The dark side of being spiritually awake

I’m sitting cross-legged on a wooden platform at a hillside cafe in Koh Phangan, Thailand. Below me, a dozen people sway in unison to ambient music, their white clothes and crystal necklaces glinting in the sun.

This island is a magnet for spiritual seekers chasing self-improvement and “higher vibration.” We’re supposed to be beyond ego here—radiating love and light.

Yet as I watch, I catch subtle glances and half-smiles that feel oddly like competition. One woman boasts about her seven-day water fast and the profound “downloads” she received; another counters with his daily sunrise tantra practice.

I nod along, even chime in about my own morning meditation routine. As the words leave my mouth, I feel a twinge of self-consciousness. Was I sharing, or was I showing off? The truth makes me uncomfortable. Inside, a realization churns: I haven’t transcended my ego at all. I’ve just dressed it up in spiritual language.

This isn’t the first time I’ve fallen into that trap. A few years ago, I was living in Los Angeles and deeply invested in the Law of Attraction and all things “high vibe.” My weekends were filled with cacao ceremonies in Topanga Canyon and intention-setting circles in Venice. We spoke of gratitude and abundance; we hugged and called each other “brother” and “sister.”

On the surface, it was all support and positivity. But scratch that surface, and the same ego games lurked.

I remember one Sunday in Topanga: after a group meditation, people took turns sharing their “downloads from the universe.” Each story seemed to outdo the last in spiritual grandeur. One guy claimed he manifested a new job by “vibrating at the frequency of abundance.” Next, a woman boasted about her third eye opening during the cacao ceremony.

As my turn approached, I felt the urge to impress. I embellished a story about meeting a “soul connection” at Whole Foods, framing a chance encounter as destiny. Everyone nodded approvingly, and I basked in it. Even our gestures of support carried a strange undertone. If someone in our circle confessed to feeling down or “low vibe,” the rest of us would immediately swoop in to “fix” them with pep talks and healing suggestions. We meant well, but in hindsight I see how we were implicitly competing to be the most enlightened helper. There was an unspoken rule: no one should stay “low” for long in our high-vibe world. The setting had changed – from L.A. to Thailand – but I was playing the same game, chasing the same validation.

It took me a long time to admit what was happening. Eventually, I learned there’s a name for this kind of self-deception. Psychologist John Welwood coined the term “spiritual bypassing” to describe using spiritual ideas and practices to avoid facing unresolved emotional issues. In other words, I was using meditation, positive affirmations, and all my “high vibe” rituals as a mask – a way to sidestep my insecurities and pain. Welwood calls it a form of “premature transcendence,” essentially trying to rise above the messy, raw parts of being human before I’d actually dealt with them. That hit home. I would force myself to stay optimistic, to immediately reframe any disappointment as “meant to be” or any sadness as just “low vibration energy” I needed to clear. If I felt anger or envy, I’d shove it down and chant a mantra, pretending I was at peace. I wasn’t confronting my issues; I was papering them over with spiritual wallpaper.

I can recall countless times I used spirituality as emotional armor. When a long-term relationship in L.A. fell apart, I refused to feel any real grief; I told myself it was “meant to be” and dove into self-love workshops instead of mourning. When I lost a major client for my business, I didn’t acknowledge the gut-wrenching anxiety that hit me; I simply repeated my favorite affirmation, “I am abundant, money flows easily,” until I was blue in the face. None of these feelings actually disappeared just because I slapped a positive sticker over them. They lingered under the surface, building pressure.

The irony is that I wasn’t alone in this ego trap. Psychologists have observed that spirituality can, paradoxically, feed the ego instead of dissolving it. In fact, there’s even a tongue-in-cheek label for it: the “I’m enlightened and you’re not” syndrome. It happens when one’s spiritual practice becomes a source of superiority — a way to feel above others. I read an eye-opening Scientific American article that explained how easily the ego hijacks our pursuit of enlightenment. As the author put it, self-enhancement through spiritual practices can fool us into thinking we are evolving and growing, when in fact all we’re growing is our ego. That struck a nerve. I realized I had been measuring my “progress” by how spiritually advanced I appeared, constantly comparing myself with others in subtle ways. Was I meditating more hours than them? Was my diet more organic and “conscious”? I might speak about oneness and compassion, but internally I was keeping score.

