Are You Actually Spiritual or Just Really Good at Spiritual Concepts?

There's a problem in modern spirituality that nobody wants to talk about. We have more spiritual teachings available than ever before. More books, more teachers, more practices, more concepts. And yet, most people who engage with spirituality aren't actually becoming more present, more peaceful, or more connected. They're just becoming better at spiritual concepts. So let me ask you: are you in your head space, or are you flowing in the present? Are you actually experiencing presence, or are you just really good at thinking about it?

I find it extremely helpful to learn the concepts of what a psychic is vs. a pneumatic person. The psychic gets stuck in the ideological concepts - using the psyche, magic, language, dogma, etc, to control the experience. It's all just mental, and it's all ego and will. Like, they're trying to manipulate reality through mental constructs, through belief systems, through ritual without transformation, through clever language games that make them feel like they're getting somewhere when really they're just spinning in circles. They're using their will to force outcomes, to shape their experience into what they think it should be rather than what it actually is. And that's the trap, right? Because the more you try to control through the mind, the more you're actually removing yourself from the direct experience of what's real. You're filtering everything through your concepts, your beliefs, your ideologies, and what you end up experiencing isn't reality at all - it's just your mental model of reality. You're living in a simulation of your own making, and you don't even realize it because you're so identified with the mind that you think the map IS the territory.

Vs the Pneumatic will transcend the mind, no longer using ideology and dogma, but instead flowing. And I want to be clear here - transcending the mind doesn't mean abandoning thought or becoming some kind of blissed-out zombie. It means you're no longer enslaved by thought. You're no longer identified with the constant stream of mental chatter. You can use the mind as a tool when needed, but you're not trapped in it. You're not filtering every single moment through your belief systems and ideologies. Instead, you're present. You're here. You're responding to what actually is rather than what you think should be. You're in flow, which means you're adaptive, spontaneous, intuitive. You're connected to something deeper than the intellect - call it spirit, call it presence, call it the Tao, whatever - but you're no longer trying to control the river, you've become the river.

So if we can become conscious enough, we can catch ourselves when the mind is taking us from the present. And this is the work, right? This is the actual practice. Not memorizing spiritual concepts or following some prescribed ritual, but developing the awareness to notice when you've been hijacked by thought. When you're ruminating about the past, when you're anxious about the future, when you're lost in some mental narrative about who you are or who you should be - can you catch that? Can you notice it happening in real-time? Because most people can't. Most people are so identified with their thoughts that they don't even realize they're thinking. They think they ARE their thoughts. But if you can develop enough consciousness to catch the mind in action, to see it pulling you away from the present moment, then you've created a gap. You've created space. And in that space, transformation becomes possible.

Then, when we become aware of that, we can then become aware of the psychological complex at play. Because it's not random, right? The mind doesn't just wander arbitrarily. There are patterns. There are underlying psychological structures - complexes, as Jung would call them - that are driving these thoughts and behaviors. Maybe you have a complex around worthiness, so you're constantly seeking validation. Maybe you have a complex around control, so you're always trying to manipulate outcomes. Maybe you have a complex around abandonment, so you're constantly anxious in relationships. These complexes are like autonomous sub-personalities operating beneath your conscious awareness, pulling your strings, determining your reactions. And until you become aware of them, until you can see them clearly, they control you. You're not free. You're just acting out the same patterns over and over again, wondering why you keep ending up in the same situations.

Then, when we understand the complex, we can work on integrating it, which then frees up that psychic energy that is blocking the flow to presence. Integration doesn't mean getting rid of the complex or suppressing it or pretending it doesn't exist. It means bringing it into consciousness, understanding it, accepting it, and ultimately transforming the energy that's bound up in it. Because these complexes consume massive amounts of psychic energy. They're like programs running in the background, constantly draining your battery. And when you integrate them, when you heal them, all that energy becomes available again. It's no longer locked up in maintaining these defensive patterns or acting out these unconscious dramas. It's freed up, and it can flow. It can be present. It can be available for life, for creativity, for connection, for love.

