve watching YouTube videos, reading books, attending workshops, etc.), it’s time to slow down and commit to something.

Don’t worry if you discover later down the road that the path you’re on is not for you – remember that you can always change routes.

What’s important is that you slow down and commit to something to begin with – this is the only way to extract the nutrients, deep essential truths, and embodied wisdom that contribute to your awakening.

So go deep-diving and commit to something all the way through to the end. What paths, practices, and teachings speak to you on a profound level? What has benefited you the most?

Begin to circle around that topic, practice, or path and dedicate your full attention to it. (And if there are a handful of paths, that’s okay too; stick with them, although it’s generally best to keep your focus simple.)

5. Be aware of sharks

You’ll meet many people on your spiritual path (whether online or in the flesh), and while some of these people will genuinely have your best interests in mind, others won’t.

Yes, there are many ‘spiritual sharks’ out there, aka., there are sleazy, snake-oil salesmen and women who are incentivized to use you for personal gain.

There are also some people – typically leaders of spiritual communities or certain gurus – who are totally unaware of their unconscious shadow motivations (but are equally as dangerous). So be discerning.

Learn to trust your intuition and gut instincts. Tap into your inner lone wolf: that primal wisdom you carry inside that drove you to begin this quest to begin with.

Even if you do fall into the jaws of a shark, know that you can get out. Not only that, but you can actually use the experience as a lesson and fuel to grow even stronger.

No one can take away your power from you unless you willingly give it to them. And even if you do, you can get it back.

6. Record what you’ve learned and experienced

We hear a lot of pretty-sounding words and mystical ideas on the spiritual path. But all of them mean little if we don’t actively find ways of absorbing them into our being.

One of the simplest ways of recording what you’ve learned and experienced is simply through the act of journaling.

Have a special journal or diary that you dedicate to writing down your thoughts, experiences, ideas, and discoveries. You don’t need to be a good writer (or even good at spelling/grammar) to do this – forget about that!

What matters is that you have a solid record that you can refer back to throughout your journey. 

There are also other ways of recording what you’ve learned and experienced, such as creating pieces of art or composing music.

Find whatever creative outlet suits you the most – that might even include creating a vlog where you go into your daily experience (and you can keep this private or share it with others).

7. Integrate and embody your spirituality

It’s easy to go spiritual window shopping and jump onto whatever new and exciting bandwagon emerges. But it takes much more strength of character, sincerity, and courage to integrate and embody what you’ve learned actively.

To integrate means to absorb something into your being and to make it a living and breathing part of you.

To embody means to be an expression of what you have learned: to be the change you’re looking for, to infuse your life with the essence of what you’ve discovered.

There are numerous ways to integrate and embody your spirituality, but remember that this is an organic process that takes time. You cannot rush or force spiritual integration or embodiment – it is the natural product of spiritual ripening and maturation.

There are, however, numerous ways to begin the integration and embodiment part of your journey. 

Some of these inner work and soul work practices include:

1. Meditation
2. Mindfulness
3. Contemplation
4. Breathwork
5. Shadow Work
6. Self-love
7. Inner child work
8. Self-Inquiry

Anything that helps you to slow down, be introspective, and go inwards while encouraging present-moment awareness will help you to integrate and embody what you experience.

Instead of being a magical-sounding idea, you will actively live and express qualities such as lovingkindness, presence, and wisdom. But first, you need to be sincere and dedicated to this path.

Note:

In my honest opinion, no spiritual journey is balanced (or healthy) without some level of psychological healing.

We need to focus not just on ascending to the Upper World but also on working with the Middle and Under World. 

The Spiritual Journey is a Valley, Not a Mountain

Wisdom tells me I am nothing, love tells me I am everything. Between the two, my life flows.

― Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Contrary to popular depiction, the spiritual journey isn’t like climbing a mountain.

We rarely start at the bottom and climb to the top. Instead, for most of us, the spiritual journey is like hiking through a series of beautiful but perilous range of valleys.

Our spiritual journeys alternate between periods of descending and ascending.

In one period of our lives, we may cultivate our connection with Spirit, while in other parts, we may descend to the Soul to heal core wounds or the middle world to develop self-care.

Finally, it is very possible and also quite common to get hung up in these valleys. 

Many of us become lost, distracted, and even forget why we were trying to get to the top of the mountain in the first place.

However, with the appropriate guidance, sincerity, and persistence, we can make our way through.

In the end, you’ll find that the spiritual journey is like a mystical marriage between the ego, the Soul, and the Spirit. 

One cannot exist without the other. 

The whole experience is a nondual expression of Life living itself.

Mateo

in, LonerWolf

Mark Lanegan - I Am The Wolf (Live on KEXP)

                                                       

I am the wolf, without a pack

Banished so long ago

I've survived on another's kill

And on my shadow home

All I've learned is that poison will sting

No one remembers the names of martyrs and kings

No one remembers much of anything

It came this way before

I am the wolf, calming the beast

Too hungry to shy away

The carcass of Leviathan 

Sways gently on the waves

I hope this shelter is enough to keep me warm

Upstairs the heaven's giving birth to winter storm

But I've been dying since the day I was born

That much I know it's true

I am the wolf, high, wild and free

Picture on the shelf

I'll burn this house down to the ashes

A law unto myself

All I've learned is that poison will sting

No one remembers the names of martyrs and kings

No one remembers much of anything

It came this way before

It came this way before

I am the wolf

I am the wolf

I am the wolf

Lyrics & Writings by Mark Lanegan 

Álbum: Phantom Radio