I also learned that my habit of glossing over real emotions with spiritual talk wasn’t just harmless pretension – it was potentially harmful to my well-being. Psychologists call the obsession with always staying positive “toxic positivity,” and it leads to denying very real feelings. When I read about a 2013 study by Harvard School of Public Health and the University of Rochester linking emotional suppression to serious health risks, I had to pause. The study found that people who bottled up their emotions had a 35% higher risk of dying prematurely from any cause, and a 70% higher risk of developing cancer. I was stunned. All this time I thought I was being “spiritually evolved” by refusing to indulge anger, fear, or grief. But in reality, I was stockpiling those feelings inside, where they festered. My forced serenity was a flimsy cover over stress and unaddressed pain – and now I had proof it could literally make me sick.

Around this time, I came across the work of a Brazilian shaman named Rudá Iandê. Unlike some New Age gurus who double down on the “love and light” mantra, Rudá’s teachings felt bracingly honest. In his article “Love Yourself™: The Self-Love Industry’s Toxic Positivity Problem”, he lays out how constant enforced positivity can backfire. He describes how an insistence on being optimistic and “high-vibe” at all times, to the point of denying reality, ends up alienating us from our true feelings. Reading his words was like having a bucket of cold water thrown on me (in a good way). One line stuck with me: “every time you force yourself to be positive, negativity grows within.” That line felt like it was aimed directly at me. I’d been so proud of always seeing the bright side, but Rudá made me question what that was costing me. Was my perpetual smile just a way to ignore my inner turmoil? Was I spiritually “awake,” or just spiritually numbing myself?

Despite these wake-up calls, change didn’t happen overnight. I left the islands and moved to Chiang Mai, a city in northern Thailand, to focus on growing my online business. I told myself I could balance hustling with staying spiritually awake. I structured my days with almost military discipline: waking at sunrise for breathwork and yoga, spending the morning on my work, breaking at lunch to squeeze in a quick meditation or a chakra alignment session, then back to the laptop. By evening I’d be drained, but I still dragged myself to a networking meetup or a chanting circle so I wouldn’t miss any chance to “elevate my consciousness.”

In truth, I was burning out. I worked long hours building my website and coaching practice, then forced myself to attend meditation circles at night so I wouldn’t “fall out of alignment.” I was exhausted, yet I wouldn’t allow myself to admit it. I plastered on the same old grin and told everyone I was “great, just blessed and busy.” Inside, anxiety was gnawing at me.

When an old friend from Australia came to visit me in Chiang Mai, the facade finally cracked. We hadn’t seen each other in years. He was looking forward to catching up, maybe drinking some beers and talking about life. I, however, was still in my enlightened coach mode. On his first night in town, we sat at a simple street-side restaurant. He opened up about some problems back home – he’d broken up with his girlfriend, was feeling lonely and directionless. I immediately shifted into guru gear. I told him that everything happens for a reason and he just needed to “trust the universe’s plan.” I suggested he focus on gratitude, and I started spouting advice about meditation and manifestation techniques.

He listened quietly for a while, poking at his food. Then he put down his fork, looked me in the eye, and said, “Mate, I just need my friend right now, not a guru. You’re always above me.”

I felt as if I’d been punched in the gut. My first reaction was defensiveness—I wanted to protest that I was just trying to help. But I caught myself. In that moment, something shifted. I saw, through his eyes, what I had become: a guy who couldn’t come down from his self-made spiritual pedestal to actually empathize. My friend was hurting, and instead of listening with compassion, I was lecturing him from on high. His simple plea—to have his friend back—cut through all my pretenses. I realized I had been using my “awakened” status to distance myself from others’ pain (and my own). It wasn’t malicious; I genuinely thought I was sharing wisdom. But really, I was invalidating his feelings and acting superior. I had turned myself into the very thing I never wanted to be: a spiritual narcissist.

