The Error of Following Your Bliss; and Other Misleading Spiritual Tropes

If we choose the right career, we will make enough money. The evil cousin of that being "Do what you love; the money will follow." I've given that advice before, and now I can admit that it doesn't always work out that way.

There is a problem with the soundbite advice that stems from love'n'light spirituality. And I'm here to break it down for you.

It's Black & White

You either feel the love, or you don't. You release your anger, or you let it consume you. You follow your bliss, or you whither into a hopeless shell, a cog in some faceless corporate machine.

The thing is, life is in grayscale. You can feel loved one moment, and have moments of insecurity the next. You can be fulfilled in a job that isn't quite your ideal. You can allow yourself to feel anger about things that deserve your anger.

Life should be about the ups and the downs. Your feelings should not be static, they can pendulum over the happy medium, swinging to one side before returning to the calm center.

There is Privilege Involved

This mindset often suggests, or outright states, that your situation is your own making. This is not only harmful to those who have had traumatic experiences, and those who are born differently abled, it is also contradictory.

If I am fully in control of my life, and my actions harm another person, but they are creating their own situation by their mindset, who is responsible for the harm?

Obviously, if I am the one acting harmfully, I am, but the positive mindset culture frequently shames or simply implies that it is the victim's fault. The psychology of narcissism and psychopathy both show that compassionate, loving and forgiving people are often the targets of such behaviors.

Love is not a Panacea

Let's just give that one up now. If love where the solution, there would be much less abuse in the Pagan and Buddhist communities. Yet we struggle with abusers, too. The 70s had cults and communities based on love and trust... and stories of abuse have surfaced from several of those as well.

As nice and clean as that would be, we are supposed to honor nature, and...

Nature isn't really very Nice

Predators kill prey. Blood begets life. Some of the worst tragedies to descend upon humankind has been Nature, from floods and volcanoes to earthquakes, hurricanes, and even diseases.

If we want to honor Nature, we can't ignore that Nature's next earthquake isn't going to be loved into a gentle shake. Things happen that we cannot stop. Genetics mutate. Birth defects occur. And the people effected shouldn't be told that they "created their situation".

Back to Business

We may love to do a certain kind of job, but there are other factors that can interfere with that being a realistic life model.

First, just because we love to do it, doesn't always mean we have the skills. The passion? Probably. But passion is only a driving force.

Second, the part you love is only part of the whole thing. You may love gems, but that doesn't mean you know how to run a gem shop. The idea that you can follow your bliss to wealth doesn't hold up when you realize your passion doesn't extend to the bookkeeping portion of the program.

Third, the market probably isn't too concerned with what you, the individual, are passionate about. Ritual clothing for pets can seem like a good idea (yes, you can use that), but that doesn't mean that enough people want their puppy in circle with a merlin-esque beard to be able to pay your rent. Even in mainstream economics, studies show that the number one indicator of a successful business is... timing. That's right, the luck of having the right idea at the right time. And that's why most businesses fail.

Pictured, me with $2k

Fourth, your passions don't necessarily mean you have the resources you will need. I really wanted to start a retail business. To open a storefront, I discovered I would need, at minimum, $20k, just to get through the first year. Pro tip: if you are reselling other people's goods, you don't have built-in collateral to get a loan. Passion doesn't mean you'll be able to get the money or resources.

So We Shouldn't Follow our Passions?

I'm not saying that at all. Being passionate about what you are trying to do can keep you going when it gets hard. But it will not dissolve all the obstacles you may face. If you have a solid plan, the resources to get started, and a realistic idea of the work involved, do it!

The problem isn't relying on passion so much as relying ONLY on passion... and blaming a lack of positive thinking for failures. 90% of businesses fail in the first FIVE years. Positive thinking may not prevent that.

On the other hand, it may be what gets you back up on the horse to try again. And that is a good place for positive thinking.

