There’s an uncomfortable truth we all need to face sooner rather than later on our inner work journeys of healing and awakening:
We’ll not only get stuck at some point, but we’ll start to stagnate and rot.
This might sound macabre, but the reality is that if we don’t allow the freshness and vitality of new information, discoveries, and opportunities to enter our lives, we’ll become stranded.
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Often, we don’t even realize that we’ve become spiritually stagnant until something shakes us out of our stupor or slaps us across the face.
In fact, many years – sometimes even decades – might go by before you realize that you’re living in a crypt of your own making.
As someone who has recently had a rude awakening and come face to face with my own spiritual stagnation, I want to help you avoid this pitfall so that you can continue to grow, evolve, and Self-actualize.
Table of contents
What is Spiritual Stagnation?
Spiritual stagnation occurs when we get stuck in any limiting worldview, habit, or pattern of being that limits our growth and internal evolution.
Typically, this is a quiet and gradual process that we become completely oblivious to, occurring “behind the scenes,” often after a period of intensive seeking and personal study.
Am I Quietly Integrating or Slowly Shriveling? (The Difference)
One can choose to go back toward safety or forward toward growth. Growth must be chosen again and again; fear must be overcome again and again. – Abraham Maslow
Having owned up to my own spiritual stagnation recently, a thought entered my mind:
Am I quietly integrating or slowly shriveling?
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They both have a slightly similar appearance, but underneath, they’re both vastly different.
Quiet integration happens after we’ve gone through a deep experience of contacting, embracing, and liberating certain wounded parts of our psyches.
Take the specific example of reconnecting with our wounded 5-year-old self. Perhaps we’ve done some thorough reparenting inner child work, have earned the trust of this exiled part of ourselves, and have freed much of our creative potential.
This inner work is tiring and emotionally demanding (while simultaneously being beautiful, expansive, and liberating), and a period of quiet integration is needed to process what we’ve gone through – this can take some time.
But slowly shriveling – what I call spiritual stagnation – is different.
On the surface, it may appear quiet. But instead of being an experience of restfulness, reflection, and recovery, it’s a sinkhole of lethargy, laziness, and lost connection to our inner vitality.
In other words, if you’re quietly integrating, you will internally feel like a calm and clear lake. But if you’re internally shriveling, you’ll increasingly feel dry, parched, and empty like a desert.
7 Signs You’re Spiritually Stagnating
Be not afraid of growing slowly; be afraid only of standing still. – Chinese Proverb
It’s an uncomfortable and irksome thing to admit that you’ve been slowly stagnating for some time.
In my case, this has happened to me behind the scenes for at least 3-4 years after a period of about 8 years of intensive spiritual and psychological work.
Perhaps some part of me was just exhausted on some level, and that exhaustion led to rest, but that rest led to a slow creeping stagnation.
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Whatever the case, I’m thankful to have finally received the “wake-up call” to leave my routine mausoleum of comfort and begin fresh again with a “beginner’s mind.”
Having experienced spiritual stagnation directly for many years, I want to share with you some of the main “red flags” to look out for within yourself:
- You’re not allowing much new information into your mind or heart, and therefore …
- You’ve lost the passion to learn about different facets of yourself and life
- You feel trapped or stuck in one place in life, but you don’t know why
- You keep repeating the same mental, emotional, or behavioral habits to the point of boredom and frustration
- You’re disconnected from a sense of curiosity and wonder
- You feel intellectually, emotionally, or metaphysically “parched” or thirsty
- You’re stuck in the shadow of the Sage archetype, thinking that you’ve already seen and done it all (stages 9 and 10 of the journey)
Can you relate? If so, don’t be hard on yourself.
Anyone on the inner path long enough is bound to experience spiritual stagnation at least once, no matter how much they’ve learned or evolved.
How to Prevent Spiritual Stagnation: 3 “Spirit Protectors”
When I write “spirit protectors,” I’m referring to the fact that spiritual stagnation has a deadening effect on our innermost essence: our lifeforce energy.
