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Do you ever feel like you're stuck in shadow work, constantly digging through fear, shame and old wounds, wondering if the healing will ever end? The truth is, purification is part of the spiritual path, but it isn't the whole journey. At some point, the work shifts from endlessly fixing yourself to embodying love and integrating your awakening into everyday life. Let's talk about it. Welcome back to Roots of the Rise with me, sarah Hope. I want to continue from where we left off last episode and talk about the third element of any inner development journey purification, what many traditions call shadow work. This is when all of our subconscious programming fear, shame, guilt, old defense mechanisms rise to the surface. It is the moment we truly see our dysfunctional conditioning for what it is and recognize it's time to release it. This is when we are deeply in it. Most spiritual traditions emphasize purifying the inner channels, healing these patterns, illusions, misconceptions, as a way to move toward enlightenment. And yes, purification is absolutely necessary. You know our nervous systems. Naturally love homeostasis. We know how to stay anxious, reactive or guarded. I mean. Those patterns once protected us, they helped us survive, maybe even for years, but eventually they no longer serve. We need the process of purification to help us release those patterns that helped at one point but now just keep us stuck. So it is necessary. But here's where many people on this path, where they get stuck, they think purification has to last forever. They believe that they have to keep digging through the shadows endlessly, ferreting out every single skeleton in their closet indefinitely, before they can consider themselves quote unquote done, before they're healed, before they can embody love. But that is not actually true. We don't need to be perfectly healed before we can step into kind of the next version of ourselves. What we need is just enough clarity for the light to enter. We don't need a big channel, we just need a small, clean one. Because once we invite in the subtle healing energy of love, once we begin to cultivate things like acceptance we begin to cultivate things like acceptance, presence, forgiveness, joy, gratitude, compassion, purification it stops being the central task. Why? Because light dissolves the dark, or, more accurately, love transforms the dark. In fact, focusing only on darkness, on the shadow, strengthens it, but bringing in the light heals. When I say light, I mean love. Light is love, love is light. They're the same in a spiritual sense. Love is the medicine, carrying with it its own bliss and intelligence and guidance, it always knows where to go and how to restore balance.

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One of the greatest misconceptions out there that I think makes so many people feel defeated in the beginning is that you have to be fully healed before living a deeply spiritual life and that if you are on the spiritual path and you misstep, if you say something that's a little harsh, if you judge someone, that, oh, you're off path and you've messed up and you've backslid. It's not true. Most people actually move through purification like a pendulum, swinging between old programming and moments of clarity, compassion and love. I think that knowing this makes it all a little easier. It helps us make that shift from trying to fix ourselves to learning to witness and love what arises. As Dr Douglas says, the goal is not to defeat the darkness but to stop collapsing into it. And I don't know where I read this or heard it, but someone else said your first reaction to something is your old programming. Your second reaction is evidence of who you truly are, of who you are stepping into, and I try to remind my clients of this. When they come to me and they're so frustrated because you know, one week, one week, they will be totally thrilled that they did not react to the coworker who usually drives them crazy, and the next week they are devastated because they blew up at their mom. They think they've failed. That it's evidence that they are not trying hard enough doing the work. But the truth is growth happens in stages. Some challenges feel like walking up a hill, others are like climbing Everest. Most parental situations are Everest's. You know, the key is learning to love yourself through it all. Being able to celebrate the progress and show compassion when you stumble. That is the real healing, because as we heal, the heart becomes our compass. Shadow work is important, but it's not the end-all be-all. The deeper invitation is to give our wounds over, to love, to be able to look at the hardest parts of yourself and say it's okay, I love you too. That's how wholeness is reclaimed.

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Now, of course, there are traps. There always are right. One is assuming your intuition is infallible. It's not. I talked all about that in episode 85 on the common pitfalls of intuition, so if you missed it, you might want to go back and have a listen. Another trap is getting laser focused on one spiritual tenant and forgetting the rest. Deciding that forgiveness is key and if you can just get to the point where you have forgiven everyone, in anything, you will be okay. Well, what happens if you can't? What happens if you just cannot forgive your abuser or your rapist or your father? Then what you failed Like, you may as well just hang up your hat and give up.

