“Awakened Wellness”, where self-discovery meets purposeful, lasting change.

The Misguided Beliefs of Spirituality: Separating Truth from Illusion

• Marie knoetig • Season 2 • Episode 16

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Is your spiritual path leading you to growth or keeping you stuck in illusion? In this episode of Awakened Wellness, I explore the common misguided beliefs in spirituality that can actually hinder self-awareness and healing.

💡 What We’ll Dive Into:
✨ The difference between true spirituality and spiritual bypassing
✨ Why "love and light" isn’t always the answer
✨ The danger of ignoring emotions in the name of positivity
✨ How personal responsibility is the missing piece in many spiritual teachings
✨ Ways to reclaim your own inner wisdom instead of following trends

Too often, spirituality is used as an escape rather than a tool for deep, personal transformation. Let’s explore how to break free from limiting beliefs and embrace a more authentic, grounded spiritual path.

🎧 Listen now and discover how to navigate spirituality in a way that empowers rather than misleads!


đź”” Subscribe to Awakened Wellness for more real, raw conversations on healing, self-awareness, and personal growth.




For More Information join our community by visiting www.awakenedwellness.life or marieknoetig.com

Speaker 1:

Good afternoon and welcome to Awakened Wellness. Marie and myself, jocelyn, are glad that you could join us here today, and we have two great shows. As usual, we do one and then the other, so the first one is Spirituality Gone Wrong. But before we dive into that, we want to know what feedback have you been getting since the last show?

Speaker 2:

All right. So I have one person. She's starting to become more intuitive, listening to herself, and we had a long talk about how she tries to save everybody in her life and that she needs to start saving herself. And all of a sudden she felt like in all her situations, she was viewing herself from afar and watching how she did that all the time. And that's the true sign that you are healing, because you're becoming the observer of yourself, so you can start to see your actions and start to create change. Oh, interesting.

Speaker 1:

So that's where she is now.

Speaker 2:

Now she's been catching herself. She's had her whole family down and she had to come to Jesus with her family. That this is how it is and this is the changes I need to make for myself and you're all going to have to start to do a little bit more for yourself. And they're all very supportive. Some families are not Right, but hers has been very supportive and she's really learning how much she just gives too much all the time and that she doesn't have to do that.

Speaker 1:

I like it. Yeah, it was a positive family and, like I said, becoming the observer of yourself is huge.

Speaker 2:

It's almost like you can see yourself talking and you can see yourself doing these things, because then you're in control and you can change it.

Speaker 1:

Right, you make the it's when you live in reactionary behavior.

Speaker 2:

You can't stop it. Oh, I like it. So that was big. So, that's that stepping back, literally, that they talk about but nobody actually does. You're becoming more intuitive and your body within is coming forward and it's showing you what you need to see for yourself. And you start watching yourself do things and you're like, oh, why am I doing that?

Speaker 1:

That was dumb. What did I do that for? Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, the next woman has been complaining and complaining about the same thing with her job over and over and over again and keeps saying she does, she wants another one, wants another one. And then one night she kept asking to see what you need, she needed to see, and something happened to the point where she just couldn't go back.

Speaker 1:

She just couldn't.

Speaker 2:

There was no turning back. They tried to get her back. She went back temporarily but all of a sudden, because she knows now that that's not the right place for her. Other opportunities have showed up where the whole time nothing would show up, but she changed her energy.

Speaker 1:

So now the energy around her is changing Exactly up, but she changed her energy, so now the energy around her is changing Exactly. I like the fact that they had her come back and that just reinforced her decision, because you'll go back and try, because it's the easier thing to do. But in the end it either. It's okay, but nine times out of 10, it reveals itself that that was not right and you should have listened to what was going on. But you have to go through it yourself to find out Right. Wow, good for her.

Speaker 2:

I have an older client who's over 90 and she's one of my favorite people in the world and she struggles sometimes because she's very independent living. She still drives but she feels I don't know some days that her days are long and she doesn't have a lot going on and her body kind of stays the same all the time. She doesn't get worse, she doesn't get better. And recently her daughter asked her to be part of a big event that's happening at her work and that if her and her friend would do something for it. And they have eight months to accomplish the task and it's requiring a lot of her time and a lot of focus to do these fabric works that she's got to do and everything else.

Speaker 2:

So she comes in and she's just beaming from ear to ear and she has purpose and she is just so excited and she talked my ear off and she found herself not wanting to drive places anymore. So she said I'm got it, I got to go get my fabric, I got to go this. So she would map out, go in the low traffic hours, make sure she knew where she was going and she would go get them. She started going out to places she hadn't gone in a long time. She'd go into her friend's house and that day, when she got on the table, her body actually moved a step forward where it hadn't changed in a long time.