Using any one of the following spirit protectors can help to guard and preserve your inner flame from being temporarily extinguished by the quietly oppressive force of spiritual stagnation. Here they are:
1. Keep reading and learning no matter what
Letting my reading habit slip was the first sign that I was spiritually stagnating – and it eventually led to me feeling internally parched and weakened to the point of emotional numbness.
So my advice is to read far and wide. Do this every day without fail with whatever time you can set aside. No, you don’t need to read for three hours a day – even just twenty or thirty minutes will suffice.
The point here is always to allow new information to enter your psyche because it has a naturally revivifying power.
2. Change your habits and experiment with something new 2-3 times per year
Commitment is essential, don’t get me wrong. To go deep in any modality, we need to stick with it for a long time. But don’t let that block your interest in experimenting with other ways of being.
For example, if you dedicate a lot of time to painting as a way of connecting with your wounded healer archetype, try something different, like dancing, singing, writing, or exploring somatic healing.
If you journal a lot, why not try something more energy-based or explore a modality like journaling and breathwork, journaling and color psychology, journaling and dream work, etc.?
3. Get feedback and see yourself from a different perspective
If you have a trusted friend, family member, or therapist, ask them for their honest thoughts on your spiritual practice and what they think you could try changing or including.
If that’s not accessible to you, try the following card spread used with a tarot, oracle, or other self-reflective deck:
- Where am I mentally blocked?
- Where am I emotionally blocked?
- Where am I spiritually blocked?
- How to become unblocked (choose three cards in total).
Here’s another all-purpose card spread:
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- What is my current spiritual state?
- A hidden block or resistance within me.
- My untapped potential.
- What action do I need to take to grow?
For more accountability and direct support, you can connect with me or Mateo within our Shadow & Light space. We answer direct questions in-depth as often as you need (way more than you get here in the public comments), and if you’re feeling spiritually stagnant, we can help you find more clarity and soul alignment.
***
It’s vital to be radically honest with ourselves as we journey through life and walk the spiritual path.
Are you quietly integrating or actually slowly shriveling? Are you open, curious, and welcoming of new information, or do you feel jaded, cynical, and tired?
It’s okay to take a break if you feel exhausted. That itself is a form of integration and self-care.
But if you do have the energy to keep moving yet find yourself getting stuck over and over again, it might be worth considering whether this silent thief of inner growth is operating in the back of your psyche.
What’s your experience with spiritual stagnation? Do you have any advice to share with our fellow wanderers and travelers? If so, share below!
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This has been very timely, as I can feel my self becoming stuck right now!
The timing of this is crazy and stirred the emotions! As I began reading this syncronistic piece, I could hear a native fantail in my garage tweeting away. In Maori mythology there is a story about how Maui wanted to kill the goddess of death Hine-nui-te-pō so that living things could never die. The tail of the fantail symbolise the realms toward and through the heavens. This bird has been a strong guide of mine for what has felt like the longest and most painful growth period 9+ yes. The physical and emotional components have been so intense, confusing and exhausting I’ve wondered how or what to do to ignite a once fearless approach to living a soul lead life. It also continues to be challenging doing this as a mother of two amazing tween boys. So yes, very stuck after doing alot of somatic and inner work, reminding myself to keep learning, go within and practice discernment. I’ve just returned from Fiji that has brought a little oxygen to the embers and actually had some time to reflect. Oddly enough the name of a book I came up with while away was ‘The death of things’.
Lonerwolf has been part of my healing and helped me so so much. With love and gratitude.
Hi, I have sent today a quite plenty comment that I can’t find now and I am worried if it got lost (+ a copy of it). Perhaps it’s a bug in the website.
