Align Within
6. How to stop taking your spiritual journey too seriously, creating a balanced and joyful path ahead
Your nervous system is recalibrating, realigning, readjusting, and then you're just shooting it with another thing and shooting it with another thing. Jeez, let your body rest, man. Like, your body's gonna, your nervous system is gonna be like, all the time, in shock. So like, you might be having pain, you might be feeling this and feeling that, you're back certain, you know? - Hello, my loves, and welcome to "Align With In." A podcast to bring awareness to your most authentic self and guided in a way to help you ignite the infinite wisdom within your own being and consciousness. Posted by Lauren Fleck, a multi-passionate, playful, spiritual, authentic, freedom seeker who absolutely loves to dive deep into all things spiritual, sacred wisdom, being consciously aware, and unapologetically authentic. Just to name a few. So within each episode, we're gonna be discussing a range of topics based on new and old age spirituality. Found and shared from my own personal experiences as well as through the experiences of others around me. So we can collectively heal and continue the journey with a more playful and not so serious approach. So take what resonates and leave the rest behind, and if you wanna dive deeper, you can follow "Align With In" for more GC episodes. All links are within the show notes, so let's jump in. So, what are we gonna talk about today? - Oh, my loves are welcome back to my channel. Today's video, today's topic, today's subject is one very near and dear to me. One that I'm still trying to practice to, yeah, not be so serious, basically. I need to stop putting this in front of my face 'cause you can't see, you can see my lips. I really wanted to touch on it today because I really feel that this subject or this journey that went on, this magical, wild, crazy journey that went on, ends up making us quite serious, quite a bit too serious. So we end up getting a bit too serious about our healing journey and our life, right? And I speak from experience, okay? I'm not saying this because I just see other people do it and I think, what are you doing? I am actually speaking from the specific, the experience of myself being in that space of everything is so serious all the time. But I am actually, I don't know why this is coming. I'm a Scorpio, right? And I feel like Scorpio's can be really intense, especially when you're passionate about something and you're really deeply feeling stuff. I just feel like the intensity of a Scorpio's energy is just intense, basically. The spiritual journey does not need to be so serious, right? Any journey in life when it comes to growth, transformation, evolution, to yourself, to move from a space that maybe like you're more, you're living from a more fearful place to a place of your higher self, basically. The version of you that is scared to show up authentically to a version of you that is authentic to you, right? The spiritual journey does not need to be so serious. When we are healing, when we're growing, when we're transforming, it is very deep, it is very heavy, it is very, it's weighted, right? It's weighted, and when that happens, things can feel very serious. And by the word serious, I mean, the joy has dissolved from the experience of life. I have been there so many times where I've been just healing this and healing that and learning about this and learning about that about myself and trying to set this boundary here and trying to realize new boundaries there and I just get so like, egh, serious about life. I find that like, I'm so in the process of healing that the joy has kind of gone and that seriousness has kind of taken over this like, I need to heal though and I need to do this and I need to do that and this healing needs to happen here and this needs to happen here and I'm getting triggered here so I want to heal that there and you just find that like everything just becomes very like heavy and the joy disintegrates and then you find that you're not laughing as much because you're just so deep in a process all the time that the journey just becomes very heavy and it just, I've seen it in myself and I've seen it in others that you just end up finding that like, you're just healing this thing after that thing, after this thing, after that thing and then it's just always so like, ugh, all the time. It feels like that season of your life is just very heavy. It's the best word I feel like I can use because being someone that's been on this journey for a decade now and having seen people around me evolve into this journey, having seen people come into my life that are on this journey, having seen people that have only just started their journey, healing can become addictive and this is when we get into this cycle of healing and then this pattern of healing this and then healing that and then healing this and then healing that and the integration process of that is non-existent because you're just healing that and then healing that and then healing that and mostly what is happening is, you're recognizing something about yourself, you're realizing there's a trigger, you wanna work on that trigger, you go towards the healing process of that and you move through all the heaviness of it and when you're moving through the heaviness of it, it is very intense, you're deep in your feelings, you're deep in your emotions, taking maybe time away from people, when you are spending time with people, you are in this process of wanting to enjoy the experience but recognizing that there's a lot going on within you and inside of yourself, which is very important to have grace during that experience, of course with yourself, but this is where the integration process comes into play and allows you to fall back into a space of joy, it allows you to fall back into a space of the enjoyment of life, of living in a space where you're not constantly trying to heal yourself, which can become very heavy, very serious and also I recognize as well within the spiritual community that a lot of people tend to feel at first and there's a face, I'm not saying that everyone does this but there's definitely a phase that people tend to move through and I've done it myself, I've seen people in my life do it as well again and it's like a process that you think that again it's fitting into a box, a lot of the stuff that I talk about on my channel, a lot of the realizations I've had about life and the realizations I've had about