This article is part of the Soul Recovery hub, a single thread within the broader practice of inner work.
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I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, but modern spirituality is a dizzying plethora of “ascension” centered practices.
Angels. The Law of Attraction. Manifesting. Crystals. Dharma talk. Star seeds. Enlightenment. Non-duality. Psychics. Higher Self.
There’s nothing wrong with any of these – they can be illuminating and healing, sure. But they’re just half of the picture. Yet, somehow, they’re often portrayed to be “the whole” path.
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The saying “religion is the opiate of the masses” comes to mind when I think of this obsessive preoccupation with ascension-spirituality: a focus exclusively on the light.
It’s easy to avoid, deny, escape, and numb yourself to the pain of reality when you’re seeking to transcend; when you’re looking out there for the answers. When you’re stepping up and out of your human meat-suit with all of its inconvenient truths and your inner world with all of its chaos.
But there is so much beauty, power, richness, and awe found in the depths.
Mystics throughout the ages have found this to be true. But I think cultural historian Thomas Berry put it best when he wrote,
“What is needed is not transcendence but ‘inscendence’…”
Psychotherapist Bill Plotkin clarifies this further, writing,
“The movement toward spirit is a journey of ascent, a journey of transcendence, while the movement toward your soul is a journey of descent … a journey that deepens. Transcendence is commonly associated with the rising sun … The soul path is often associated with the setting sun … the descent to our earthy roots, into the wildness of the soil and the soul, a journey into the underworld, a voyage into darkness or shadow.”
This is where soul recovery practices such as introspection, contemplation, shadow work, inner child work, and others come into the picture. Any ascension-path is incomplete and will almost inevitably result in spiritual bypassing (and ego inflation) without them.
In fact, from what I’ve experienced and observed, ascension-paths not just ignore, but often actively reinforce loss of soul.
This disconnection from the soul is reinforced when the “ultimate answers” or “cosmic bliss” are made to be found only in a guru, enlightened teaching, extraterrestrial channel, or some other “awakened” practice, always external and disconnected from one’s Deeper Self.
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Inscendence is a path that asks us to go inwards so that we can then live an external life aligned with love, truth, peace, and freedom. Without diving deep into the wilderness of the self first to heal and befriend what we find there, we can’t hope to truly live from the truth of our own power. We’ll always be giving that power away to others.
This is one of the biggest reasons why I focus on inner work on my own path (and have created a series of journals on this topic). We need ascension, yes. But we need to descend, or inscend, first. What goes up must come down, and vice versa.
In the words of sage Lao Tzu,
“The inner is foundation of the outer.”
So before you get sucked into the rabbit hole of sparkly ascension-based spirituality, take some time to dig deep.
Get quiet, go inwards, ask questions, contemplate, reflect, connect with your body, find delight in the ordinary magic of daily life.
Spirituality isn’t meant to be a path of avoidance and escapism; it’s meant to help us be more awake and alive in the sacred wildness of existence.
What does “inscendence” mean on your spiritual path? I’d love to hear in the comments.
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Ha ha!!!I found this so funny! 😄We are called to ascend every week 🙄and moon by Angels. The Law of Attraction. Manifesting. Crystals. Dharma talk. Star seeds. Enlightenment. Non-duality. Psychics. Higher Self. Thoth. Sophia. Arcturians. etc!
I realized after a few “events” that ascension seemed to be an ongoing thing. I got weary and wary. I do not want struggle. I started to go inward….. but didn’t know there was a word for it…. “Inscendence”. Love it! 💕
My Spell Checker doesn’t know it. So, even if you two made it up (smile)… I love it!
Thank you for this email. You never fail to enlighten me Luna and Sol. 💕
Thomas Berry came up with “inscendence” 🌝 Glad you resonate with it, Sherill!
thank you, th a nk you! I always love and appreciate the light of what you share. useful, valuable, revealing. and growth inducing. as we grow so the energy grows, as does t h e healing of mother earth and the h earth of t h e universe. thank you. I am grateful!
