Conditioning on the path
October 2024
While walking the spiritual path is essential for growth, it also brings with it a variety of conditioning, says Suma Varughese
Have you ever thought of how deeply the spiritual path conditions us? It is ironic, isn’t it, that the very activity that is meant to free us of conditioning, and restore us to our original wholeness and perfection, also ends up adding more baggage to our load?
Well, it can’t be helped. Most of us enter the spiritual zone as raw newbies. Perhaps we read a book, or attended an inspiring talk or workshop, or even had a spiritual awakening that launched us into self-discovery.
We know virtually nothing about the terrain that lies ahead, its innumerable twists and turns, its many winding orbits. Except for the occasional seeker who has taken incarnation virtually fully realised, the rest of us have to work the treadmill for many long years. In the meantime, the conditioning piles up.
Among the most prevalent is the intense fear and resistance to all negative emotions. Now that we are aspirants, we feel it is incumbent to swim in the bliss of peace, love,
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joy and compassion, and we cringe each time we experience anger, greed, jealousy, hate, shame, or guilt. The message we get, not just from our own judging mind, but also from the talks of the gurus and teachers, is to steer clear of negative emotions. Of course, few tell us how to accomplish that, and what we are meant to do with them were we unlucky enough to experience them, so we handle them in ways we have done all our lives. Suppress them, deny them, reframe them, and rationalise them.
Since these methods don’t help, we accumulate other emotional baggage. We feel bad about ourselves. Our self-esteem – never quite whole – dips further. We often feel discouraged, but if we are lucky, we still persist, because honestly there is no going back. We have been irretrievably changed by all that we have understood and experienced, and come what may, we have no option but to forge ahead.
In peeps another little complication. Spiritual competition. We hope desperately that not everyone will get ahead of us, and that there are a few laggards we can overtake. Each time someone says they are in a great space or have no questions left, we turn cold. When will our number come? Jealousy, envy, and other undesirables step in and make themselves comfortable in our inner space, giving us fresh targets to resist and reject.
Since we cannot seem to access our original goodness or compassion (hidden behind the heap of unaccepted and unprocessed negative emotions), we do the next best thing. We pretend. We pretend to be loving, kind or compassionate. To our amazement, it fools no one. Our recipients cold shoulder us, and we cannot imagine why.
We also do our fair share of spiritual bypassing. This means to ignore our shadow parts and project that we are realised souls, in the moment, and fully conscious. Even aspirational gurus are guilty of this.
But nevertheless, bit by bit, by sheer persistence, we progress. Insights power us on, teachers shine the mirror on us, and compel us to see a little bit of our shadow self at a time. Life, above all, is relentless in pushing us onward and forward. Events and experiences assail us, and if we have enough awareness by then, we use them all to grow by. This, of all things, is what helps us the most. As we encounter and overcome all the dragons life sends us, confidence builds, and with that so does our self-esteem, and the capacity to look at our shadow side in its face. Hurray, we are on our way! Suma Varughese is a teacher of words and wisdom. She broadcasts spiritual truths and a love for writing in her various capacities as columnist, writer, writing coach, and the founder-facilitator of the popular Zen of Good Writing Course. She is the former editor of Life Positive and Society magazines. She has authored Travelling Light, Travelling Lighter, and 50 Life Lessons. She can be contacted at sumavarughese@gmail.com
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