Spirituality or Beautiful Dissociation? - Nici´s Story

Hey 👋🏼 my name is Nici, and in my early twenties I experienced something that, depending on the bubble, would probably be described as a spiritual breakthrough, Kundalini awakening, ego death, or something else entirely.

Because this experience was deeply shaped for me by Christianity and especially by Jesus, I initially went through a very religious phase. After that, I began diving deeply into spiritual texts, myths, and psychological approaches in order to better understand what had actually happened to me.

And if there’s one thing I’ve been able to observe, it’s that especially in spiritual or religious circles there is often something present that could probably be called “toxic positivity.”

A tendency to dismiss uncomfortable or so-called “negative” emotions too quickly with phrases like:“You have to see the good in it.”“Everything happens for a reason.”before the body and nervous system have even had the chance to fully feel them and become conscious of them.

Before necessary — and sometimes completely justified — anger, shame, helplessness, or grief were even given the space to exist.

At the same time, we as humans often tend to avoid the very pain that comes with the moments in which we could actually meet ourselves most deeply.

Then we use phrases like:“Maybe it was meant to be.”“It must have been God’s will.”“It was karmic.”and in doing so, we sometimes avoid the responsibility we carry in this reality toward other people and ourselves — while also relativizing pain that first needs to be felt before it can transform into true “understanding.”

I myself am someone who today can draw something positive from many experiences in life. But that was always a process.

I often sat with and felt pain, guilt, anger, and grief for a very long time before I was truly able to let things go and integrate them.

And that is exhausting.It is ugly.It is unbelievably vulnerable.

50 Kundalini sessions within a few months, meditating daily, or constantly remaining in some kind of “high state” was, at least for me, not the solution to truly work through my issues.

No guru, not even Jesus, in my case, came to free me from my suffering, and the real “light” only comes once you have looked into what is truly dark.

And spiritual wisdom didn’t help me either whenever I used it to avoid responsibility or to beautify the pain that had been inflicted on me.

What I have also learned, however, is that during phases of severe trauma, the body actually protects us and only allows pain to surface gradually because the full weight of it would have been too traumatic to fully let in all at once. That too is important — and a very precious protective function of an incredibly intelligent body. 🖤

Very often, we remain stuck in the same loop until we finally dare to look at the place where it truly hurts.

In my opinion, spirituality should not be used to avoid pain, but to meet it more consciously. At the moment when we are truly ready to open ourselves for real.

Because sometimes “spirituality” is nothing more than dissociation wrapped in beautiful language.

And in the process, perhaps the most important part gets skipped:the honest encounter with oneself.

My direct wording here is not meant as an attack.

I have been all of this myself — and with great certainty, I probably still will be from time to time. Our brain, or ego, can be quite the trickster sometimes. And sometimes things simply need time before they can truly dissolve.

Maybe we are allowed to approach all of this with a bit more honesty.And sometimes with a little more humor and lightness too 🙂

Feel free to take a look at the art series I’m currently working on, because in the end it is the result of all these states, emotions, and perhaps the consciousness I carry within me today. Because I did not find the real answers in the “light,” but in listening to what the darkness had to tell me.

And that, to me, is what is actually spiritual: real life. :)

From Nici @noarts.13