The Three Spiritual Tests You Must Past Right Before You Uplevel

Right before things finally open, life can feel like it is doing the exact opposite of what you asked for. That is not “bad luck” or the universe punishing you, it can be your psyche applying pressure to expose what still needs to be integrated so you can actually hold the upgrade you say you want.

We explore three major tests that often arrive before a breakthrough on the spiritual awakening and individuation path, inspired by Jungian psychology and grounded in embodiment. We start with shadow confrontation and the golden shadow, how triggers, projections, envy, and even the inability to receive compliments can reveal the parts of you that were exiled for safety. From there we move into the tension of opposites, where you cannot stay identified with only one pole like strong or good or spiritual, and you learn to sustain the tension long enough for something new and more whole to emerge.

Then we get honest about synchronicity. Real meaningful coincidence tends to be weighted and humbling, and it asks something of you. False synchronicity inflates the ego and feeds specialness, confirmation bias, and spiritual narcissism. I share practical tools that bring it all into daily life: a shadow inventory practice, somatic integration in the body, active imagination, and simple dreamwork that builds a real relationship with the unconscious over time.

If you are ready for depth, not fluff, press play, share this with a friend on the path, and leave a review so more people can find Body Wisdom Rising.

Alyssa's IG: @wildfemininerise

Work With Alyssa:

Nervous System Mastery Masterclass May 20th With Dr. Jesse Hanson

The Calling —A 9 Month Initiation Into Your Soul's Assignment

In Service— 1:1 Soul-Led Leadership Mentorship

The Awaken Experience— 7 Day Retreat In Costa Rica with Alyssa & Dr. Jesse

Free Meditation —Positive Timeline Activation

Watch Alyssa's episode on Lead With Heart

Transcript

Welcome To Body Wisdom Rising

SPEAKER_00 0:16

Welcome to Body Wisdom Rising. I'm your host, Alyssa. We're living at a profound turning point in humanity, a collective choice point where old systems are dissolving, and many of us are being called to wake up, heal, and step into deeper alignment with who we truly are. On this podcast, we explore consciousness, healing, ancestral wisdom, and the initiations that shape our lives. We also explore how to navigate times of great change and what it means when healing begins to open the door to deeper questions. Who am I really? Why am I here? And how am I being called to serve in this moment of history? Here we talk about the collective themes unfolding in our world and how each of us can learn to meet them with greater awareness, embodiment, and courage. Because real transformation doesn't just happen in the mind, it happens through the body. If you're on a path of awakening, healing, remembering, and perhaps stepping into service, you're in the right place. This is Body Wisdom Rising.