Speaker 1:

Really. So she left that plateau and moved Even Really.

Speaker 2:

So she left that plateau and moved. Even in their 90s your body can do some healing and opening and changing, because she changed Right and she had purpose all of a sudden where she hadn't had purpose in so long. Because when you start getting up in the years your friends are gone. You know, your circles get smaller and, yeah, good for her so for me, the best part is at any age you can get better.

Speaker 1:

Well, that's the whole problem. Everybody just comes to what they think is the end of a road, and it doesn't matter your age. Just as the lady with the job Well, that's it, that's all I've got. You know, that's the job that I have and she talked herself into not moving into, not looking for something else or taking a chance. And just as this lady, this opportunity presented itself out of nowhere and she could have said no, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm happy the way I am, but she didn't. And so her positive outcome and reflection is reflecting back at her Nice.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, good for her. Everything's energy, everything's energy. All right, spirituality gone wrong.

Speaker 1:

Okay, that sounds like that could be a horror movie.

Speaker 2:

This came about because of some of the things that have been happening in my life and the people I've been getting as clients coming in and they're doing a lot of spiritual practices, hoping to yield one thing, but they should be yielding something else out of it, okay, so one woman came in recently and she's been doing all types of spiritual work and she's actually one of the teachers for one of the leading energy healing schools in the in the world, okay, and she's traveled around and everything else. And so she was with a friend who had been diagnosed with kidney failure and they told her that if she does this, this and this, she'd probably get about five more years, and so on and so forth. And she took her friend out to lunch and she was with her friend and she looked at her friend and she knew it wasn't going to be long and she just didn't want to know that and she just was so overwhelmed by that. And then it played out within a two week period and she came to see me and she was so shook up and so overwhelmed and why did she have to know that?

Speaker 2:

It was too hard for her to know that. And I just looked at her and I said isn't that what you've been doing all this time? Right? And then, the more I pick that apart and the people I knew, I realized how much we've gone wrong. We've techniqued ourselves to death. We are looking for this higher vision, but we don't want to know what real life is. We want it to be something else. And what a gift to know that about your friend and to be able to sit by them when everyone else is saying something different.

Speaker 1:

Right, if you this, if you that, just do this, just do that.

Speaker 2:

So today we're going to go through a little bit of that and a bunch of stories of how that has played out for people that I know and the struggle they have of knowing reality versus the created reality we've made spirituality to be.

Speaker 1:

Okay, that's a lot to wrap my head around. So, finding different ways to heal themselves. When you, when you talk about spirituality they're looking for, we're going to start with what is spirituality right?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, right. So most people are looking for that higher power, and that that higher power has has this essence. It's going to give them and make them either more open or enlighten them or make them closer to God, or whatever it is. But what is it really right? What is it? It's an opening to just see what's really there, because you want to get closer to the source or God, whatever you call it. So it's an opening, but that opening means you're going to see things for what they are, not what you want to get closer to the source or God, whatever you call it. So it's an opening, but that opening means you're going to see things for what they are, not what you want them to be Right, so it takes away.

Speaker 1:

So I'm hearing the word like manipulation, that you, that you're taking away the curtain, which is, you know, oh, take away the curtain and you get to see the real thing. But a lot of people just peek, so that way they're manifesting or trying to sugarcoat what they're going to look at.

Speaker 2:

Right. So when we started this today, I said to you, you showed me this new book, yep. And I said, well, I'm actually going to use that to show you an example of what I'm talking about. So, you came in and you told me this book has all this information of all the energy centers and you can diagnose and put your hands on those spots. Then what do you do? You can read that book to death and lay your hands forever. Right, what's?

Speaker 1:

that mean Nothing unless you get feedback from the person, or they start to change or they learn it themselves. But even if you learn it, if you do it, what are you looking for? What am I looking for for me when I do it, looking to feel those pulses and feel the parts of the body? It's not really a healing thing for me. It's more of an opening.

Speaker 2:

Is how I'm understanding this right and the dangers of something like this is you're going to self-diagnose yourself, right, and then you're going to decide it's your knee. Then you're going to go after your knee and try these. But it could be it could be something completely different, right, then? What do you do with it?

Speaker 1:

well, you go to the. We all go to the next thing, don't we? And then the next thing.

Speaker 2:

This is just so true spirituality is sitting and letting the energy come going within and just letting it funnel through you, and whatever happens is going to happen.

Speaker 1:

Because you can self-diagnose and self-heal from within.

Speaker 2:

You can technique yourself to death, literally to death.

Speaker 1:

Oh my goodness. So throw away the tarot cards.