That conversation was a reckoning. Over the next days, I did a lot of soul-searching – the unglamorous, uncomfortable kind. I apologized to my friend for being condescending. He accepted my apology with a smile of relief. In fact, once I dropped the pretension and talked to him like the old buddy he knew, our friendship felt more solid than ever. More importantly, I started actively working to undo the habits I’d built. I eased off the constant positivity pedal. I even took a break from the endless workshops and circles – instead of spending every evening at a sound bath or ecstatic dance, sometimes I’d just grab dinner with friends and talk about mundane stuff. I gave myself permission to be “low vibe” when I felt low.

Instead of repeating affirmations every time I felt down, I let myself actually experience the sadness or frustration and talk about it. I began doing what I’d call “grounded emotional work.” For me, that meant journaling honestly about my fears, going to therapy (yes, actual therapy, not just another Reiki session), and practicing simply being present with whatever emotion arose, without judgment. One evening, I finally broke down and cried about everything I’d been holding in – the stress, the loneliness, the disappointments I’d never voiced. No mantra or visualization, just raw tears. It felt foreign and a bit uncomfortable to me, but also strangely relieving. It was awkward at first. I was so used to immediately reframing everything into a spiritual lesson that sitting with raw feelings felt like a new muscle I had to train.

I also made an effort to reconnect with people in a more authentic way. I called up old friends I’d distanced myself from. Instead of trying to impress them with how “evolved” I was, I just listened and shared openly about my own ups and downs. I remember grabbing coffee with a college buddy when I visited home; I casually admitted that living abroad chasing my dreams was exciting but also really hard and lonely at times. He was surprised — he said, “I always thought you had it all figured out these days.” That hit me. I had been broadcasting the image of a man who rose above normal human struggles. Now, by admitting I didn’t have it all together, I felt us actually connect. We ended up swapping stories about anxiety and uncertainty in our thirties, and I walked away feeling closer to him than I had in years. There was a warm humility in being ordinary again.

What I found in this deceleration of my spiritual life was a sense of relief. Humility, it turned out, felt lighter than the constant pressure to be enlightened. I could laugh at myself again, be the beginner, be wrong, be just another flawed human. And paradoxically, I started to feel more genuinely “spiritual” in the sense of connected – not because I was meditating more (in fact, I was meditating less), but because I was being honest. I wasn’t performing holiness or chasing bliss. I was living in reality, with all its messiness. And reality, I discovered, is a pretty good place to be.

A few months later, I found myself back in Koh Phangan, on that same island of seekers. This time, everything felt different. On my first night back, I went to a community kirtan circle under the palm trees. I noticed some of the same characters holding court, dressed in flowing yoga attire and speaking about transcendence. But instead of rolling my eyes or jumping in to prove myself, I just smiled. I could see beneath the surface – I recognized the insecurity that drives that kind of spiritual showmanship, because I’d lived it. I felt empathy instead of judgment. In a way, I was finally at peace with not having to be on top.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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A post shared by Justin Brown (@justinrbrown)

The place hadn’t changed: the sunset drum circles still thumped, the yoga studios still filled with ethereal music. But I had changed. I no longer felt the need to prove my spiritual awareness to anyone.

At a gathering one evening, I struck up a conversation with a guy who was new to the island. He sheepishly admitted, “I’m not really into all the ‘high vibe’ stuff — I mostly came for the beaches.” I chuckled and replied, “Honestly, I’m kind of over that ‘high-vibe’ act too.” His eyes lit up in relief. “Phew, I thought it was just me!” he said, laughing. We ended up having one of the realest chats I’d ever had on Koh Phangan – talking about how exhausting it is to pretend to be zen all the time. There we were, two strangers bonding over plain old truth. No one-upping, no spiritual jargon, no competition to see who was more awakened. Just two people sharing what it’s like to be human.

Before I went through this unmasking, I used to think of “awakening” as rising above — climbing to some higher plane where petty human feelings couldn’t touch me. Now, I see it differently. The dark side of chasing spiritual awakening is that it can make you forget to be a person. In my case, I had to come down to earth, get off my high horse, and embrace the ordinary truth that I’m not above anything or anyone. And in doing so, I actually feel more awake than ever. These days, I don’t judge my progress by mystical experiences or how perfectly I can stay “positive.” I measure it by my ability to be present and compassionate – to sit with a friend’s pain or my own, without immediately trying to float above it.

In the end, spiritual awakening isn’t about rising above our humanity; it’s about coming down into the human experience, fully and gratefully.