The Three Tests Before Upgrade

Workshops Retreats And Mentorship

You Are Not Being Punished

Shadow Confrontation And Golden Shadow

The Pedestal Fall And Financial Crash

Sustaining The Tension Of Opposites

How Culture Swings Between Extremes

Synchronicity Or Spiritual Inflation

Daily Shadow Inventory That Works

Finding Your Collapsed Polarity

Receiving Signs And Dreamwork Practice

The Raccoon Dream And The Trickster

Release Schedule And Closing

SPEAKER_01 1:53

Spent a lot of time just contemplating and reflecting what I wanted to include into this episode. I spent a lot of time just out in nature walking like hours and just going inward. Yeah, I'm gonna go deep in this episode and in all future episodes, really into the depth work that is so needed on this path of awakening, on this path of individuation. And I fully realize that these episodes won't be for everyone. Not everyone is on this path, right? And um, you know, some people just tune into these episodes because they want the energy updates and they want to know what's going on collectively, because, you know, and get addicted to needing a sense of uh certainty, something to cling to. And um while I'm gonna continue to put out those episodes, uh, these ones, you know, where we actually go into the deeper work are the most important. So for those of you who stick around and actually listen to these episodes, you are my people. You are on this path. And yeah, you're the ones that I put these episodes out for because, like I have shared, I wish I had more of a map for what I was navigating and what I was going through when I was going through my own spiritual awakening and how to move through it. You know, there's so many, um, I like to say, call them dangling carrots that can distract us and pull us off center and, you know, pull us off of this path. And um, having, you know, someone who's been through it, who can share their experiences, share what they've learned can be really helpful. You know, and I did end up finding those people on my path initially. You know, I felt so alone, I felt so isolated, didn't really have language for what I was going through. And I've been on this path now for almost a decade, you know, and I came across someone who's a teacher, a mentor to me, who she at that time had been on this path for eight years. And um, she learned from mentors and teachers who had been on this path, you know, a lot longer than her as well. And yeah, it's definitely something that we need, you know. There aren't a whole lot of containers and a lot that you can find out there of just actual sincere that isn't full of spiritual bypassing or spiritual fluff. So, this episode, we're gonna go deep into uh three ways that we are tested before we go through a major breakthrough or up level on our spiritual awakening path. So on the awakening path, we reach different landmarks on our journey, different levels. We confront different aspects of our shadow at each stage. We heal and evolve in a spiral, not a straight line. So each level asks you to meet a deeper layer of yourself. And often we get tested the most right before we up level. There is a point of maximum pressure right before breakthrough. And right before we receive the upgrade and reach that next level on our journey, old patterns start to surface, and often situations and circumstances arise that completely contradict the reality that we're wanting to call in. Our faith and our trust is tested the most right before the breakthrough. So the ones devoted to the path of awakening and individuation actually get tested more, not less. Individuation is the path of becoming whole. And you cannot become whole by identifying only with your light. Wholeness requires integrating everything, including the parts of yourself that horrify you. And this is why every great spiritual story includes a descent into hell. It's one of the most universal patterns in mythology. Joseph Campbell named it the belly of the whale or the descent into the underworld, and it appears in nearly every initiatory tradition. The hero cannot become who they're meant to be without going down first. Every descent yields a gift, and the gift is always something that could not have been received any other way. So the hero always retrieves something for themselves and they bring something back for the collective. The descent is never just personal, it's always in service of something larger. This is why the wounded healer archetype exists. You can only guide others through what you've walked through. The whole world needs people who have gone down and come back. They become the elders, the guides, the healers, the wisdom keepers. And the path of individuation is the path of the soul. Individuation is the process of becoming who you actually are, not who you were conditioned to be. And the soul has its own blueprint, its own evolutionary arc, its own unique unfolding that is not the same as the ego's wish list. Most people aren't manifesting from their soul. They're manifesting from conditioning, from the wound, from unmet needs, and from family conditioning, from the culture's definition of success. The descent often strips the ego desires because those desires are based on false premise. So the universe and service of your soul dismantles the structures built on false premise. And what gets revealed underneath is the soul's blueprint. The ego's desires have to be loosened so the soul's desires can be heard. And once they are heard, it feels like a homecoming, a deep remembering, completely undeniable. And yes, the soul does have desires. The soul wants to express, the soul wants love, it wants to create, it wants to be in service, but it doesn't feel like grasping. It does not, you know, it's not coming from a place of lack or scarcity. It feels like a calling. Like I would do this even if no one paid me, if I didn't receive any validation, if I didn't receive any recognition for it. And um and coming from this place is often actually where abundance actually arrives. So from this place, the life we are meant to be living can come in. So today we're gonna talk about the three levels of testing that you go through and practical tools on how to pass these tests and accelerate the process so you can graduate to that next level of your soul's evolution. And before we get into that, I just want to remind you all that I'm hosting a nervous system mastery workshop with Dr. Jesse Hansen on May 20th. And it is all about how to navigate rapid change and expand your nervous system's capacity to hold more love, more success, abundance, and leadership. It is a three-hour workshop, which will be recorded, so you will receive the full recording. I will kick off the first 30 minutes and then Dr. Jesse will take us through a full one-hour workshop, then we'll do a 30-minute QA, and then I'll take you through a full one-hour guided somatic journey. Dr. Jesse is one of the best in the industry. I've had a chance to work with him over the past two years, and his immersive experiences are truly what helped catalyze my growth in my business over the past two years. So the workshop will also include three guided meditations, an integration workbook, which will be sent out, and$200 off of my new program called The Calling, which is a nine-month soul initiation into your souls assignment. And that program starts in September. So very fitting with what we are speaking about today. Jesse and I are also hosting a seven-day retreat together in Costa Rica, January 17th to the 23rd. It is a deep, somatic, intensive journey, weaving in two plant sacrament ceremonies, a traditional Temezcal ceremony, otherwise known as a sweat lodge, breath work, movement, body work, adventure therapy, and we are staying right in the heart of the jungle, luxurious accommodations with waterfall views, permaculture farm, pool, hot tub, infrared sauna. It's already one-third full. And I also just opened the door to my one-on-one mentorship program for soul-led healers wanting to step into more visibility and make a global impact. And also have the opportunity to work remotely, host retreats, and collaborate with other healers across the world. It's for any coaches, practitioners, clinicians, healers, or anyone wanting to step into that work. I help you build your virtual offerings, build your social media presence, create both long form and short form content. We work through any visibility blocks that inevitably will come up along the way. Stepping into your purpose, stepping into your calling, stepping into visibility, leadership, and building a business is truly like spiritual and personal growth on steroids. That's why I love it so much. And we work together for six months, building your business together from the ground up. And it can feel very overwhelming, you know, stepping into the virtual space and not really knowing where to start. So I walk you through the whole process. And every one of my one-on-one clients also gets free access to the calling. And I actually only have a few spots left for the