Speaker 2:

Well, it was funny because I have this fascination with mediums, because I connect with the other side as well, but they do it very differently than I do. So I've been reading some different books and listening to them and then I get fascinated by one of them and then I'll look them up, and in the last six months I've looked up three or four of them that I've been fascinated by their work, and all of them have died young.

Speaker 1:

Interesting, so that sparked my curiosity.

Speaker 2:

Then I started watching that Tyler Henry. And then there's these couple other ones, and they have to limit themselves to one reading a week because they get so violently ill.

Speaker 1:

Because they're taking on the illness of somebody else or just driving themselves nuts.

Speaker 2:

And when you read about them, a lot of them, when they become at a higher level, they train out of this place in Europe and then they all have their own form of training. But a lot of them bring the energy into them and then they talk to the spirit or whatever. It is Okay, but that's never a good idea. You know, everything's just right there.

Speaker 1:

Doesn't that make it too personal and you're taking on something that's not yours?

Speaker 2:

I did an open medium night one time because I was so darn curious because of how I see healing and how the body's always moving forward, and they were teaching you how to become a medium. And this was a woman who's worked with some of the world-class mediums and she was talking about how most mediums have a way that they get so depleted after their readings that they either drink a bunch of caffeine, they do a bunch of salt or a bunch of sugar, and it helps push things out. And I'm just sitting there in awe that that's a thing, right, because what it does is it shocks the system. So then they don't know what just happened to them, correct, and then they just go into another state of being and then their body readapts.

Speaker 2:

Yeah yeah, so we can technique ourselves to death versus these people learning from at a young age and following those, they start to learn their skills and then they go learn from someone else because they don't think their skill sets are good enough, and then they stop listening to themselves, because if they truly listen to themselves, they probably wouldn't do half of the things that they're doing, the way they're doing, and they wouldn't question either, right.

Speaker 2:

But the techniques and the credentials in the world that we live in give us power but they actually don't. They confuse us. You know, I'm working with some people right now that are doing some of the higher level Buddhist trainings and they're losing themselves because they're doing the techniques to death but they're not listening to what they should be doing alongside it. Okay, Again, we're techniquing ourselves to death. You know, I've seen people with organized religions that are some of the most hateful people and judgmental people because, again, they're techniquing themselves to death. They're listening to everything this way and they're taking it so literal versus sitting within themselves. How does it feel, what should be happening? And those kinds of things.

Speaker 2:

What do, I think, right. So true spirituality is just really understanding who you are, your place and what value you have in a room, and to see things as they are, not how you want them to be, and to also see that everybody is coming from a different place, that there is no one truth in the room, correct?

Speaker 1:

That everybody has their own truth Right.

Speaker 2:

Right.

Speaker 1:

And there isn't one that's wrong. But isn't sitting in a room and assessing is also kind of judgmental as well.

Speaker 2:

But they don't know that they're being it because their technique tells them they're supposed to judge that.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so judging whether somebody's technique is right or wrong Versus seeing someone?

Speaker 2:

else's pain and why they think that way, or their journey and why they think that way. And I'm just going to go through a few stories of how being present is very different than using a technique Okay, and how people respond to life and not wanting to know what's real because they have their own beliefs that jade it. And one of them is a more personal story to me when my dad was in the hospital passing. It was through COVID and there's been a lot of turmoil in my family and there was a lot of dialogue between my siblings and I didn't have a lot of value in the dialogue, but I knew when he was getting close to passing and I would try to interject with their thoughts and their beliefs. And they were trying to bring him back home, to get him to go to California so he could fight his cancer and his chemo and everything else where he didn't have that in him. It just wasn't going to happen.

Speaker 2:

And the day before he was going to die I put it out to them and I said, look, you need to get him home to hospice, he needs to be with my mom and he needs to die with family around him. He doesn't have much time and I got berated by you don't understand. This is how it works. He would this and Jesus said this, and it went on and on and on and the next morning he passed and my heart sunk, because knowing things doesn't give you the golden star and you're the powerhouse in the room, right. It just helps you to do what you need to do for you, because people are always going to have their story and their agenda around it, and if you can help them, that's a much better scenario. And, like this woman that I just talked about with her friend, what would have been nice is she could sit with her friend and just be there with her, but she was so afraid that she was right.

Speaker 1:

That she couldn't do that Right.

Speaker 2:

She was so afraid she was right. Wow, but it's not about being right. She couldn't do that Right. She was so afraid she was right, wow.

Speaker 1:

But it's not about being right, it's just about knowing. And yet they want to know, yet we want to know.