being in the spiritual community and the reason why I started that podcast and the reason that I'm sharing my voice on this channel around these subjects is because I wanted to have a space where people can recognize that you don't have to be so serious in this journey and this journey doesn't have to be so heavy all the time and it's so important to do healing and it's so important to grow and transform as a person so that you can become your most authentic self but it's equally just as important to enjoy life, to laugh, to play, to have fun, to let yourself live in the present moment because when we're constantly healing and growing and transforming and recognizing things about ourselves, we end up not being in the present because we're so focused on the past and then we're so focused on the future that like the present is non-existent because you're just so here and there and there and there and there and there and over here and over there that you're not here in this moment, in this body, in this mind, right? So it doesn't have to be so serious all the time and this is me, again, giving permission slips because permission slips all round people, permission slips all round, it is important that you allow yourself to live life, to just go out and live a normal life because when you're in this spiritual community as well, a bit of a barrier, when you're in the spiritual community as well, there's always these conversations about healing, about our trauma and about our past and about our boundaries and about, you know, the things that trigger us and that, again, is very serious, it's very heavy, it's very, oh, this is what's been present for me and that's what's been present for me and this is what's been happening in my life recently and this is what happened to me in the past and this is what brought me to where I am today and granted, those things are very important and they are a key to your healing and a key to unlocking the truth within yourself and a key to finding your most authentic self and allowing yourself to heal and then grow through but this is why it doesn't need to be so serious all the time, it's not, I don't personally think it's healthy to constantly be healing something because you're not allowing your nervous system, a break and the break, and I'm gonna talk about this in another video about how important it is to have a spiritual pause, I call it a spiritual pause because you've got to allow yourself to pause after a deep healing and integrate what you've learned and by integration, it's anchoring that realization into your daily life and starting to respond from that newer, more grounded, more present place of understanding and realization and awareness around what it is that you've just healed. I've found that I have been very, very serious in the past, I've been through a process in the past of just healing this, healing that as I've said and life wasn't as enjoyable because I was constantly in my shadow, I was constantly transmuting something and thinking about the past and focusing on the future and what I needed to do to get there and it just didn't allow me to enjoy the moment of the now and I have found that there's people in my life that bring me so much joy and this is again another reason why I think it's really important that you don't just eliminate all the people in your life that aren't spiritual, that you still communicate with those people and still connect with the people in your life that are loving and caring and kind of people that make you laugh. I find for myself that I'm in a relationship and my man is not quote unquote part of the spiritual community. He has a completely different background and completely different upbringing. Spiritual in his own way, not to the certain things and interests that I have within my spiritual kind of experience, right? Some of the things I say, I don't think he resonates with and some of the things I say he finds fascinating, some of the things I say he finds intriguing, but it doesn't mean to say that he's like on that path at all. It's so important in your life to allow yourself to have space for joy, allow yourself to have space for presence, allow yourself to have space for laughter because one thing I've realized recently is that negativity breeds negativity and joy breeds joy. Laughter breeds laughter, when people laugh, it makes other people laugh. Sometimes people don't even have to say something, that's funny, just their laugh alone can make people laugh. I find this anyway, I find people's laughter so beautiful and if someone's got a funny laugh, like it just brings me so much joy and I just love to hear it. It literally lights up a room for me when somebody's got a funny laugh and they're laughing away. It just makes me feel so much more joy because I'm just like, what a beautiful energy to bring to the space. And in the last few weeks, and to be honest, this past like years since I've had my Kundalini awakening, I've been through spells of really deep seriousness and then like, oh, I need to come out into that joy and break free from that and recognize what it is that I need to heal and then integrate that into my life and then allow myself to just be in the moment to just enjoy life like a normal person. I hate to use the word normal, but like, we don't always have to be healing. We don't always have to be recognizing this and recognizing that. We don't always have to be having a spiritual conversation in every single conversation. Like, I love depth in conversation. I don't necessarily enjoy small talk that much, but I don't always want to talk about spirituality every time I'm having a conversation because I just don't like, I watched the documentary the other day actually. I'm gonna have to pop the name of the documentary here, it was on Netflix and it's to do with the Dalai Lama. And it was so amazing because it just made me realize that they don't take life too seriously. They just live in the moment, they just enjoy and these were two elderly men that are old enough to be my grandad and they were just cracking jokes, having a bit of fun, they were literally like two kids and it was so joyous to watch because it just made me realize that, gosh, things don't always need to be so serious, things don't always need to be so heavy and things don't always need to involve a conversation about spirituality or about our healing or about this and that. And although this channel is very much related to that, that's why I want to be the permission slip 'cause they gave me