one-on-one mentorship as well. So if you are interested in learning more about that, any of that, you will find all my offerings in the show notes. So we've got the workshop, the Costa Rica retreat, the one-on-one mentorship, and the calling, which the calling begins in September. Okay, let's get back into the episode. So it's important to mention that there isn't this external force testing you and doing something to you that you are powerless over. You are actually fully participating with this at an unconscious level. So your own psyche will test you by creating situations that will expose every contradiction between who you say you want to be and who you actually are right now. The path to wholeness doesn't feel like ascending into light. It feels like descending into darkness. Young said that the path to individuation is not for everyone because most people will not consent to the dismemberment that the deeper layers require. There are three distinct levels, and recognizing what test you are in can completely transform how you navigate it. So the first one is shadow confrontation. Becoming whole, you must face every fragmented, rejected part of yourself hiding in the shadow. So your shadow is everything that you have decided is not you, every quality rejected, every desire suppressed, every part deemed unacceptable. Your unconscious will attract situations, people, and circumstances to get you to face what you have rejected. It's your own unintegrated shadow parts working through your unconscious, creating the exact conditions necessary for integration. So, say for an example, you want to step into leadership, but deep in your shadow, you believe all people in power are corrupt. So people start to undermine you, projects fail. So that's one example. Maybe you're wanting to call in abundance, but deep down you have feelings of unworthiness. So you start experiencing financial crisis. Maybe you're wanting to call in success, but deep down you have a fear of responsibility. So you unconsciously sabotage opportunities or quit or procrastinate right before you reach that next level. So this isn't your subconscious punishing you. It's your subconscious calling in the exact situation you need to face and heal these wounds. It's your repressed qualities surfacing as external problems. So it feels like you are being given the opposite of what you're actually asking for. The psyche cannot manifest what it's still at war with. So the test arrives. The crisis is the shadow surfacing to be met, claimed and felt. We call in love, but we get abandoned because the disowned peace is often the abandoner inside us. So the one who leaves ourselves first or the unmetabolized grief from the original wound of abandonment. Until that's reclaimed, the outer field keeps mirroring it back. The golden shadow is the same dynamic in reverse. So we disown our own light, our own power, our own brilliance, our own magnetism, our own sovereignty, the size of our calling, because claiming it felt dangerous, made us a target, threatened belonging. So we project it onto teachers, lovers, mentors, gurus, celebrities. We fall in worship. They become luminous because we are seeing our own unlived potential reflected back. Then they fall, they betray us, they reveal their huminous, and we feel devastated, tricked, disillusioned. But disillusionment is the medicine. The illusion was ours, the pedestal was ours. The light we saw in them was the light we hadn't yet given ourselves permission to embody. The work in both directions is the same, reclamation. So what you cast out returns as fate. What you place on a pedestal returns as betrayal. Both are invitations to bring it home. Other ways we notice our shadow is through triggers and strong projections. So Young said that anything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves. It's the disproportionate charge. That is the tell. So it's not, say someone cuts you off and you get triggered. That's not your shadow, right? Like it's normal to feel triggered by that initially, but then you, if you can like move through it and brush it off. But say for an example, that that kept triggering you throughout the whole day, right? So it's like, oh, that person cut me off and you couldn't stop thinking about it. You were like ruminating about it, you were angry, you were resentful the whole day. How dare them? So it's asking yourself, like, what were those qualities, right, that you were triggered by? Was it rude? Was it inconsiderate? Um, and just really, you know, diving into that trigger. What was it about that, that character, you know, that you felt was so triggering? And is that a repressed quality of yourself? Is that something that showed up in your life? People were very inconsiderate to you throughout your whole life. Um, maybe someone was cutting you in line, right? Like you always felt like someone took your spot, took your place. Something that you um were meant to have or achieve always got taken from you. So those are different ways that it can show up. And it gives us an opportunity to really, you know, face those unhealed wounds or the um shadow aspects of ourselves as well. Our shadow also shows up in dreams, in our behaviors, in body symptoms and somatic disturbances, shows up in strong moralism. So judgment, self-righteousness, very black and white rigid thinking, what we envy in others, which is actually a doorway to our golden shadow. Also the inability to receive money, gifts, compliments. It's the golden shadow refusing re-entry. So the next is the tension of opposites. So shadow work is the entry point, and then we have the crisis or the tension of opposites. And this is what shadow work becomes when we go even deeper the anima and the animus. So once enough personal shadow is integrated, Young said you encounter the contrasexual figure inside. So for a woman, it's the inner masculine. For a man, it's the inner feminine. So the psyche is built on pairs, light and dark, masculine and feminine, conscious and unconscious, ego and shadow. So I'll just kind of share with you something recently, you know, that I navigated and everything I'm sharing with you, I'm I still work through myself because we heal and we move through all of these aspects of ourselves in layers, right? In a spiral. It's never a straight line. So everything I teach, I also am still learning. I'm still a student too. And uh the latest, I would say, tests that I went through was a big one. It was a really, really big one. But it was also right before one of my biggest upgrades that I've ever experienced in my life. I mean, these patterns and these tests have been showing up our entire life, but it was when I became actually conscious that I was on this path of individuation awakening, was just over this, you know, this past decade. And so I went through a lot of really challenging tests initially on my journey. And I've been really dedicated and devoted to this path. And um I definitely thought that I was over like the the bigger test, but that is so not true. I find that, you know, the more that we're on this journey on this path, um, yeah, the tests can still be quite challenging. And so for me, you know, even just speaking a little bit of the golden shadow, that was a big thing that came up for me. I tend to put uh men that I was in relationships with on pedestals. I put a lot of bosses or even like business partners on pedestals, right? I would I didn't see um their flaws or their weaknesses or didn't want to, right? It was like very much an illusion. And I got into a work relationship, um, a bit of a uh it was a business partnership a few years back now. And um I definitely put this person on a pedestal and I put a lot of trust in this person, and I actually ended up leaving my corporate job because of this uh collaboration that I was in. And so soon enough, the masks were revealed, the illusion wore off, and that partnership ended. And I was left in a very bad place financially, was not paid a lot of money that I actually worked for and was owed. And um, it was quite shocking. And so I went through this, you know, this process of like, I mean, looking at my own shadows, what I was projecting onto him, the golden shadow, but just also the parts of myself that I didn't want to see, right? How I was abandoning myself and my own dreams because of this work relationship. You know, I wasn't being my true authentic self. I wasn't even doing the work that I was meant to be doing in this world. I was actually abandoning that part of myself. And so I learned a lot of uh really hard lessons, but it was definitely a financial crisis period where I was brought to my niece because all of a sudden, you know, I had left my corporate job, work part this partnership ended. I didn't receive a lot of money that I was owed. And it was, I was not put in a good place financially. It brought me to my niece. It brought me to a complete breaking point, the point where I was ready to give up. I was like, I just I can't do this anymore. Maybe I'm not meant to be on