Grounded Spirituality: Being Human Is the Practice, Not the Problem
If you’ve ever been in a spiritual class or picked up a metaphysical book, you’ve probably heard the idea that “we’re souls having a human experience.”
It usually pops up when we’re struggling with challenges and attempting to look at things from a bigger perspective.
I believe it’s said with good intentions – meant to remind us that we’re more than our to-do lists, our stress, our heartbreaks and to nudge us towards connecting with something bigger than the moment we’re currently in.
And…
It can also unintentionally position the human part of ourselves as a thing to transcend. That being human is a messy, emotional, inconvenient layer and something we’re supposed to grow out of on our way to becoming “enlightened.”
Soul is up *here*. Human self *down here*.
What if the soul and human self are equal? What if they’re both needed to navigate life?
Our soul perspective can help us to find meaning when things feel out of control and anchor us into something that feels more steady when the human world feels too unpredictable and too chaotic.
But if we only rely on that soul level view, we can fall into:
- Talking about “higher selves” as if the rest of us is lower
- Treating the body like a project to manage instead of a place to live
- Viewing emotions like glitches we need to override with “good vibes.”
- Making boundaries feel “unspiritual”
And eventually, the very tools meant to bring us closer to ourselves become ways to disconnect from ourselves.
However, if we include the part where being human is part of the spiritual practice…
Then awakening isn’t about rising above our human-ness. It’s about becoming more fully human.
This moves the soul to a place within us rather than a destination somewhere above us, helping us to hold our humanity with more compassion.
Here are a few questions to experiment or go deeper with this idea. Feel free to pull a card or journal about them:
What if….
- Being human – with all the tears, the anger, the body that gets tired – isn’t a distraction from awakening, but the doorway to it?
- This is what we came here for: to learn how to be a soul in the middle of grocery lines, laughter, and the ordinary day to day life?
- We stopped ranking our humanness and we started embracing it – how could things change on both a personal level and a collective?
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