the permission slip, watching that documentary, that gave me the permission slip to just be joyous and to just learn to live in the moment and learn to live in the present because you eventually get to this point within your journey and obviously the journey goes up and down and up and down, it's just a way of life, it's a big spiral. It spirals up but it spirals down, it spirals up, it spirals down but this gave me the permission slip to just live in that present moment and yeah, you do find that you reach a level in your journey where you just want to enjoy the present moment, you just want to be present and it makes sense because you read the book, what Eckhart Tolle wrote about the power of now and when I first ever read that book, that was one of the first books, first spiritual books I ever bought and honestly when I first read it, I was like, I don't get this, I don't get this at all and it took me years to read that book and actually understand what it was trying to tell me because back then, when I first was stepping into my journey, I didn't understand what presence meant and I don't mean presence like gifts that you give someone or you give yourself, it's presence like the present moment, the now, the very, very now that you were in this now moment, right? There's a point where you reach on your journey where you just crave that because you've done so much healing. Sometimes I get to a point where I heal something and then I'm like, oh, I just don't, I just don't wanna, I don't wanna heal, I just don't wanna heal anything again for a little while, like I just wanna enjoy my life, I just wanna enjoy the moment, I just wanna be present, I just wanna be going out and doing things, spending time with friends, spending time with family, spending time with my partner, I just wanna be enjoying life. I don't wanna have to be thinking about this trigger and that trigger and this and that, because that's not joyful, it's not like it's joyful after. Gosh, the joy after, the joy after is just, whew. When you come out of a spell or a season in your life where you've been healing a lot and then you reach that joyful place, it's so peaceful and you feel so much better. It's like stepping up a level each time, like you're up leveling yourself every single time you do it. But like, please, please, please allow this video, you've obviously come across this video for a reason but allow this video to be a permission slip for you that you don't always have to be healing, you don't always have to be deepening into your process, you can be present, you can enjoy life. But I've just seen people moving through healing, healing, healing, I've seen myself do it, I've seen other people do it around me and you have to allow yourself a break, man. Like give yourself a break to enjoy life 'cause otherwise it's just gonna always be heavy and always be so serious and always be this and that. Ah, you just wanna breathe, you just wanna enjoy it. You want the process to be joyful and you wanna enjoy it. You don't want the process to be hard and heavy and painful. I did an ayahuasca ceremony literally about a month ago and that was one big thing that I learned in my ayahuasca ceremony was all about joy and how it's important that we bring joy to a space, basically what had happened. I'd been so deep in a process and so deep in my triggers and my wounding and healing that that I forgot to be joyful, I forgot to laugh and be present and play and joke and banter and I forgot all of that and I was just very much flatlined. I didn't have my character, my bubbly self was just not there and that was because I was just so in this serious place. The medicine was just like, I'll bring your joy back. Your joy is what lifts other people up. Your joy is also just as contagious as negativity. Negativity breeds negativity, joy breeds joy, right? So like instead of allowing the negativity to breathe because what happens sometimes when you're in your triggers, when you're really in your process of being triggered, you are quite sensitive, your nervous system is quite activated because you're moving through a process. So you might find that you end up getting activated by something else and then something else happens and then you realize this and then something in that area of your life happens and then someone says this to you and it's just like you're being triggered after triggered after triggered and healing after healing after healing that that you forget that you've been in it for a while and you're like, whoa, take a step back, take a moment. Let's just like recognize like, how has my energy been recently and how long has it been like that? Okay, it's been like that for a while. Okay, it hasn't been feeling very lifted and light. It's been feeling very heavy and serious that, okay, how can I bring my joy back? What can I do for myself to bring my joy back? How can I bring more presents into my life? How can I bring more play into my life? That is what starts the process. Anytime you feel like you've been moving through a trigger, anytime you've been moving through some shadow work, if you've been doing some plump medicine, if you've been doing plump medicine a lot actually, give yourself time to pause afterwards, give yourself time to integrate that and then give yourself a break. Just give yourself a break for as long as you need. This is the permission for that. We don't always need to be so serious all the time and I genuinely just think this is what happens in the spiritual community. You get so addicted to healing, you get so addicted to the process of evolution and transformation that you forget to live in the present moment and in the present moment, life can be so much more fun and playful and when you're living in the present moment, when you're very, very present, what I've learned is that you don't get as triggered. People can't manipulate you as well either because you're very present and you're very aware of yourself, you're very aware of your intuition, you're very aware of your surroundings because you're so present that you are taking everything in as it comes rather than like taking things in but thinking about something else, you're not actually there in the moment, you're thinking about this over there. So your whole energy is just like up and out here. I found this with friends, I found this with myself, I found this with clients, I found this with family members that when we are constantly in the process of like thinking things and we're up in our heads, imagine you've