this path. It brought me to such a breaking point, but I knew I was being asked to look at these uncomfortable, you know, parts of myself that I didn't want to see, that I didn't want to face, that I didn't want to look at. And so I started to do the deep shadow work. I also did a lot of forgiveness work and seeing my part. I had to go and get to a place of such deep trust and surrender and divine in God. It was humbling, it was deflating. From that place, my creativity actually started to surge. I all of a sudden started to receive very powerful guidance, you know, on the work that I was actually meant to be doing. I I found myself again because I lost myself in that relationship. You know, I had a tendency to do that, and I'm an Aries North Node, you know, with a Libra South node. That is a shadow that I am continuously met with, you know, is this. Um is this self-abandonment and becoming a meshed in relationships, losing myself in relationships, focusing on other people's dreams rather than my dreams. I'm meant to step into leadership. I'm meant to be sovereign. I'm meant to make my own money in this lifetime. I'm not meant to rely on anybody else. That's part of my life lesson here, right? We all have different lessons that we co come in with. We all have a different soul blueprint. And yeah, when I got to that place of that deep surrender, that breaking point, that zero point, all of a sudden, just this creative surge started to come through. I spent a lot of time in prayer and ceremony. I doubled down on my rituals, on my spiritual practices, connecting with my ancestors, praying for guidance and support. And sure enough, things completely turned around. My own business took off. And, you know, I'm in the best place I've ever been when it comes to finances, when it comes to purpose and meaning. I'm living a life beyond my wildest dreams. But, you know, that was not too long ago that I was I was in a very dark place. So I share that just so you know how things can turn around pretty quickly and drastically once we are willing to actually face these parts of ourselves and face these tests head on and see them for what they are. And the next test is the tension of opposites. So shadow work is the entry point, and the crisis or the tension of opposites is what shadow work becomes when you go deeper. The anima and the animus. So once enough personal shadow is integrated, Young said that you encounter the contrasexual figure inside. So for a man, it's the inner feminine, and for a woman, it's the inner masculine. The psyche is built on pairs. So light and dark, masculine and feminine, conscious and unconscious, ego and shadow, spirit and matter, life and death, attachment and freedom. And most of us live by identifying with one pole and exiling the other. So we are the good one, the strong one, the spiritual one, the loving one, and we cast out the rest. So that works for a while. The persona holds, but then life brings a crisis. And usually this is midlife, though it can come earlier through rupture, awakening, loss, or initiation. The exiled pull rises. The shadow refuses to stay buried. The exiled grief, rage, hunger, ambition, sexuality, doubt, longing, all of it begins to break through. Suddenly, the woman who built her life on being good meets her own destructive power. The man who built his life on rationality meets the flood of feeling. The devoted partner meets her longing for freedom. The spiritual seeker meets her appetite for achievement. This is the crisis of opposites. So you can no longer be only one thing. Both poles are alive in you and both are demanding to be honored. The ego cannot resolve it. There is no clean answer. Every choice betrays something true. And Young saw this as the moment most people collapse the tension prematurely. So they pick a side, they repress again, they numb, they distract, they leave, they cheat, they blow up the life, or retreat into rigidity. Anything to escape holding both. He said the modern person flees the tension of opposites because it is unbearable to the ego, but the medicine is in the holding. Young called it sustaining the tension. You stay with both. You do not collapse one into the other. And out of that sustained tension, something new emerges. Young said what is true in the individual psyche is also true in the collective psyche. So cultures, generations, and movements live by the same dynamic. A society identifies with one pole, exiles the other, and then the exiled pole erupts. It either erupts inside the culture as crisis, war, scapegoating, or it swings the whole collective hard in the opposite direction. And you see it everywhere. So a culture that represses sexuality for generations, then it swings into hypersexualization, a culture that worships the rational masculine, dismisses the feminine, the body, the earth, and the exiled feminine returns as ecological collapse, as the resurgence of the goddess, as the somatic awakening movement. A generation raised in militant atheism produces children hungry for mysticism, ceremony, lineage. A culture that exiles the shadow, elects the shadow into power. So the pendulum swing is the collective refusing to hold the tension. Just like the individual, the collective tries to escape the crisis of opposites by collapsing into the other pool. So it feels like progress. It is actually the same wound dressed in opposite clothing. So the healing is not the swing, the healing is the integration. A culture that can hold both reverence for the rational and reverence for the mystical, both sovereignty and belonging, both individuation and lineage, both light and dark as sacred, each generation is in part a response to the exiled material of the previous one. So the crisis of opposites plays out in family lineages, in cultures, in centuries, and just some examples right now that we can see that I've, you know, really noticed that are very important. So one, say the trad wife movement. So this is the return of the exiled feminine, the homemaker, the rooted, the receptive, the slow, the domestic, the surrendered. For decades, the culture told women that liberation meant the corner office, the hustle, masculine achievement track. It exiled the women who wanted to nest, bake, bread, raise children at home, be devoted to a husband, live by the rhythms of the earth. That exiled pole did not disappear. So it returned and it returned with force, often dressed in aesthetics of the 1950s, often fused with religious traditionalism. So the women are starving for slowness, for embodiment, for devotion, for a life that's not optimized by productivity. But the shadow side is that the swing often collapses into a new rigidity. So a new trend, a new romanticization of an era that was also a cage. So this is a counterculture movement to the boss babe movement, which was, you know, the previous swing. So the exiled masculine in a woman erupting after generations of women being told that their ambition, their money-making, their visibility, their hunger were unspiritual or unfeminine. So both babe culture said, claim it all, build the empire, make the millions, dominate. And women had been exiled from their own power, agency, and economic sovereignty. So the shadow side was that it often collapsed into hyper-masculine grind culture, performance, burnout, and disconnection from the body from cycle from soul. It was the inner masculine without the feminine. And now we're watching it swing the other way, you know, going off grid, rejecting Western medicine entirely, all natural everything. This is the exiled body, the exiled earth, the exiled animal self, the exiled trust in nature returning. For generations, the culture worshipped the rational, the technological, the pharmaceutical, the institutional, and exiled the wisdom of the body, the plant, the lineage, the elder, the midwife. That exiled material is returning and it is returning hot. So the medical industrial complex has caused real harm. The food system has been corrupted. The disconnection from the earth is killing us. The shadow side is that the swing often collapses into total rejection of anything institutional, including the parts of modern medicine that save lives. So it collapses into magical thinking, into refusing care that is needed, into a new kind of fundamentalism dressed as freedom. Pattern is the same across all of them, right? So the culture identifies with one pole and the culture exiles the other. Then the exiled pole returns through the bodies of the next generation, often as a movement, often with aesthetic intensity. And the early phase of the return is usually fundamentalist because the psyche is overcorrecting. It cannot hold both yet. So it swings hard, it collapses into the new pole, and it treats the old pole as the enemy. So this is a crisis of opposites at the collective level. And most movements are stuck inside it. You know, I've experienced this myself personally when I look at all of these. It's also important not to judge it if we do find ourselves, you know, swinging into uh one