Hijacking Spirituality: Ascension, Twin Flame, & Manifestation Gurus
OLD WISDOM
The ancient mystics and contemplatives spent time in solitude connecting with divinity. Some of today’s spiritual and new age thinkers have adopted a new type of divine being, one that can create and manifest anything the heart desires. Communing with spirit, seeking eternal love in God, and stepping out of society has now become the new version of powerful creators manifesting true human potential. These two concepts seem radically different. Seeking connection with a higher power and letting go of everything, seems completely opposite of evolving into a superhuman magnetically attracting your reality.
Why do so many new age and spiritual communities turn spirituality into a mode of getting anything and everything your heart desires? Why does something sacred get transformed into a sales pitch for manifesting your dream life in ten easy steps? I am not intending to discount the very real nature of intention and using a positive mindset to attain your goals and dreams in your life, or the ability to heal yourself from illness and past life circumstances. However, so many movements adopt the idea that to be spiritual is to be a super magnetic attractor of energy, or that you have some magical power to make anything happen in your life, all you need is a vision board, the right attitude, and the ability to set your vibration on the future you want to attract.
There may be some truth to how energy works in this world. You might imagine and envision a future for yourself, which typically requires a lot of work to get there. The idea that lots of physical things, houses, vacations, and luxury vehicles just pop into your life out of nowhere is typically not the case. Most people that acquire the finer things in life either came from a lot of money to begin with or worked incredibly hard to get there. Either way, it usually doesn’t just appear out of thin air. But, to tie in spirituality to these practices seems far-fetched. If spirituality is about undoing the self and all things you thought were true about yourself and the world we live in, then what does ascending into another dimension, being gifted a soul mate, or manifesting things into your life have to do with it?
DREAMS SELL
Realizing the true self requires a devastating blow to the ego. All of your mental constructs, your deeply held beliefs, and judgments come crumbling down during a spiritual awakening. This is a difficult process, horrific at times, and a total life transformation. You will never see the same again after such a radical shift occurs in your awareness. It’s not a good selling point or workshop to market if your main theme is “Lose Yourself Totally and Completely and Plummet into Severe Darkness!” Even though there is a lot of truth in that statement, it certainly doesn’t sell, does it? No one wants to hear the truth, that waking up from the ego’s view of the world and the self is no walk in the park. This could be why the ego sneaks into spiritual and new age offerings all the time.
For example, there is a lot of information about ascension and ascension symptoms. Within this topic there is a general consensus that the human being is upgrading from a 3D consciousness to a 5D consciousness, in other words, a higher frequency. Because of the higher frequencies experienced, shifts within the body, mind, and the way in which you experience the world may change. Now, there may be some truth to this, however, the final frontier always ends up in a perfect co-creating reality with other humans supposedly ascending and becoming equally enlightened. Some schools of thought seem to think that all of us will ascend together like one big, enlightened family. If you just hold on everything will be perfect and life will be one exhilarating experience after another. Now that sells! Selling dreams sells big time!
This can be confusing for people. On the one hand, a physical, mental, and spiritual transformation is very possible. Where it gets questionable is when you become a master of your humanness attracting and creating every avenue of your life the way that you want it, or physically ascending and leaving this reality into a brand new one, or only feeling harmony and love the rest of your time on Earth. This is when nirvana, utopia, and heaven on earth weave into the equation. There’s a sense of the chosen people have arrived to change humanity.
The reality of spiritual awakening is it brings you deeper into your humanness. It humbles you. You recognize that everyone is struggling on some level, and there’s a deep sense of compassion and understanding for others on their path of life. There’s no longer an attachment for being a certain way, attaining any power, having a dreamy life, it becomes a flow of life, allowing everything to unfold as it should. When a part of you dies inside, a whole new world opens up within you, however, not much has changed out in the world. The dual nature of it remains, yet you are simply waking up from it.
TWIN FLAMES BUSINESS
There are new age terms describing finding your perfect love match, or what is commonly known as a soul mate, and calling it your twin flame. Many people believe they have a soul match, or a replica of themselves in someone else, that you have a destined partner to love in this life. There was recently a documentary series on Netflix called Escaping Twin Flames, based on the online group Twin Flames Universe. You can certainly check it out. This is a group led by a couple claiming to have direct access to each person’s Divine Masculine or Divine Feminine energy. They claim you can only have one, not a balance of both. As most groups go, you pay to take classes and workshops on how to find your Twin Flame, you can pay to become a coach, which continues to feed the two leaders lots of money.
What is unfortunate about this particular online community, is the leader begins telling members who his or her twin flame is, almost an arranged type of relationship, taking power over these people, and people fall in line. Many of the members do not see it, get stuck inside the brainwashing, and simply stay for fear of leaving. It is sad for those that get mixed up in situations such as these, they are all too common and usually it boils down to money. People can be very vulnerable and believe what someone is claiming, especially if they appear to have a special gift. What they sense they are lacking in their lives has been found in what the leaders of Twin Flames Universe are offering. The leaders maintain they have not crossed any boundaries or done anything wrong, however, if you watch the series you can decide for yourself.
Too often people hijack spirituality and turn it into something it isn’t. Twin Flames Universe uses the masculine and feminine energies and makes it about God and divinity, when spirit is truly beyond bodies and gender in this world. Spirituality is about returning to our essence as spirit and recognizing we all have this within us. It isn’t about listening to an authority who has direct communication from a higher power for others. We all have a direct connection to spirit. Those willing to sell their specialness to convince others they need them, are simply abusing power. If soul mates are real, then we will be led to whomever ours is by spirit, not by a couple who has been married for a short period of time claiming to know what is destined for everyone else’s love life.
MANIFESTATION GURUS
Manifesting workshops, online courses, podcasts, books, and coaching sessions are extremely popular. Manifest whatever you desire into your life, sounds amazing, right? Yes, it does. And then pull spirituality into it and you have a match made in heaven. Being spiritual is now directly correlated to using the law of attraction to get whatever I want in my life. If using the law of attraction and putting out positive affirmations and vibrations works to achieve what you want, that’s fabulous. However, what does it have to do with spirituality? Why pull these two together as if they have anything to do with each other? One is driven by the ego’s desires of the world, the other is reminding you of your true nature in spirit, which has nothing to do with gaining monetary wealth, accomplishing and achieving goals, or what you do while you are here. They are two totally separate things.
Whether this is intentional, or just following what everyone else’s is doing, who really knows. What is certain is selling courses about how to get what you want SELLS! Let’s face it, it’s popular. People are searching high and low for a good life, and in this world of form, it’s so easy to fall into thinking that everything we do here makes us who we are. But is that really true? Are we our accomplishments, our career, our family role, or any other identification we can label ourselves? Or is there something else underneath these apparent disguises? If you have moments in your life where something deeper touched you, maybe you had an experience that took you outside of the things of the world, or you felt connected to a greater essence when you least expected it, an inner wisdom is born. You begin feeling there is more than what the eyes are showing us in the world.
If you enjoy using the law of attraction in your life, then by all means use it. But, when manifestation gurus begin touting spirituality as a means of attracting what you wish, take it with a grain of salt. Getting what we wish or yearn for in this world is simply part of the ego’s dream, plain and simple. It has nothing to do with being a spiritual being. We are all spiritual beings whether we are actively using the law of attraction or not. For those struggling to make ends meet living in utter poverty, they are just as spiritual as those living luxuries lifestyles, there is nothing of the world that can destroy that basic truth. We are all the same spiritual essence and nothing of the world will change that. Seeing when the ego steps into these movements will help you on your own spiritual journey.