Speaker 2:

We only want to know what we want to know, and we all want it politically correct in a package that's either going to heal us or save us or make someone else. You know, I mean, we don't want the truth.

Speaker 1:

Right, or you don't have to make a decision based on it, right, right.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, the upside with my dad's passing is I did have a sibling that followed my lead and she was just so proud of herself because she was able to connect with him and know that his time was limited and she needed to do what she did what she needed to do.

Speaker 1:

What she needed to do Right.

Speaker 2:

And that's all you want for people? Yeah, Wow. And in a previous show we had talked about this woman who knew her husband was going to have appendicitis before he had it.

Speaker 1:

Yes.

Speaker 2:

Yes, again, because he was a nervous wreck and he had had stomach pains before similar to that. He followed her lead because she knew and she was a mess after she knew and it took me a couple of days to work through it with her because she didn't want to know that I go. Of course you wanted to know that. Yeah, you want to be prepared for it.

Speaker 2:

Because she's asking to see what she needed to see. But we don't want to know those things. That's my point we don't want to know those things, but we do want to know those things. So we have to learn that being spiritual and being connected to the source means that we're going to see things for what they are, not what we want them to be, and all the veils are going to come off, all of them. That's the hard part.

Speaker 2:

But once all the veils are off and all your beliefs are gone and you're only with what's happening between us. It's a whole different world. It's kind of beautiful because you can just be now.

Speaker 1:

Well, there's no artificiality, there's no sort of maneuvering along the path. I mean you're going to for a while, but that's what we're all so busy doing, right.

Speaker 2:

I had another woman that her husband was diagnosed and they kept giving him five to seven years and if he did this and if he did that and she knew, and she would come in week after week and we would talk and she goes, he just doesn't look good. I know they're saying that, but he doesn't look good and she just enjoyed him because she knew. She knew, but her kids wouldn't go there with her and it was really rough. And then when he did start to pass, she did some things where she just sat in the room and she just she wasn't upset that he was where he was at, because she'd already made peace with it and she just wanted to be there with him. She just wanted to be there. And the next thing, you know, the kids started following her lead and then they all found peace and it was beautiful. Yep, they all gave up the fight.

Speaker 1:

At that point, and you can't always do that if you're in a hospital. You can't always do that if you're in a place where you're not able to Well, sometimes that has to be.

Speaker 2:

You should be able to do it, no matter where you are, because, again, we're dealing with reality, right? We're not dealing with what we want it to be. Yeah, I want to die at home, but if that's not possible, that's okay too. Everything's okay, right? You just got to be in what's happening and not getting mad that it's not the way you want it, because that stops you from seeing what's happening.

Speaker 1:

Okay.

Speaker 2:

All right, Everybody's got a plan, Everybody's got a plan. It's like I had one woman that she wanted to have the kid home and the birth at home, and it got to the point where she wanted to have the birth at home so much her and the midwife were changing the dates Because the state she lived in if you were a week late you couldn't do it at home anymore.

Speaker 1:

Oh, wow.

Speaker 2:

Oh yeah, I had another one signing a waiver with the doctor because she was two weeks late and she wouldn't put toes in it because things weren't working the way she wanted. She was going to have that baby. Naturally, because of the stuff she read, we have techniqued ourselves to death.

Speaker 1:

And we've put the power in other people's hands.

Speaker 2:

Well, it's because we want it. We don't want reality. But the reality is women have died in childbirth for thousands of years. It's not new. We have a bunch of new techniques that stop that from happening. Yeah, yeah, so we should probably embrace those, yeah.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, boy, when you put the stories to it it really makes you think that you know, just don't go headlong into these decisions without actually stepping back like that lady did in the original story.

Speaker 2:

You have to ask yourself are you seeing it clearly, or are you seeing what you want it to be? That's the key.

Speaker 1:

Or are you trying to manipulate it to the way that you want it? So then everybody does.

Speaker 2:

Everybody does, and that's what's happening with the spirituality path. Everybody's manipulating. People are doing drugs to try to get higher. What are they trying to accomplish when they get higher? The more you come out of your energy and the more you try to become awakened, the more you lose yourself. In India, if people had that happen, they became despondent. Nobody could wake them. They'd be sitting there meditating and people would have to feed them and bathe them and everything else. Is that what you're looking for?

Speaker 1:

I wouldn't think so, but that's what happens.

Speaker 2:

The more awakened you become, the more you lose yourself here. So everything here is created. You go to a place where there's no more creation of you and you just are. Well, you don't know how to put your clothes on anymore, you don't know how to feed yourself anymore. So why are you looking for that? What you're looking for in meditation is a way to quiet the chatter so you can see what you've created and realize there's something else sitting in front of you. That's all we're looking for. It's just to be present in what's here. Nothing else, not what we thought happened, not how we thought that person did that, not that. I believe this is the way it should be what's happening here right now, and give it power oh boy it's hard to take a step back.