Thank you so much for these kind words, Bebe 💜
I guess there is a lot of mis information spread around the ascension journey, and with that a lot of misunderstandings. The teachers that I have been following the last couple of years never portrayed the ascension as escaping the inconveniences of the human experience. More the opposite, as what you are describing. Letting the mental realm for what it is for a little and start feeling in the body. Meeting yourself exactly where you are in the middle of the messy chaos and the ugly pain. Having compassion for yourself right there. Because those are the parts that make you, you too. The parts that also want to be heard, seen and acknowledged. Not just the pretty rainbows, sunshine and roses. As how its feeling to me in my own words, owning all of it. Even those parts of the human experience that you would rather erase because someone or some institution decided we had to be xyz, and therefore shame, blame and guilt if your weren’t xyz. To me its part of the experience we came fore. We came to experience the wild variety of emotions. Because where we come from everything is already love and light. If everything is always love and light, at some point your not learning something new to expand anymore. I vaguely remember something around the hero’s journey that’s being talked about around the journey of Mary of Magdela. Embodying(owning) all of it. Maybe Intresting to explore, since I felt intrigued everytime I hear people talk about the hero’s journey.
Thanks for sharing this perspective, Evelien. ;)
WOW! This was short/sweet/to the point/spot on/True
INSCENDENCE
Thanks. I love it
All the answers are Inside. Plucking them out…..0ne by one when they are ripe and ready
It’s a gorgeous word, isn’t it? Thank you Donna!
I’m always in the state inscendense. My mind never shuts off because the inner voice is always yacking at me. I try to remain grounded in the voice, but sometimes it comes up with something out of left field, and I say, “Did you just say that to me?” It’s surprising the results one gets when you just stop and listen.
I’ve learned that the mind often mirrors our external world – it is just as much a wilderness as the wilds outside ourselves. And I love the “Did you just say that to me?” 😆
Hi Aletheia,
Thanks for yet again a beautiful article. Funny, I experience it just the other way around: to me, the outside world mirrors back my outprojected mind content. This way, whatever happens to me, allows me to take full responsability and helps me to dig up the energetic load of whatever I tucked away, which is the primal cause of my mind outprojecting it into the world. So, there it is: incendence, do the work, before ascending takes place on its own account–fully automatically….
BR,
Rob
Interesting perspective, Rob. Thanks for sharing. ;)
Exactly! That’s what I’m talking about! This whole feeling of scarcity that society pushes on us is the main reason people’s minds get sick. I mean, isn’t envy, jealousy, greed, comparison, inferiority or superiority complexes, anxiety, frustration, failure… all just signs of some external lack, something far away? I usually don’t criticize organized religion — that’s not my goal, since faith is a personal choice — but the idea of a distant God or a paradise only in the future can make people feel incomplete.
I like to say that every single one of us is unique, a microcosm with all the potential of the macrocosm. And one of the coolest things I see people rediscovering is simplicity. Sure, there are folks out there selling crazy formulas about being “extraordinary,” but honestly, why not just be ordinary? Do we really need to be the hero who slayed dragons, climbed the castle, and became a legend? Why not just wake up, look in the mirror at your messy hair, grumpy face, no mask, and say: ‘This is me’?
Why not be someone who doesn’t have to prove anything to anyone, who accepts mistakes and setbacks, and still deserves love and compassion from themselves? Yeah, I’ll mess up, I’ll get things right, stuff will happen or not happen — and that’s fine, it’s part of the ride. I agree with Jung when he says we never reach a final Self, it’s always a search. But we don’t always need to be searching. Sometimes, not searching is exactly what we need.
People talk a lot about today’s emptiness, that feeling something’s missing. Maybe that emptiness is just our soul asking to shrink the gap between the center and the distance. I see many wanting to go back decades or centuries, or dreaming of some utopian future, as a way to escape themselves and reality. But imagine: if the whole world vanished in an instant, comforts gone, and only ruins left with just you standing there — what would remain? Escapism always feels like the easiest way out when we face darkness and the unknown. But unlike a rock that only changes when something hits it, we can choose to Be from our inner wholeness.
“And one of the coolest things I see people rediscovering is simplicity. Sure, there are folks out there selling crazy formulas about being “extraordinary,” but honestly, why not just be ordinary? Do we really need to be the hero who slayed dragons, climbed the castle, and became a legend? Why not just wake up, look in the mirror at your messy hair, grumpy face, no mask, and say: ‘This is me’?” –– Wow wow wow, yes! I love what you write here and I think it reflects a lot of the tiredness and cynicism people feel towards the self-improvement industry and increasingly the spiritual landscape. There’s just too much shit flying at us, left right and center. To me, that embrace of our ordinary, flawed, weirdness is at the core of true healing and spirituality. It’s recovering the right to be ourselves in all our boring, plain, messy, wild, mysterious glory.
Thank you for these wise words. I definitely needed to read this :)