Summary of a Workshop: Negative Emotions on a Spiritual Path

Many times, we get the message that being on a spiritual path means you can't have anger, depression, anxiety, or fear.  Instead, we are told to quickly get rid of such emotions and replace them with something more akin to love.  But is that really the case?  Is that healthy?

We will be discussing the place that negative emotions have even at higher spiritual levels, and how to know when it's time to embrace negativity as a part of continued spiritual growth.

No matter how much we embrace our religious or spiritual beliefs, we are still just people living in the real world. We like to post memes that quote the Buddha: "You will not be punished for your anger, you will be punished by your anger."

We talk about the destructiveness of being a hater, of judging others, of not being "grateful", of not holding enough love. We talk about hate and fear as the opposites of love, as though they are the corruption within us. As though "allowing" ourselves to feel these emotions is a failure.

What kinds of messages have you heard? What do those messages mean to you?

Tell that to people living in fear...

Many people, in normal everyday lives, look at these and see a message of hope. But others see those ways of looking at emotions as being accusatory, a symptom of denial, and - yes - privileged.

How might those messages be hurtful for people in different circumstances?

We should be "rising above" such negativity. If we are still feeling hate and anger, we aren't as spiritual as we should be. How do those sound to people with mental illness, chronic pain, chronic poverty, or in an environment of oppression?

What do those two ways of looking at emotions have in common? They assume that emotions are controlled by and a symptom of the person feeling them. This perspective has several problems.

The first problem is that this ignores the legitimacy of those emotions. Spiritual growth is about understanding who you are, accepting the flaws of human incarnation, and living a life complete with suffering and hard knocks. In many ways, a spiritual path is less about who you should be and more about who you really are, stripped of the illusions of culture and expectation.

There is a brutal honesty inherent in that. We are supposed to accept that we are clumsy, but not the angry reaction we have when we stub our toe? We are supposed to accept the complications of relationships, but not the heartbreak that comes with that?

Where is the line of what we are allowed to feel? Who gets to decide if our emotions are valid enough to acknowledge?

The second problem is that we often choose to suppress our negative emotions. We are supposed to change our sadness into gratitude, or our anger into empathy.

First of all, that doesn't work. You can fake it for a while, but those emotions will show themselves eventually. Bitterness, passive-aggressive words and actions, sabotage of oneself or others... those are the negativity leaking through. And it's subtle and insidious.

Secondly, it assumes that feeling certain emotions will lead to certain behaviors and mindsets. Anger isn't the problem. Punching a stranger in the face is the problem. Sorrow isn't the problem. Railroading every situation and conversation for the next six months to talk about how your ex was your soulmate and you can't live without him or her - that's the problem.

The third problem is that the mindset that you can just decide not to feel a certain way is extremely contextual and, in many ways, inaccurate.

This means that there are assumptions made about those feelings and the situation that caused them in the very statements that say things like "your anger will hurt you more than it hurts them."

Except, why are you angry? Was someone you care about hurt by someone else? Are you angry over injustice? Those are pretty legitimate reasons to be angry.

You can watch a funny movie after a bad breakup - and you will probably laugh during the movie. You may even feel better about it. But the humor of Hollywood won't take away the knowledge of what has been lost.

Emotions don't happen in a void. You don't just be sad. There is always a reason. People get angry or sad or hurt or possessive for many reasons. The emotions themselves won't change. They can't.

The assumption that we can control and change our emotions is a myth based on the fact that we can temporarily feel differently with certain behaviors. But it is still a myth.

If you feel sad over the death of a loved one, that sadness never goes away. Once you process the grief, your mind can move on. It returns, more often at first, then less as time goes by.

But anyone who has lost someone close will tell you that there is still a pang of grief when you realize it's their birthday, or the anniversary of their death. The emotion never changes, you just don't focus on it as much.

Unless you grieve appropriately, you will still feel it come back at times. Even if you *do* grieve appropriately, you will have feelings returning. Grieving lets you process the situation more deeply, more often. Essentially, you are allowing the focus on that feeling to wear itself out.