I have spent some time and effort reflecting on it, so I would like it to be read by you and other lone wolves :)
Stagnation… This is indeed something that I often fall into. It’s the unpleasurable feeling when you think that you are doing enough work, yet everything, or most stuff just feels like pouring water into sand. Gone in vain. Perhaps also linked to feeling like a machine that keeps executing sefl-indulgent actions, although knowing that the end path is destruction.
This may be a repeated comment because my previous might have been lost somehow.
I would like to share that I am glad that I have recently got an aha-moment, a reviving and rejuvenating experience, a reflection about the nature of my faith, Islam, in which I recited musically and whole heartedly a verse of the Quran that I feel very connected to:
“Allah (God) is the Light of the heavens and the earth. The parable of His Light is as (if there were) a niche and within it a lamp, the lamp is in glass, the glass as it were a brilliant star, lit from a blessed tree, an olive, neither of the east (i.e. neither it gets sun-rays only in the morning) nor of the west (i.e. nor it gets sun-rays only in the afternoon, but it is exposed to the sun all day long), whose oil would almost glow forth (of itself), though no fire touched it. Light upon Light! God guides to His Light whom He wills. And God sets forth parables for mankind, and God is All-Knower of everything.” (Surat 35)
I knew that the light referred to here is probably linked to one of the greatest experiences human being can witness during this lower life, an experience of divine guidance, when you just feel like you are doing the right things eventhough imperfectly, the inner peace, the love one can feel towards creations for the sake of God, a deep compassion towards all that is suffering, a clarity in the way we discern between the right and the wrong, and a deep curiosity and longing to know more about the wonders of this creation. I got reminded in crucial times, because these week is very special for Muslims, it is the last ten days of holy month in which, as stated in the Quran, one unknown night witnesses the coming of Angels, and in which the good deeds are as good as the ones done by someone for almost his lifetime… I got revived, there is so much more to learn. I got reminded.
They say that Sufism is the spiritual branch of Islam, I learnt from my epxerience that Islam in itself is a spiritual gift on a golden plate, yet, to be objective, many do neglect this spirituality, and focus instead on divine legislations and rules. They are divine, yes, but only divine if deeply experienced, otherwise, suffocating. For example, humble dressing is divinely important in this religion, but if it is stressed out as a social obligation (to avoid shame), then I don’t see much value in it.
Stagnation happens to me when I forget about the awesomeness of this existence, the awesomeness of everything in it, of its joys, sorrows, boredom, dread, pleasure, sadness, even trauma… This atitude makes me keen to learn and observe more, not only about my religion, but about everything that God decided it to be, life perspectives, people’s experiences, and so on… I need to always keep that calm and powerful awe deep within my consciousness, it’s like a flame, the antidote of stagnation.
It is helpful to be reminded that during stagnation, you are still on a sacred journey. Have the courage to stay authentic against the forces that are trying to mold you otherwise. Be heart centered and open to a greater awareness of the truth. Many times the greatest difficulties bring the greatest rewards. You have brave soul, be blessed!
The Year I Get Out of My Own Way.
(That’s the goal, and so far my decisions are keeping on the path.)
Awesome name, Eileen! Keep it up 💜
Thanks for sharing your reflections, Richard :)
Much of these 7 things resonated with me. I have been in a process of self discovery and became stuck at some point. I have been focusing on being aware of my mood and thoughts more consciously and have started to identify places where I have gaps in my Self.
I feel validated by your article because it rings true for how I have been feeling more often. Thank you!!
I’m so glad this resonates with you, Shannon!
I think this is a repeated comment — but love the title!
Sometimes there is a finishing of a phase or path. Time is needed to notice that. Put the skills and knowing into the kitbag and begin a whole new adventure – including getting through the new Learning Stupids.
As you say allowing the gifts from painting to become a different expression (e.g. music) – so both skills grow.
Remembering to stop breathing between the breaths. Allow awareness to occur. No need for haste.
Thanks Andrea. No need for haste, no need for excessive passivity. Balance between both polarities is crucial. With love <3