Speaker 1: 6:35

Too often, that sends people into another pitfall, that of spiritual bypass, which is when we use spiritual practices, beliefs or positivity to avoid facing unresolved pain, trauma or uncomfortable emotions. Instead of working through those things, working through fear and grief and anger and shame we bypass those hard experiences by covering them with ideas like everything happens for a reason. Just focus on light and love or stay positive. You know, I'm not saying that there isn't truth to the divine having a greater plan, but I am saying that faking it till you make it is not the best uh, you know plan of action when you're on the healing path, because bypassing doesn't heal If you don't truly feel the love and light, if you cannot have an energetic experience of that and you're just saying it because you've been told that it heals. You're just listening to me and you're thinking okay, I just need to think about loving everything. That is not going to work, that's bypassing and it will not heal, it will suppress, and what we suppress eventually resurfaces, sometimes in even more disruptive ways. So it's okay if you're hearing me talk about how love is going to heal everything and you're sitting there thinking I'm not connected to love. Love isn't safe for me. I don't know how to feel those things. I don't know what love feels like. What are you talking about? The energy of love? It's okay if that has like no foundation in your experience it certainly did not have one in mine. It's something that you need someone to work with you to help teach you how to access it.

Speaker 1: 8:21

Because true spirituality is not about skipping over the shadow. It's not about pretending to be something you're not. It's about embracing all of our humanity, the light and the dark, the joy and the grief, with love and compassion. It isn't about choosing only light. It's about embracing all of it, all of it, as being sacred, and this is really where spirituality meets ordinary life. It's not just about having some sort of major breakthrough on the meditation cushion or in some, you know, plant medicine ceremony. It's about how you show up in traffic in your relationships at work with your kids. How you show up in traffic in your relationships at work with your kids. This is why it always makes me chuckle when I'll be at some sort of event that supposedly I'm surrounded by like-minded spiritual people and then I'll hear one of them gossiping about another, or I'll be in conversation with someone and another person will come over and will just like blatantly interrupt or completely not read the signal that we're in the middle of having like a deep, important kind of personal conversation and they are intruding in that.

Speaker 1: 9:33

I mean that is an example of lack of integration. And that's the next stage of integration. And that's the next stage, you know, which is also, honestly, where, like other people get really discouraged. You know they want life to feel blissful all the time, but first of all, that's impossible. And secondly, integration is about being at one with yourself in ordinary moments. It's not about feeling, you know, incredible and blissful and never feeling guilt and or beating yourself up because you lost your patience while trying to make dinner when your kid would not stop getting in the way. Yeah, been there, but that is the practice is having that experience and being able to return to peace, return to the heart again and again, no matter what life throws your way, big and small.

Speaker 1: 10:23

Integration is not perfection. It's about consistency and compassion. It's about creating rhythms that sustain your growth, whether through meditation, prayer, journaling, mindful movement, whatever. There's so many ways. Maybe I should do a whole episode on just different ways of integrating. I'll write that down, I'll do that.

Speaker 1: 10:44

These daily practices build the bridge between insight and embodiment and as integration deepens, something beautiful happens your identity shifts. I mean you really begin to live from the heart, most of the time, guided more by love than by ego or personality. It's like your higher self is in the driver's seat while your ego relaxes quietly in the back. For once you know compassion, forgiveness, joy, gratitude. They become your natural state. You can still remember the trauma of your past, but it no longer gut punches you. You honor your humanity instead of trying to overcome it.

Speaker 1: 11:25

And even here there are pitfalls. Of course. You may think you've arrived and drop the practices that got you there. And then what do you think happens? You revert, you know, or you believe you no longer need support or a mentor. But every single teacher I admire, all of my mentors, have mentors or at the minimum, peers who are able to reflect truth back to them. No one outgrows the need for community and guidance and guidance.

Speaker 1: 12:08

And if we do all of that, if we effectively work at integrating this embodied sense of light and love, well then we move into full integration, where it transfers, it shifts from being a state to a trait. You go from having to kind of remind yourself of these practices, remind yourself to live and to act from the heart, remind yourself to pause and kind of speak from the heart. When you get triggered, all of that efforting begins to fade and you live in an ongoing connection with the divine, guided by intuition, anchored in love. Challenges still arise, because they always will, but you instinctively meet them with compassion and acceptance instead of fear. You experience not just connection to the divine but embodiment of it. And yet even here there are traps. You know. We can begin to cling to transcendent experiences as proof of progress. Our meditations have to continue to be flashy. At meditation retreats I always caution people against having meditation envy, where people compare their inner experiences during the meditations and assume that one person's experience means something more than another's, that someone else is further down the path or something.