got a huge funnel on top of your head and it's like your thoughts are all up here in your funnel, in the funnel, in the funnel, Jesus, I can't say the word, in the funnel and then they're drifting off up into the universe and they're spreading out like you're thinking about that person and your thoughts going all the way over there and your thoughts going all the way over there. What to do is imagine that funnel and all those thoughts, imagine drawing them back into your body and back down into your being, back into your being, back into yourself and giving all that energy back to you rather than giving it up and out there and because we can't live in the past all the time, we have to do the healing, granted, this channel is all about spiritual growth and healing and becoming a most authentic self, it's a part of the journey but it doesn't need to be like that every single day, every single living, waking hour, every single year, like I know people, I've seen people, I've had conversations with people that are just constantly healing and constantly doing this and that and I'm like are you giving your body a chance to actually rest? Your nervous system is recalibrating, realigning, readjusting and then you're just shooting it with another thing and shooting it with another thing. Geez, let your body rest, man. Like your body's gonna, your nervous system is gonna be like (gasping) all the time in shock. So like you might be having pains, you might be feeling this and feeling that your back's hurting, you know? It's very important to laugh. It's very important to laugh, it's very important to play. Even if it's just at your favourite programme to watch, like if it's a film that you find funny, if we're constantly living in this heaviness, life is never gonna be enjoyed. We're constantly living in the heaviness of it. Sometimes we're surrounded by people that might be feeling heavy as well, right? And they're in a very serious space. They're in a very serious moment in their lives. It's so important to have empathy and compassion and grace for those friends of yours, those family members, your partner, whoever it is that might be moving through that. But imagine being that light for that person. Imagine just bringing that joy into their lives, that little bit of bubbliness, that little bit of play, that little bit of laughter. Imagine bringing that into their lives and even if they're in a heavy process, when they eventually move out of that, imagine the memories that they'll have with you and what light you've brought into their lives. And using this video as a permission slip for yourself to also hand those permission slips out as well. Like I said, when you've been on the journey for a while, I've gone through spells. So you might go through spells of healing and then putting that to the side and then just being present. And then you find that you haven't done a lot of healing for a while. So then you actually wanna dive more into it and take it more seriously. So then you go back into it again, you come out the other side again and then you just find that you wanna just enjoy life. I'm kind of at that point in my life now because I found like I said for like the past year, I've done quite a lot of plant medicine and I feel that the plant medicine that I've done obviously has brought a lot of transformation and awareness and healing to my life. I kind of feel like I don't really wanna do plant medicine for a while now. And I've done it a lot in my life. I just have this feeling of like, I don't feel like it's necessary in my life right now. I've done so much healing. I've done so much transforming. I've been so in that seriousness of life, of heaviness, of healing and transformation that I just need a break. I just need a break. And I'm like, I just can't be asked. CBA, CBA with it right now, CBA. Because like when I find or when I found that I'm healing something and then I'm like, okay, I feel better about that now. And then something else comes up. I'm like, oh, again? Like, have I not done enough? Why not done enough? This is a part of my journey though. If you read my chart, my astrological chart, it makes a lot of sense as to why I do these videos and why I talk about this kind of stuff because I learn a lot about healing through my transformational healing process. Would this seriously be one of my videos if there wasn't a technical difficulty in the process of creation? - Seriously. - If I was one of those people that every time I was hanging around with my friends, every time I was talking to one of my friends and I was coming to them with this heaviness, this realization and always talking about something that triggers wounding past trauma. And that was all I would talk about. That person is going to eventually feel like, gosh, this is like just really heavy all the time. And I'm saying that because I've definitely done that. I feel like to people in the past and people have also done that to me. And it gets to a point where you're just like, I just want to have a normal conversation. Sometimes when I notice people are in that kind of space, I just want to hold them, take their hands and just be like, look, it doesn't always have to be this heavy. It doesn't always have to be this constant, deep process of healing. You can give yourself a permission to give yourself a bit of a break in the process of this healing that you're going through. It's okay. It's okay to have a break. It's okay to just find the joy in life and do the things that light you up and the things that lift your spirits. It's okay. You can do that. It's cool. Don't stress. It's all good. But anyway, my loves. I really, really hope that you enjoyed this video. If there's anything specifically that you have found for your process, your healing journey, that has brought joy back into your life, then please leave it down in the comment section below. I'd love to hear. Give this video a like. Subscribe to this channel. If you vibe, subscribe if you vibe. And yeah, hit the bell button. I put videos out every week. So please stay tuned for that if you are vibing. And you just like a bit of that not so serious approach to spirituality. Thank you so much for watching. Thank you so much for being here. I really hope that you took something from this video and you can take that into a life going forward. I am sending you so much love. Have a beautiful day. Have a beautiful evening. Every time it is in the world for you. Bye guys. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music)