But the feeling doesn't go away. It can't. The reason for the feeling is still there.

And therein lies the core of the issue.

We can't control our emotional state because it is an indication of what is happening to us.

"Negative emotions like loneliness, envy, and guilt have an important role to play in a happy life; they're big, flashing signs that something needs to change." Gretchen Rubin, author of The Happiness Project.

In a healthy, spiritual life, negative emotions are great big indicators or how we are doing. Sadness tells us we've lost something, even if it's just a potential of something. Guilt indicates that we've violated our own code of conduct - it is the emotion of honor. Loneliness indicates we need to establish more meaningful social connections.

Anger, says psychotherapist Robert Augustus Masters in "Spiritual Bypassing", is “the primary emotional state that functions to uphold our boundaries.”

Fear is about acknowledging possible threats, whether physical or emotional. It's okay to understand that there are things that can happen. Dwelling on remote possibilities may not help us, but healthy fear can tell us when there is a real danger.

Jealousy and envy are horribly maligned emotions, but they tell us the most about our spiritual path.
Jealousy tells us what we are most connected to, for better or worse. If we are jealous over a person, we may have an unhealthy connection. Or that person may be a lifeline that provides something we should work on for ourselves.

Envy shows us what our desires are. We become envious of our friend's new job, but that may simply indicate that we would like to find work that is equally fulfilling to us as their job is to them. We become envious of a new relationship, but we don't necessarily want the person they have - rather we desire the support and connection they seem to have with them.

The best way we can progress on our spiritual path is to receive all of the messages that we are sent. We acknowledge "signs" and "omens", and interpret dreams, but we ignore the powerful, motivating force of what our negative emotions are telling us. They may be the best insight we will ever have, so don't suppress them. Let them tell you what's going on.

The Goddess of Ick

Limnos, Greek Goddess of Hunger

There are hundreds of unique goddesses throughout history, around the world. Many of them have become inspirations for the women of our so-called post-feminist society. They represent the independent, capable women that define the modern goddess-woman. They teach us how to be mothers and workers in this new society of semi-equality.



Each goddess represents a side of womanhood: kind, compassionate, capable, nurturing, wise. These aspects are ones that we can understand. They are good and positive. We can say that we are these things, and say them with pride.

But there are still characteristics that many goddesses possess, which, even in our supposedly enlightened society, we see as negative qualities. These are the qualities that we ignore, or push aside as irrelevent. We brush over these things as too dirty, literally and metaphorically. We whitewash these less-then-desirable characteristics from our experiences of Goddess, or turn them into a lesson of who not to be.

Mud is natural for Sekhmet

These characteristics turn a goddess of the feminine into the Goddess of Ick.

But that may not be what these goddesses are telling us. There is strength in having these characteristics that are seen as mean or even weak.

These characteristics, these icky things, are what make a goddess powerful. The dirt and the blood, the so-called weaknesses, show us how to be better humans. They teach us how to be truly powerful women and men.

Even more, they help us to be complete. A shining example of personality is one-sided and, dare I say, boring. When you throw in these icky things, we, and the goddesses, become interesting, lively, whole and even more powerful.

Persephone was a victim,
so what makes her Goddess?

You can see the power of the Goddess of Ick in the way that children are safer playing in the mud then in being kept in a sterile environment. You can find the power in the blood and sweat and tears of a woman giving birth. You can find the darkness of the Goddess in deep black caves filled with teeming life: glowing fungi, slimy bacteria, blind bats, slugs and maggots.

The Goddess of Ick represents all that creates and destroys life. Light and cleanliness interfere with the lifecycle and represent the order that life cannot live in.

We fight so hard to keep our world clean and orderly, to prevent the mud and the dirt from coming into our homes, and into our lives. We sweep, we scrub, we bathe, we try to keep nature from entering our lives unannounced.

But the Goddess of Ick is nature, and she cannot be denied.

The truth of the matter is, we are the mud and the dirt; we are the Goddess of Ick.