pole as well, because that's often how we experience it and play it out of our system before we can actually uh be able to integrate both poles, right? And find a nuanced approach, find a more balanced approach. The third test is synchronicity. So synchronicity is not a test in the way that shadow is a test. So it's a phenomenon that begins to occur with increasing frequency once the self is constellating and the ego is no longer the only operator. So Jung defined it as meaningful coincidence, where outer events mirror inner states in ways that cannot be explained by linear cause and effect. So Jung said that synchronicity is the psyche revealing that the inner world and the outer world are not actually separate. They are one field expressing itself through both. When the ego is in charge, the world feels mechanical, random, and different. As the self comes more online, the world begins to feel responsive and alive. So reality changed because you did. Syncronicity is less the test and more the next confirmation. Synchronicity is the language the psyche speaks once you have done enough of the labor to hear it. It is the evidence that you are no longer only running your life from the ego. Something larger is co-authoring with you. Where it gets dangerous is synchronicity can be inflated. So the ego can grab it and turn it into specialness, chosenness, magical thinking, spiritual narcissism. Every coincidence becomes a sign. So every sign becomes confirmation that I am the one. This is the shadow of synchronicity, and it is everywhere in the spiritual field right now. Real synchronicity humbles you, it points you toward the work, the integration, the next layer of surrender. False synchronicity inflates you. So it tells that you that you are above the work, that the universe is arranging itself around your specialness. So the discernment is this: real synchronicity tends to ask something of you. False synchronicity tends to confirm something for you. So real synchronicity opens the field, false synchronicity closes it around the ego. Young saw inflation as one of the central dangers of the individuation path. The unconscious opens, spiritual experiences arrive, synchronicities occur, and the ego, instead of being humbled by contact with something larger, claims it. I am chosen. I am a starseed, a wanderer, a light worker, whatever it is, whatever labels we use, twin flame. I am special. The signs are for me. Young said that this was actually more dangerous than staying unconscious because the person now has access to real archetypal energy, but is using it to inflate the ego rather than serve the self. And I talked about this, you know, these archetypal forces. So this would be more of that luciferic energy that Steiner teaches about. I've done episodes on this, that luciferic archetypal energy that you're being influenced by that pulls you away from reality, inflates your spiritual ego. And there's no judgment here because it's actually quite common, especially if you have an accelerated awakening. I've shared in previous episodes that that was my experience. I went through a very unexpected awakening and I was having these very intense spiritual experiences before I had done any actual inner work, like any deep shadow work. So I definitely, you know, attached to these experiences. It did feel like I was chosen and special, you know, because how could it not when, you know, you go from living a completely ordinary life to all of a sudden having these powerful spiritual experiences, um, being contact, but contacted by something larger than you. But it is actually our own psyche asking for integration, asking us to do the work. Young saw it as a common failure mode in mystics and spiritual seekers and anyone who opened to the unconscious without enough shadow integration to ground it. He also warned about projection onto outer events. So the ego, hungry for meaning, can read significance into anything. So every bird, every number, every coincidence becomes a sign. Young was clear that this is not synchronicity. Real synchronicity has a specific quality. It is striking, it carries numinous charge, and it tends to occur at certain thresholds, at moments of psychological intensity, and at junctures where the psyche is reorganizing. Authentic synchronistic experiences usually carry a quality of being addressed. They land with weight, they tend to humble rather than inflate. They often point toward the work that is being avoided. You know, I had this experience, um, I felt like I was being guided to, and I was being guided. There were certain, I would call them teachers. There were certain relationships that I was fully pulled to and guided to through synchronicity. Doesn't necessarily mean that you're meant to be with these people. It can very much mean, and in many of my cases during these experiences, that they were powerful teachers for me, that they brought up a lot of uh wounds for me to address and look at. So they were still like soul contracts, like definitely very much people that I was meant to uh come into contact with, that my psyche was organizing, you know, these um circumstances, these situations where these people came into my life and they were huge part of my path, where, you know, I was confronted with a lot of my shadows, a lot of my unhealed wounds through these relationships. So um it's important to mention that too, because sometimes we think that we're being guided because we're meant to be with this specific person, whether that's we're meant to work with them, whether um we're meant to um be in a relationship with them. And in some cases, that is what it means, absolutely. But it in many cases, it also just means that they're here to be a mirror to us, right? That they're here to be a teacher in some sort of way. So just approaching with curiosity instead of clinging to like specialness. They often point toward the work that is being avoided, right? So the shadow that needs facing, that next layer of integration. So the misuse of the concept, how it gets diluted often is like, you know, everything happens for a reason, or just thinking the universe is um constantly sending you signs when you're actually just really looking for them. Maybe they're not actual synchronicity, right? Like not everything is a sign. So it's important to ask these questions that is this experience humbling or inflating you? Because real contact uh with the numinous, it tends to make the ego smaller, not bigger. Is it asking something of you or confirming something to you? So the unconscious tends to call you toward the work. The inflated ego tends to grab evidence for what it already wants to believe. So real synchronicity has a felt sense that is unmistakable when it occurs and rare enough to mean something. Are you grounded enough in shadow work to receive it without distortion? And that is tough, you know? It's something that I'm still uh learning and navigating, and I always will be, right? It's this path is never ending. Young was clear that opening to the unconscious without sufficient ego integration and shadow work is dangerous. The signs become weapons of the inflated ego rather than messengers of the self. So the reason someone might receive these synchronicities without being fully integrated would be that the unconscious has opened, but the ego has not been prepared. So sometimes the unconscious opens spontaneously through trauma, through plant medicine, through awakening, through crisis, through a kundalini event, the veil thins. So the numinous floods in and synchronicities multiply. That was my experience. So the person genuinely is in contact with something larger, but the ego that is receiving the contact has not done the work to hold it. So the shadow is unintegrated. The personal material is still running underneath. So the numinous experience gets routed through an unhealed ego. And what comes out the other side is inflation, uh, spiritual specialness, magical thinking, a sense of being chosen. So the synchronicity is real, but the reception is distorted. So Young said this is more dangerous than staying closed because the person now has archetypal energy moving through them with no container to hold it. So they become unrecognizable to themselves. They make decisions from inflation that destroy their lives. This is rampant in the spiritual field right now, with plant medicine in particular. It opens the unconscious faster than most people can integrate it. That's why it's really important to have plenty of preparation, integration afterwards, and also just be aware of these archetypal forces, right? Uh the synchronicities are very real, but there is shadow still underneath it, which is now amplified by the archetypal contact. So this is why so many people have spiritual openings followed by collapses. And also a second reason is the person is in projection and confirmation bias. So this is the more ordinary version. So the unconscious is hungry for meaning. The ego is hungry for specialness. So when you start looking for signs, you're