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Another pitfall is believing that overgiving is the ultimate demonstration of spirituality. Someone recently told me that giving until you can give no more is the highest expression of the spiritual path. No, no, like burnout is not spiritual. Running yourself into the ground or bankrupting your family through charitable donations is not divinely sanctioned. Like, true spirituality requires discernment.

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Likely, you've heard the wave ocean analogy. You know it's a way of describing our relationship to the divine, that each of us is like a wave, unique in form and expression but inseparable from the ocean itself. Right and just as a wave can't exist outside the ocean, we can't exist apart from source, the divine God, whatever you want to call it. We can't exist apart from source, the divine God, whatever you want to call it. You know we are individual expressions of the same vast, infinite consciousness. I mentioned it because this stage is about really knowing that we are the ocean. But, as Dr Douglas reminds us, knowing you are the ocean doesn't mean the wave doesn't exist or that it can violate the laws governing waves. In other words, you still live in the real world and you still operate under its rules. And you know perhaps the most humbling truth of it all is that the journey never ends.

Speaker 1: 14:58

And I know that hearing that can also feel discouraging. You know it's that sense of like wait what there's always going to be more work to do. Everyone's hit this point, you know where they have an experience that they thought they healed and then they realize they haven't fully healed it and they go through this moment of just being like, oh gosh, I can't believe I have to work on this problem again. But eventually, eventually, you realize that it's the greatest gift. I promise you one day, if you keep going, the scale will tip and all of a sudden, knowing that consciousness is infinite and therefore your ability to grow and evolve and progress is infinite, that becomes so exhilarating. What once felt heavy and burdensome becomes the greatest gift. It is this endless invitation to expansion. So let's end today, as we always do, by going over a couple prompts to help you explore your inner development journey. You don't have to write your answers down, just use it as a thought experiment and let those thoughts flow without judgment. So here we go.

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In your daily life, where do you notice yourself living from love, compassion or intuition? Notice yourself living from love, compassion or intuition. In your daily life, where do you still feel pulled by fear, ego or old patterns? What parts of yourself or your past do you find hardest to love and accept? How might you offer those parts compassion or forgiveness today? How might you offer those parts compassion or forgiveness today? And lastly, do you have any practices in place that help you integrate what you learn as you walk this path?

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This path is not about chasing progress or perfection. It's about deepening your connection to love and all its gifts. It's not about constantly identifying yourself as a seeker or a soul searcher and hey, you know, caution, sometimes we can get a little bit up on our high horse with that. You know, comparing ourselves to others because we are actively trying to become the best version of ourselves. But what are they doing? But integration and embodiment mean holding all of that with love, recognizing that everyone, whether they're aware of it or not, is on their own spiritual journey. Just because you have insight, awareness or are consciously choosing a healthier, happier way of being, because you are choosing to quote unquote, do the work does not mean that you are better than anyone else. To quote unquote, do the work does not mean that you were better than anyone else. So offer a little compassion. Huh, like it's tough walking around in the dark. They need your love, your forgiveness, your acceptance, your compassion, not your judgment. And you, you keep doing the work. You've got this. Keep going, it gets easier and it is so worth it.

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If this episode resonated with you, I invite you to subscribe so you never miss a new conversation about spiritual growth, inner development and heart-centered living.

Speaker 1: 18:18

And if you know someone who might benefit from these insights, share this episode with them. It might be exactly what they need on their journey. Your support helps us build a community rooted in love and determination to rise one step at a time. Just to note, there will be no episodes on Monday because it is a holiday here in the States, but we'll be back next Wednesday, I think, talking about integration practices. So, unless I get nudged in a different direction, that's what you can expect to hear me talk about on September 3rd. Until next time, remember, know who you are, love who you've been and be willing to do the work to become who you want to be. Just a quick reminder this podcast is for educational and entertainment purposes only. I am not a licensed therapist and nothing shared here is meant to replace the guidance of a physician, therapist or any other qualified provider. That said, I hope it inspires you to grow, heal and seek the support you need to thrive.