Speaker 1:

It's hard to let go and not control.

Speaker 2:

it's hard to let go and not control it's hard to let go and not control, but the power comes from being able to let go and not control and just to see that we're all the same. We all have a different story.

Speaker 1:

But still all walk, all walking a path.

Speaker 2:

You know, I asked to see what I need to see every day and recently my brother and I my first born brother have been at odds our entire lives and there's been some violence involved and everything else, and when he passed less than a year ago, nothing was done. There was just a whole bunch of stuff behind it. Well, recently I'm in charge of his estate and I'm in charge of burying him and I'm actually going to do a eulogy for him. Oh, wow, okay. So if you would have asked me at any point in my life that I could go there, I would say no, but at this point in my life, I see him for every ounce of who he is and all the suffering he had and what made him him and how he died suffering. And there's no more pain for me, but I'm watching my siblings and the pain that they have and the stories that they have were probably some of the stories I had at one point just to make myself feel better.

Speaker 1:

To justify and all those other things.

Speaker 2:

Yeah because you don't understand, so you have to make it up. But when you can actually see that he's no different than I. He just reacted to life differently and he chose different paths and his paths didn't serve him very well. It's a whole different way to look at a human being, but we seem to think we have the right answer in everything. And it's just really sad because the reason why one person might think one thing about religion or politics has to do with how they came through life. And who are you to say they're wrong? Because the way you came through life didn't show them what they saw. But yet we feel we have a superiority to everybody in anything. True spirituality shows you that you're both wrong and you're both right.

Speaker 1:

And you don't have to meet in the middle all the time. You just have to be accepting of where you are.

Speaker 2:

You just have to understand where each person's coming from and then it will resolve itself, because if you can see why they think that they think and why you think the way you think, there will be a solution in the middle. But as long as you're mad at them and you believe you're right, no other solution can come forward. Like that woman with the job, it just can't Right Because there's no way it fits in the puzzle Until she's ready to allow that Right To say that piece doesn't fit.

Speaker 1:

I think that belongs to another puzzle, right? Wow, holy cow, that's a really heavy thing.

Speaker 2:

Well, it's been showing up a lot, yeah, and, like I said, to see this woman's pain about knowing the most beautiful thing she could have known for her friend, because she's the only support system the friend had through it when the friend knew, you always know.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and so to pretend all along the way when it could have been simpler and quieter. And I just felt sad that she felt she did something wrong by knowing it.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, with all the techniques and training she learned in her entire life, it didn't prepare her for that. So what are we teaching people?

Speaker 1:

To escape, to pretend that you know something and pretend that you can make it right, or pretend that you can.

Speaker 2:

We're not here to save anybody Right. They're here to save themselves and all we can see is why they can't. And have compassion for that and maybe throw them a few tools along the way and try to help them. I like that.

Speaker 1:

Wow, yeah, wow, all right. So you'll probably have to listen to this show a couple of times. I'm going to go back and listen to it because that's a lot of information and that's a lot of how to's and how not to's.

Speaker 2:

The only answer is just to be present.

Speaker 1:

Ask to see what you need to say see and let the information come through you.

Speaker 2:

And if you do it once or twice, it's going to start in small areas of your life and then it'll keep branching bigger and bigger. And whenever things slow down in front of you, take notice, because that's usually something you're showing yourself, whether it's your kid. All of a sudden, you just you know you're reacting. You're running around and all of a sudden you're just looking at the kid and you see their eyes for the first time, or you see their smile for the first time. Pay attention to what they're doing, because you were missing something Right and you're showing yourself that you need to pay more attention. Could be your spouse, could be anybody, could be your coworker, or all of a sudden, you're just looking at them different. Why? Because you're seeing more than what you saw yesterday and all of a sudden, the reason why you thought they were being a jerk was because of something that you couldn't even.

Speaker 1:

That was because of something that you couldn't even, that you couldn't see, that you couldn't even pay attention to because you were too busy running around. And mad that they were being a jerk Yep and right mad that they're being a jerk. All right, so tell everybody. Awakendwellnesslife.

Speaker 2:

Yep, life, life, life and awaken. I'm not going to give you the email because it's slipped off my tongue right now.

Speaker 1:

That's okay. So, awakenedwellnesslife, go to the website, check on the tabs. It's growing daily, yep and again, sit quietly and see what you need to see and we'll see you next time. Thanks for joining us.

Speaker 2:

Thank you.