gonna find them everywhere. The brain is a pattern-matching organ, it will find what it is looking for. So number numbers, animals, songs, sentences, coincidences, all of it begins to feel charge because the psyche is projecting meaning onto ordinary events. So this is not synchronicity in Young's sense. It is the inflated ego reading itself into the world. It feels like synchronicity from the inside, but it is not the unconscious speaking. It is the ego hungry for confirmation, dressed up in spiritual language. So I'll give you an example of like what synchronicity is like. So I'll share with you my personal experiences. Uh, number synchronicity was like a huge one and a huge one for many people. That was a really big one for me. And it was undeniable. So I was driving, this is actually a day before I lost my job. I was um driving and I ended up pulling over because I felt so overwhelmed. I saw nine cars drive past me all in a row with triple fives on the license plate. Nine, one after another. I kick you not. So that's synchronicity, right? That was not me looking for it. Um, also for a year and a half straight, I would be driving. My daughter was with me the whole time, literally every single day, triple numbers on the license plate driving past me, one after another. Like it was overwhelming. We would see, I would see, like honestly, some days 40, 50 driving past me, like a whole bunch one after another. And there are many, many others, like being woken up in the middle of the night uh at 3:33 on like a regular occurrence, like feeling like I was being pushed awake and jumping out of bed and looking at the time. So many situations like that. So that's just an example of synchronicity. I was having them really intensely at that time. I had a lot of unintegrated stuff to look at, right? So there was a lot of things surfacing, like it was getting me to look at certain things. Um, but at the time I wasn't too sure at what it was getting me to look at. And then I started to actually like work with it and do the deeper, deeper psychospiritual work. So real synchronicity is rare, it's weighted, it's humbling, and it tends to point toward the work. Inflated projection is constant, weightless, validating, and tends to confirm what the ego already wants to believe. So when everything is a sign, nothing is a sign. And there was definitely a mix of that for me too. By what the vast majority was like overwhelming, like something was getting my attention. But then once you start to receive it, you start to believe too. It's like, oh, is everything a sign? And no, not everything is a sign. Um, third reason is the synchronicities are real, but they are calling the person into the shadow work. So not validating that they have transcended it. Sometimes the unconscious sends synchronicities precisely because the shadow is unintegrated. That was my case. So the psyche is trying to get the person's attention. The signs are not a reward for spiritual advancement. They are the unconscious knocking urgently asking to be met. So the dreams, the symbols, the strange coincidences, the figure showing up are the psyche pointing at exactly what is unintegrated. If the person reads them as confirmation that they are advanced, they miss the message. If they read them as invitations into the work, they Receive what the unconscious is actually offering. So sometimes the flood of synchronicity in someone who has not done the shadow work is the unconscious trying to drag them toward what they have been avoiding. This is the difference between spiritual narcissism and the path of the humble initiate. Fourth possibility is the opening is genuine, but the integration is just behind it. So sometimes a person genuinely is opening, the synchronicity is real, the contact is real, and the shadow work simply has not caught up yet. So this is the most hopeful version. It is the early phase of the path. The numinous arrives first, often because the soul needed evidence that something larger was real before the ego would consent to the dismantling, right? And that is, I often share about like why I was so glad that I was having these spiritual experiences. Because if I hadn't had those spiritual experiences, you know, um, I don't know how I would have handled, you know, the dark nights and the dismantling that um, you know, came along with it. The synchronicities are the lure, the confirmation, the breadcrumbs that bring the person to the threshold. Then the work begins. So the honeymoon ends. The shadow rises, the synchronicities are often quiet down or change character, becoming less validating and more confronting. So this is the path doing what it does. And the person who stays with it, who lets the shadow rise and meets it, integrates the early opening into something real and sustainable. The person who clings to the early phase, who keeps trying to get back into the validation, gets stuck. So synchronicity is not the evidence that you have arrived. It is often evidence that you are being called. The unconscious does not flood you with signs because you have transcended the work. It floods you because something is asking to come through. The most integrated people in any spiritual lineage tend to talk about their spiritual experiences the least. They have them, they receive them, but they hold them quietly. They know that naming it too loudly tends to inflate it. So that's actually what I look for in spiritual teachers is humility. And it doesn't mean that you can't share your spiritual experiences with close friends or a mentor or even share some of them publicly once you have uh integrated them. It just means not sharing them from a place of specialness or needing validation. Um, you know, I actually had uh a friend uh who's actually a healer, a shaman, shared with me his experience with this when he was early on his path, you know, starting to really open up his gifts, how he was uh visited by certain spirits on a regular basis. And he said that he started to share about this one spirit that kept visiting him. Um he was sharing it with a lot of people. And he said he was sharing it with like a bit of like ego, like kind of bragging about it. And then that spirit stopped coming to him, completely stopped visiting him. So he said for him, it was a lesson like not to share these spiritual experiences and not to come from ego. So I mean, that is how we learn, right? Um, it's it's quite common to want to talk about these things early on in our path. And like I said, there's nothing wrong with like sharing it with a couple close friends. Um, but it's just the place that it's coming from is just important to look at. And as the person integrates, the spiritual experiences change form entirely. So they become less frequent, less spectacular, they become deeper, slower, more weighted. They tend to humble rather than inflate. That's definitely been my experience, um, you know, over the last while. My I don't receive really intense synchronicities like I did at the beginning of my journey, though I do still have very powerful spiritual experiences, but I do not share the majority of them. Um, I keep the vast majority of them to myself because I want to continue to have them. And also because I still don't know what a lot of them mean. Like I'm still learning, I'm still integrating it. It comes with time, right? It comes with devotion. And um, there's something really sacred about just having these experiences between you and spirit, between you and the divine. Something really special about that. The mystics across every lineage describe this: that the early phase is visions, raptures, signs, and the middle phase is the dark night, the emptiness, the abandonment. The indigenous traditions call it being eaten by the spirits and remade. And these do not feel like the early synchronicities. They feel like being broken open in a way that strips you. And the mystics would say that this is real contact with the divine. So not some, not that you're doing anything wrong. This is actually the work. The indigenous lineages would say this is spirits actually working with you. So, whatever the language, the texture is the same, it humbles, it does not inflate. It changes how you live, not just how you talk. It's the mark of the elder and the real teacher. So deep humility is the sign. The elder is not the one talking about her gifts the loudest, right? They have been humbled enough by real contact with something larger that they do not need to claim it as personal achievement. The traditional lineages knew this. The elder was the one who had been broken and remade. The elder was the one who had buried the parts of themselves that needed to die. The elder was named by their community when they were ready. And they often resist the role because they know its weight. They know it comes with responsibility, great responsibility. So here are some practices on how to actually work with these tests. So practice one is daily shadow inventory. So at the end of your day before sleep, sit with a journal and you're