If you've ever felt like you're being asked, we extreme this episode is great. Today we're talking about the biggest. Welcome to roots of the five terraces. We're spiritual wisdom practical tools. These are tasters, not deep dives. Thank you, spark curiosity, help you root deeply, rise freely, and remember who you truly are. Today's topic has come up repeatedly in the past couple of weeks. In the retreat I just facilitated, in conversations with clients, students, listeners, and when something comes up repeatedly, I take it as a sign that I should talk about it here. So many people who are sincerely, thoughtfully dedicated to inner growth and development, to spirituality, feel confused, frustrated, or even discouraged on their path. Not because they aren't trying hard enough, and not because they're doing something wrong, but because they keep being presented with false choices. It often feels like spirituality is asking us to pick a side, one way or another, one belief or its opposite. And what I want to explore today is this idea that many of the biggest struggles people face in modern spirituality aren't failures of discipline or faith, but dilemmas created by outdated paradigms that are still influencing us. What's emerging now, the new spirituality, it's something different. It's about integration. This is something that doesn't ask us to abandon our humanity in order to awaken. And that's related to one of the most common dilemmas that people are faced with: this idea of divine control versus total free will. There's this tendency to swing toward one extreme or the other. On one end, there's this belief that God, the divine source, is in charge. You know, the divine knows everything. Life is completely out of my hands. And on the other end, there's this belief that there is no God, no divine, no source at all, no intelligence guiding life's ebbs and flows, just complete randomness and free will. And I want to talk about why both of these extremes can be detrimental on a path of inner growth and why finding the center point of co-creative empowerment is one of the most essential understandings we can develop. Now, let's start with the there is only the divine, no free will perspective. Now, look, most of us have had moments where it feels like we have done everything we can. And if something is going to shift, it's going to take some sort of divine intervention. I call those, you know, the Jesus take the wheel moments. And I want to be very clear, I'm not being flippant or dismissive of anyone's belief. I don't think there's anything wrong with praying, asking for guidance, reaching a moment where you truly don't know what else to do, and throwing your hands up and asking the universe for help. The problem comes when we go too far with this, when we completely give over our power, when we say we have no free will, that everything is exactly as the divine orders it, and we have no choice. At the opposite extreme is the belief that there is no guiding intelligence, no wisdom, no deeper order. At that end of the spectrum, all we have is free will and nothing to have faith in. No greater meaning, no lessons, no sense that life is unfolding for us in any way. There's just you carrying everything on your own. Neither of these extremes actually reflect how consciousness develops, how inner growth happens. The emerging paradigm, the new spirituality, it isn't about having someone else carry the weight of your existence, or you carrying the weight of your existence alone. It's about co-creation, living in relationship with something larger than you, while also taking responsibility for your choices, your patterns, and your growth. And once you see this, you start noticing how many spiritual dilemmas follow this same pattern. But before we keep going, I want you to ask yourself: where in my life do I tend to give my power away? And where do I carry everything as if I am completely on my own? So here's another extreme: having to choose between trust and mistrust, especially in how we relate to authority and guidance. On one side, we're taught to trust completely, handing over our power to a teacher, a guru, or some sort of spiritual belief system. History has shown us again and again how easily this can slide into corruption or abuse. On the other side, we swing into mistrust. We dabble endlessly, one technique, one modality, one framework after another, always searching, always gathering tools, and yet likely still suffering. The new spirituality, it reframes this entirely. Conscious development is skill-based. Just like learning any meaningful skill, you don't worship the teacher and you don't isolate yourself and try to figure it all out alone. You work with guides and mentors who offer structure, feedback, and perspective while you build your own inner capacity and abilities. And part of that maturity is fully acknowledging that every teacher carries some mix of brilliance, bias, and yes, bullshit. You don't trust anyone 100%. You listen, you practice, and you use your own discernment. Sometimes that means thinking someone is completely off, only to realize later how right they actually were. And sometimes it means believing someone completely, taking it, you know, all in, hook, line, and sinker, until you eventually see where they missed the mark. You know, conscious development includes being okay with this, recognizing that it's not a failure or a betrayal of the path, it's part of the process, and learning not to become disillusioned when our teachers turn out to be human after all. So ask yourself: do I tend to over-trust teachers and systems, or do I keep myself safe by never fully committing to anything? And this leads me to the next one: the difference between belief and direct knowing. Direct experience, really. Conscious development isn't about replacing one belief system with another. It's about direct experience, direct knowing. You don't have to abandon your religious beliefs, and you don't have to adopt new metaphysical ones either. This path is about developing awareness, coherence, and higher functioning. It's about learning how to live grounded in experience, your own felt experience, in central nervous system regulation, in understanding the neuroscience, the developmental way that the brain and the nervous system mature. Understanding how we grow on a spiritual level, on a conscious level, the way things ebb and flow, how we evolve in so many different ways. So pause for a moment and ask yourself which parts of my spirituality are based on lived experience, and which parts am I holding? Mostly because I was told they're true. Here's another extreme. Old spiritual frameworks often focused on the future. Heaven, liberation, enlightenment someday. Some modern teachings now swing the other way. They suggest that any focus on the future means you're unevolved in some way. The only time is now. Now is all there is. Conscious development integrates both. It's about bringing heaven into the now while also growing toward greater coherence, capacity, and