Unless mystics or spirituality is teaching that, they are only pulling you away from spirit because it's the ideology itself, which becomes the psychic block to flow, which then, in turn, creates the neurosis effects in return. And this is what I see everywhere, man. Spiritual teachings that are supposed to liberate people are actually just creating more mental prisons. Because they're teaching ideology. They're teaching belief systems. They're teaching dogma. And people latch onto these teachings intellectually, they memorize the concepts, they adopt the language, they perform the rituals, but there's no actual transformation happening. There's no integration. There's no flow. They've just traded one set of mental constructs for another. They've gone from being trapped in materialist ideology to being trapped in spiritual ideology, but they're still trapped. They're still in the mind. They're still trying to control. And worse, now they have spiritual concepts they can use to bypass their actual psychological work. They can spiritually bypass their trauma, their shadow, their complexes, by saying "oh, it's all an illusion" or "I'm just letting go" or "I'm transcending the ego" when really they're just avoiding the actual work of integration. And this creates neurosis. It creates a split between what they believe they should be experiencing and what they're actually experiencing. It creates internal conflict, anxiety, frustration, judgment - all the things spirituality is supposed to heal.

All we become is mind trying to out-clever itself, lol. Like, we're using spiritual concepts to try to think our way to enlightenment, which is like trying to use a hammer to fix a hammer. It doesn't work. The mind can't liberate itself through more thinking. You can't think your way out of the prison of thought. But that's what happens when spirituality becomes ideology - it just becomes another mental game, another way for the ego to feel special, another way to avoid the actual surrender that presence requires.

Because what is the point of spirituality and religion anyway if it isn't trying to solve a problem? Like, seriously, what are we doing here? If these systems aren't addressing some fundamental human issue, then what's the point? And I think we need to be really honest about this because a lot of spiritual and religious systems have lost sight of what problem they're actually trying to solve. They've become self-perpetuating institutions more concerned with maintaining their own existence than actually helping people.

When they try to save a soul they should be saying that one has abandoned themselves so much that they have allowed their desires or fears to go against another. Like, let's reframe what "saving a soul" actually means. It's not about some external salvation or getting into heaven or avoiding hell. It's about addressing the fundamental problem of self-abandonment. When you abandon yourself - when you disconnect from your authentic being, from your true nature, from your soul - you become driven by unconscious desires and fears. And when you're driven by unconscious desires and fears, you inevitably end up acting in ways that harm others. You lie, you manipulate, you betray, you exploit - not because you're evil, but because you're disconnected. You're so lost in your own ego's agenda that you can't see the humanity in others. You can't feel the interconnectedness. So "saving a soul" should really mean helping someone reconnect with their authentic self so deeply that they would never act against another, because they understand that to harm another is to harm themselves.

This matters in this context because you could easily be the other person that another has gone against. This is the key insight, right? We're not separate. What you do to another, you do to yourself. What another does to you, they do to themselves. We're all interconnected. So there is a moral conundrum when we go against another for the sake of our selves. Because in reality, there is no "self" that's separate from "other." That's the illusion. That's the ego's fundamental delusion. And when we act from that delusion, we create suffering - for others and ultimately for ourselves.

So what is religion solving? Is it salvation to educate to such a degree how and what it is to identify and know the internal spiritual reality and become so connected with it so that to never live crossed from it? Like, is the goal to help people develop such a deep, intimate, unshakeable connection with their inner spiritual reality - their soul, their true nature, their authentic being - that they would never deviate from it? That they would never abandon themselves? That they would never act from ego, from fear, from unconscious desire? Because if that's the goal, that's beautiful. That's profound. That would actually solve the problem.

Is it attempting to offer world peace? Or maybe even just personal peace? Because these are different goals, right? Though maybe they're connected. Maybe personal peace is the prerequisite for world peace. Maybe if enough individuals found genuine inner peace - not the fake peace of spiritual bypassing, but the real peace that comes from integration and presence - then world peace would naturally emerge.

Like what exactly are we solving for? And if we understand that we can then take a look at the systems offered and see, not what they claim to do, but what they actually do when practiced. This is crucial. We can't just take these systems at their word. We have to look at the actual outcomes. What kind of people do these systems produce? Are they more present or more in their heads? Are they more compassionate or more judgmental? Are they more integrated or more fragmented? Are they flowing or are they controlling? Because the proof is in the pudding, right? A system is only as good as its results.

And what we find is that they actually just produce psychics - those who actually are removed from the soul further because they got stuck in ideological theory and dogmatic mentality. And this is the tragic irony. These systems that are supposed to connect people to their souls, that are supposed to facilitate presence and flow and genuine spiritual awakening, are actually doing the opposite. They're creating people who are more disconnected, more trapped in ideology, more identified with mental constructs, more removed from direct experience. They're producing psychics instead of pneumatics. They're producing people who can talk eloquently about spirituality but who aren't actually present. Who can quote scripture but who aren't actually flowing. Who have all the right beliefs but who haven't done the actual work of integration. And that's the problem we need to solve.