not writing about your day, you were just tracking the doorways the unconscious open for you in the last 24 hours. So the shadow is always speaking. So most people miss it because they're not looking. So this practice trains you to see. And it's not about analysis, paralysis, or like being hyper-aware, but just notice, you know, your triggers and your projections, you know, don't brush them off. So just things like that. So go through the doorway one by one and be honest. No one, no one is reading this with you. No one's reading this but you. So triggers. Where did I have a disproportionate reaction today? So not something lightly that would have triggered anybody normally, right? Like someone being rude to you, that's obviously going to trigger you, right? But if it just it stayed and you were a lot angrier than you should have been. So what sent me into rage, contempt, fixation, obsession, shame, jealousy, irritation? That was bigger than the situation warranted. So name the moment, name the person, name what they did or what they said, projections, who did you judge? Who did you decide was selfish, manipulative, narcissistic, fake, attention seeking, weak, too much, not enough? What quality did you see in them that you felt certain about? And patterns, what patterns showed up today that have shown up before? So the same dynamic, the same kind of person, the same disappointment, the same collapse, the same defense. Look at envy. Who did I see today and feel the sting? What were they doing, having, embodying, claiming that something in me reacted to, right? The golden projections. There often are unclaimed aspects, are unclaimed qualities, our unclaimed potential, compulsions and slips. So what did I do today that I swore I would not do? Where did I lose myself? What took me over? Look at your body. What did my body carry today? Where am I tight? What kept hurting? What got loud? The inability to receive. Where did I deflect today? If someone compliments you, can you just receive the compliment rather than trying to give them a compliment back right away? Can you receive gifts? Can you receive help? Looking at all those things, right? And then the integration. So choose one, just one. The one with the most charge, the one you almost did not write down. Take it through three layers. So layer one, name it as yours and write the sentence. The rage at her confidence is my confidence asking for permission. So that's one example. When I was triggered by her selfishness, it was my unmet right to want. The envy of her visibility is my own visibility calling. The obsession with him is the part of me that is unavailable to myself. Make it a clean sentence. The unconscious responds to clean naming. Layer two, take it into the body, close the journal, close your eyes. Where does the charge live in your body? Is it in your throat, in your chest, in your belly, in your hips, in your jaw? Put your hand there, breathe into it. Let the sensation get bigger before it gets smaller. Let yourself feel what you exiled. The rage, the grief, the hunger, the longing. Five minutes, ten minutes, let the body have it. Shake if you need to, cry if you need to, make sound, move, do not perform, just let it move. And layer three is active imagination. So once the body has moved the energy, let the figure come. So the one carrying this material. Close your eyes and let her arrive. What does she look like? How old is she? What is she wearing? What is her face? Then ask her in your own mind or out loud, what are you carrying for me? What do you need me to know? What have you been protecting me from? What do you want? Let her answer. Do not edit it. Just write down what she says, even if it doesn't even make sense. So this is one cycle, one charge, fully metabolized, 10 minutes a day. Done consistently. This practice will move you through more shadow material in three months than most people integrate in a decade. And the acceleration is not in intensity, it is in the consistency. So daily, small, honest. The unconscious response to being met regularly, not occasionally. The collective is a mirror. So every cultural extreme right now is an exiled pole erupting after generations of being denied. So if you want to see what your psyche has collapsed into, look at the movements that have pulled at you, the ones that you have been drawn to, the ones that you have rejected completely. Each one is half a polarity, and the swing into it is the unconscious of the collective trying to come home. So here's what is actually swinging. So that return of the traditional feminine. For decades, women were told that liberation meant the corner office, right? The ambition, the masculine achievement model, the empire building women, which was the previous swing. So the boss babe, the off-grid and anti-institutional return, which was the exiled body, the exiled earth, the exiled trust in nature, the exiled wisdom of the elder and the midwife. So there's many, many others. Like just look at, you know, even politics is a good one to look at, right? So each political party follows a certain follows certain trends. So those are really good places to look at. Like what are some cultural trends that you have adopted that you feel drawn to? And which ones do you feel completely repulsed by? Each side sees itself as the corrective to the other side, and each side is unable to see what the other is genuinely carrying. The exile pole on each side is what the other is loudly proclaiming. So neither will integrate until they can hold both. And most people inside either pole experience the holding as betrayal. And that's why they have a hard time doing that, holding both. You know, wellness and spiritual extremes is another one. So the carnivore movement, and then there's veganism, like complete opposites, right? Um, you know, then there is the everything is love and light, you know, the spiritual bypassing, but then there's also the everything is trauma and teachers, right? Like they're two extremes: hyper-masculine bros and the hyper-feminine surrender priestesses. Each one is true and each one is partial. Each one collapsing the tension into a new fundamentalism, you know, um, new age swinging into dogmatic Christianity is a major one that we're seeing right now as well. So you can see the pattern. So every extreme is an exiled pull. Every movement is the unconscious of the collective trying to come home, often dressed in too much certainty because the early phase of reclamation cannot yet hold both sides. So now the question, yeah, just turn it inward. Which of these have you been pulled into? Which have you rejected? Which feel like the truth, the answer, the way forward, and which feels like the enemy? Because if you are inside any of them with that level of certainty, you are inside the collapsed tension. You have picked a side. You are using the exiled pull to escape the other one rather than holding both. So be specific with yourself. It doesn't mean to just to be completely neutral, because we're never completely neutral, right? Um like, can you, even if you feel like you lean more strongly to um one pool, but can you still hold the perspective of the other? You know, a perfect example for me, right? So it's like I I quit my corporate job. So I did not want to work corporate any longer, did not want to do the hustle, the grind, the nine to five. And for a little while there, I completely rejected like that, that masculine energy, that masculine push, hustle type of energy. And I went all in on my feminine, on the surrender, on just magnetizing opportunities that would come to me. And um, you know, really rejecting any type of any type of hustle, which was important for me to really heal that because I had been so pushed into my masculine for so long, right? But now it's like I can hold both. I can see the value in both, right? I've also done, I love the carnivore diet. That's a diet that really works well for me. I feel really good on it, but I do not believe that it is the only diet and everyone should be on it. You know, that's another example. It's like it works for me, but I also know that it doesn't work for everybody. So that's a perfect example. It's like when we collapse into the rigidity, it's like it doesn't mean that you can't be a homemaker and stay home and bake bread and want to be home with your children. But if you believe that that is the right way and that's how everyone should be, then you've collapsed into it, right? So those are perfect examples. It's like when we become really dogmatic or rigid about a certain belief. It's like when you left the corporate world and now you demonize ambition entirely. The exile pull is your own healthy desire to build, to be visible, to make money, to have impact in the world. Maybe you were harmed by the medical system and now you reject all of it. The exiled pull is the discernment to know when modern medicine is the right tool, when your body or your child's body actually needs intervention that you can't provide alone. Maybe you were raised