love in the future. Presence and aspiration are not opposites. So get curious and ask: Am I using a focus on the future to escape the present or staying focused only on the present to avoid taking responsibility for my growth? Here's another one. It's one of my favorites. I talk about it all the time: the monk versus the householder. For a long time, serious spiritual gross was seen as something that happened outside of life through renunciation, isolation, withdrawal. It was the, you know, the person who goes off into the mountains to live as a hermit or leaves, sells everything to go into the monastery. That left many people feeling like they had to choose between spirituality and a real life. I think we've all had moments when we thought, wouldn't it be great if we could do that, if we could just walk away from all this mundane rat race, groundhog day, insanity, and just be at an ashram or a monastery, you know, where we don't have to worry about any of this and can just meditate and focus on, you know, healing and inner growth. But I'd argue that that's not really what we want. What we want is peace and grace, compassion and joy. And most of us want that to happen within the framework of the life we're living. And the new paradigm, that's what it's all about. It's about integration. It's a, it recognizes that spirituality happens within relationships and work and creativity and embodiment. In fact, you know, old paradigms, they treated relationships as distractions. That's why you went off, you left your family. But the new paradigm, it recognizes relationships as our greatest teachers. Every relationship, whether with ourselves, others, money, the body, the natural world, it reveals to us where our unconscious patterns live. You know, the issue is rarely the other person. It's what's within us that is asking to be healed. And this is why the path of the householder, the path of your average Joe, is actually faster than the path of the monk. Because you want to think about those relationships, those experiences we have in our day-to-day, those are the dumbbells that are strengthening our spiritual systems. Those are the weight, the friction that we have to move against in our everyday lives that challenge us to stay in peace. I mean, I don't know about you, but when I go on vacation and I'm just sitting at the lake watching the water, drinking my coffee, I mean, it's hard not to be at peace. Very, very different when you're doing the morning commute and people are cutting you off. That's friction, that's real life. Being able to stay peaceful in that moment is a lot harder. It challenges us, which is how it also gives us the ability to grow faster. But I digress. The point here is to learn how to recognize the magic in the mundane. So, where are you with this? Ask yourself: do I believe that spiritual growth requires me to step away from life? Or have I found ways to grow through my everyday responsibilities and relationships? Here's another good one. Either we have to transcend the world or resign ourselves to suffering. Either we have to go out and up of our bodies, or life is hard and then you die. Conscious development, it offers another way. Suffering ends not by escaping life, but by integrating consciousness into life, integrating love into life. Suffering at its root is a lack of acceptance. So if we can cultivate the facets of the heart, deeply integrate joy, gratitude, forgiveness, compassion, presence, and of course, yes, acceptance into our day-to-day reality, that is conscious development. That is transcending, that is the end of suffering. So where are you with this? Ask. When life feels painful, do I try to rise above rise above it? Or do I feel resigned to it? What would it look like to meet it with more consciousness, more love instead? Not quite the same, but along these lines is the confusion out there too between peak states and embodied integration. This particular one has seen a huge increase since plant medicine, like ayahuasca, has become more and more mainstream. I'm not against it. Again, to be clear, plant medicine has been around for thousands of years and it has very important and sacred uses. However, it, along with other certain experiences that could happen in retreats or in healing sessions, can allow us to access these peak states that we then mistake for the goal. But it's not. Maybe it gives us a glimpse of a higher state. It allows us to have a momentary experience of maybe unity or of bliss. But then we get sad when it's gone, right? We think we've lost something, that we need to get back to that experience. But those experiences without integration can lead to disassociation. Healing without grounding can overwhelm the nervous system. Someone said if we were to become enlightened in a single moment, our nervous systems would essentially fry because they wouldn't be able to handle the amount of energy. You know, this is what can happen with these types of experiences, like with ayahuasca. We can just become overloaded. Our central nervous system can't handle it. And and other, the other part of this too is that, you know, none of us, we don't want to have these peak experiences for a moment. We want that feeling of freedom and lightness and unity to be a constant within us. And that's why integration is key. And integration does not come in a singular moment. It is a work in progress. It is something that we have to cultivate within us. Now, where do you stand with this? Ask yourself: am I more attached to peak spiritual experiences? Am I constantly chasing that high? Or to becoming more grounded, present, and coherent in my daily life. And I'm not saying, by the way, that we can't enjoy those peak spiritual experiences. I've had them, I've had many. They're wonderful. I mean, they're all great. We all want to have those. We just don't want to become so attached that we begin to think that we need to just constantly chase those moments because we can actually have that same sense of bliss and peace in our day-to-day lives without all the things that you have to do to have those kinds of peak experiences. Life can become the peak experience. Okay, that was a lot. Just remember in all of that, as you contemplate it, go back, pause, you know, allow yourselves to kind of soak in those questions. What's being asked of us on the path of spiritual growth and inner development isn't perfection. It's participation. Not giving our power away and not carrying everything alone. It's about learning how to live in conscious relationship with ourselves, with life, and with something greater than us. That's the path of integration and co-creation. Thank you so much for listening. If someone came to mind as you listen to this episode, please share it with them. That's how we grow this community of healing and rise together. I hope you have a great week. And remember, know who you are, love who you've been, and be willing to do the work to become who you are meant 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.