in religion that caged women, and now you reject all tradition, all lineage, all rooted devotion. So the exiled pull is the part that hungers for ceremony, inherited wisdom. Maybe you were abandoned by men and now you have collapsed into the divine feminine and rejected the masculine entirely. The exiled pole is your own inner masculine, the one who can build, decide, hold, structure, follow through. Maybe you burned your old life down and now you can't tolerate anything ordinary. So the exiled pool is the part that needs to do the dishes, pay the taxes, be a regular human being, not always be in transcendence or rupture. Maybe you awakened through plant medicine, and now you cannot trust anything that does not come through that doorway. So the exiled pole is the slow, ordinary, glamorous integration that no medicine can do for you. And also mine was the opposite of this, um, was sober. And I became a complete sober purist for a long time. And I was like, there's no way that I'm going to, you know, incorporate medicines. I don't need anything. I'm just gonna raw dog it. I felt like I was better then. And um, you know, sure enough, I started actually doing the research. And um, I did actually start incorporating plat medicines with a really uh balanced approach and plenty of preparation, integration, and it has been a huge part of my healing journey and helping me actually work with my own shadows. So you can see what I'm pointing at, right? So the the collective shows you the pattern at the largest scale because it is easier to see in others before we can see it in ourselves. So then you bring it home. You ask honestly, where have you collapsed the tension? Where have you picked a side? Where have you made the other pole the enemy? So the medicine is not to swing back, the medicine is to hold both, to stop, to stop needing to be on a side, to let the tension cook you into something larger that emerges, that includes what was true on every pool and is not captured by any of them. So this is the work that no movement can do for you. It is the work that your soul is asking of you. And then practice three is working with synchronicity and dreams. So this is ongoing rather than scheduled. It is the practice of receiving. You don't do not chase synchronicity, you let it come. The chasing is the ego trying to manufacture meaning. The receiving is the soul learning to listen. So receive it without claiming it. Do not immediately make it about your specialness. Do not post it, do not turn it into content or share with everybody initially, right? Just ideally sit with it for a little bit. Let it land in private first and ask the question, not what does this mean for me? That question keeps you in the ego. The question is, what is being asked of me? What is this pointing toward? What in my life is this calling me to face? Real synchronicity tends to ask. It tends to point you toward the work, the integration, the next layer of surrender, the conversation you've been avoiding, the truth that you've been willing to see. If the sign is just confirming what you already wanted it to, just be careful there, right? The unconscious is rarely flattering. It usually challenges us. Write it down, keep a synchronicity journal, date it, and note what was happening in your life when it occurred. Note what you were thinking about, struggling with, deciding. Patterns will emerge over months that the ego cannot see in the moment. The psyche speaks in long arcs. So you will only see the arc looking back. Test it against the humbling question. Is this experience humbling me or inflating me? Real contact with the larger tends to make the ego smaller, not bigger. So if you find yourself feeling chosen, special, advanced, we're all chosen, special. Just know that, every single one of us. But if we feel more chosen, right? More special, more advanced. So if you find yourself quieter, more devoted, more willing to do the work, then the contact is real. And then dream work. Young said that dreams are the royal road to the unconscious. And the practice is simple. Keep paper by the bed. Your phone is fine, but paper is better. The dream evaporates within minutes of waking. So you have to catch it before the day takes over. Write down before you do anything else. So before checking your phone, before getting up, before speaking. The dream lives in a liminal layer that the waking ego dissolves really quick. So catch it raw in fragments if that's all you have. Even one image, even one sentence, even just the feeling or the tone of it. And do not interpret immediately. So don't start decoding it through a dream symbol, dictionaries, or AI. Just let the dream be alive. It doesn't want to be decoded at first. It wants to be related to. So let it sit, let it work on you. Their meaning often arrives days later, even months later, in the middle of an unrelated moment. So notice the figures. Who showed up? Was it the pursuer, the intruder, the child, the animal, the dead, the stranger? These are just aspects of our psyche. The same-sex figure who threatens you, chases you, shames you is often personal shadow. The opposite sex figure who appears as lover, mentor, threat guide is often anima or animus. And the numinous figure, the wise one, the elder, the divine presence, is often self. So bring the dream into active imagination and sit with the figure later in the day. Let them speak. Ask what they are carrying, what they need, what they want you to know. Also notice repetition. So the figures and themes that return are the most important. The unconscious repeats what is unintegrated. So the same dream three times is a psyche underlying the message. So pay attention. The dream and the synchronicity are speaking the same language. They are the unconscious surfacing through symbol. I had a dream a few months back, actually, of and it was very vivid. And anytime a dream is super vivid, like um it feels more real than actual reality. I know that it's a really important message. And so for me, I was actually getting a card reading by this man with glasses. He actually reminded me, if anyone remembers Buffy the Vampire Slayer, that was like one of my favorite shows. But the librarian, I can't even remember his name. But, anyways, whatever his name was, that was who he reminded me of. So it really felt like teacher energy. Super interesting. And then he gave me a card reading and he was telling me my future. And um, before he even told me my future, he said to me, looked at me before he read the cards, and he said, Um, your dad, Clarence is my dad's name. He said, Your dad, Clarence, had a pet raccoon. So I remember that part of the dream. Then he gave me a card reading. And I know that I was so happy and excited about the card reading about my future. But I woke up the next day. I could remember everything but what the reading actually was, but I knew the feeling of it. So I wrote that all down. And interesting enough, I ended up telling my dad about this dream, which I never tell my dad about the dreams. I wasn't even going to. He was driving me to the airport and I was like, oh, I had this dream. And he looked at me shocked. And he said that he had a pet raccoon when he was a kid for a few weeks and had to give it away because it got too wild. But he couldn't believe that I dreamed that because he's never told me that. I didn't know that. So that was pretty wild. And then he ended up seeing a dead raccoon when he was driving home and he hasn't seen one in years. So I sat with that. I mean, of course, I had the urge to check what the meaning that the spiritual meaning of a raccoon is. But I sat with it for a while and um I went inward and I asked those questions. And uh what came to me was um, so there was a symbol of the teacher, right? So I felt like I was reaching this next threshold, this next level on my journey, and that there was a gift on the other side of it, but I wouldn't receive that gift. That was the reading, right? So he gave me the reading of the future. So I know there's a gift on the other side of it. And to me, the raccoon resembled this trickster energy, that I would be confronted with this trickster energy that tends to show up for me quite a bit, the trickster spirit. So that to me is what uh how I interpreted it. And so I wrote that down. So do your own interpretation, right? Start to read your own dreams. We don't necessarily need to go to other people and outsource our own inner wisdom, our own intuition. Um, it is your subconscious speaking to you. So yeah, I invite you to um sit with all of those reflections. And what I'm actually going to be doing is I plan on putting out a podcast episode every two weeks because they are longer. And I'm gonna be breaking these into shorter YouTube videos with um like practical like tutorials, lessons for you. And there'll be also meditations on my YouTube coming up as well. So I'll keep you guys posted once uh the first few videos are up for you to uh watch. So thanks so much for tuning in. Love you all, and we'll see you next episode.