How to Avoid Spiritual Addiction & Stay Grounded on Your Spiritual Path

A couple of weeks ago I wrote an article entitled – Are you out of balance with your spirituality?

In that article, I listed some symptoms of being out of balance with spirituality.

What does it even mean to be out of balance with spirituality?

If you’re out of balance with spirituality, it means that you are giving the spiritual side of existence too much importance in your life.  You may spend all your time focusing on activities such as meditation, psychic development, and being immersed in that which is supernatural or otherworldly.

You may be so introverted and lost inside yourself that you find it difficult to relate to the rest of the world (when it’s not about personal or spiritual development).  And you may take your spirituality so seriously that you have forgotten to have fun in life too. If you are imbalanced in your spirituality, you will also find that you have neglected other, more earthy areas of your life such as making money and your social life.

If you relate to this description, then I advise that you read that article about spiritual imbalance before you continue reading this article about how to overcome it.

The types of people who are commonly out of balance with spirituality include:

• Psychics; healers; other people who work in personal development (with a spiritual slant).  It is easy to get out of balance with spirituality when you work in the spirit realm all day.
• People who have gone through some sort of trauma in life and who are on a path of healing.   These people may be addicted to healing experiences, spiritual growth and the highs that you get from connecting to spirit.  These people will be spending so much time detoxing and healing, spiritually and emotionally, that they forget to live too.
• People who dislike/hate something about their outside reality, but lack the motivation or courage to change it and find it easier to escape through the spiritual realm.

This article is written for those people who are seriously out of balance with spirituality, like the above groups.

Steps to lose an addiction to spirituality (without losing your spirituality)

If you recognize that you are out of balance, here are some lifestyle changes to help bring more balance back into your life.  I’m sure you’ve heard recommendations to ground yourself such as ‘walk on the grass in bare feet’ etc.  Those suggestions are good for people with a temporary imbalance but they are not good for people who are totally out of balance – such people will need to take bigger steps to redress the imbalance.

Note that one of the most effective ways to overcome a spiritual addiction is to get a healing session (such as a cord-cutting) and at the beginning of the session, set the intention to bring about more balance between your lower and upper chakras. Cutting a cord to someone who has caused you trauma or pain can make it easier for you to come back into your body.

Apart from that, here are some lifestyle suggestions to help bring more balance into your life:

________________________________________________________

Symptom of Imbalance #1: You feel lightheaded and spacey in your body.

Suggestion: Check in with your eating habits.

Your eating habits can either help tether you to the earth plane or they can destabilize and unground you.

Both veganism and raw veganism I find to be ungrounding for me, personally. Often people ask during spirit guide coaching if a raw or high raw vegan diet is right for them at this time and the answer is usually something along the lines of ‘no, not unless you are willing to suffer some imbalance.’ Being on that kind of diet as a psychic or very spiritual person requires a very strong foundation and a good connection to reality. If you don’t have that, it will unbalance you.

I bring this issue up because many people do become drawn to a really pure and light diet when they begin to get interested in spirituality or psychic development.  When you open your upper chakras, you might be drawn to giving up meat (the meat-eating students on my spirit guides coaching course often tell me that they notice an aversion to meat as the weeks go by). 

Then as people become even more sensitive, they may be drawn to giving up fish.  Then some people take it one step further and give up animal products.  Some then feel drawn to giving up cooked food and become raw vegans.  This is a natural (but rather extreme) progression and one I went through about 18 months ago.  First, I was vegetarian, then vegan for a while, then I tried raw veganism for 2-3 weeks, twice.  Now I have come full circle and I’m eating meat again. Some people have arguments against eating meat but this is the most grounding diet for me personally.

Other ways to unground yourself with your diet include…

Not eating enough and not eating regularly.  Eating three good meals daily and at regular intervals is more grounding than eating small snacks here and there because it sends your energy out of your head and into your digestive system on a regular basis.  If you miss meals regularly or if you fast, it isn’t good for the lower chakras – or put in a non-jargon way, it’s bad for you as a human being who is trying to stay tethered to the Earth plane.  Regular eating connects us to the earth.

I am not a nutritionist (so the above definitely does not constitute nutritional advice).  But it is what I’ve noticed with myself and working with other ungrounded people who are doing psychic development. 

________________________________________________________

Symptom of Imbalance #2: You neglect your body habitually and you don’t care about your personal appearance

Another Suggestion: Pay more attention to your body

A great way to take your focus away from your upper chakras and put it on your lower chakras is to treat and pamper your body (on an ongoing basis) and really pay it some attention.

Ways to do this include: spending more time and money on grooming – getting a new haircut, painting your nails; getting a pedicure or manicure; updating your wardrobe (throwing out all your old clothes that you no longer wear and getting some new ones that you love wearing and which make you feel great).  Investing money and energy on your appearance and the way you feel in your body (instead of investing it in psychic development, spiritual growth or some such thing) will help to move energy out of your upper chakras.  If you’re very out of balance, it might be a good idea to set aside some of your budget each month especially to celebrate and take care of your physicality, beauty and appearance.

I know that this may seem not a very appealing task, especially if it’s the middle of winter and you have no money but those are the times when you really need to go shopping (even if it’s to the thrift/charity shop).  I myself have been guilty of wearing jogging bottoms to work and brown and black all the time (especially in the winter and seeing as I work from home).  But it’s great for your sacral chakra if you can dress up in something beautiful and colourful more often, and allow yourself to wear nice things even if you’re not leaving the house.

You have probably seen those TV shows where they take a drab, unhappy-looking person and turn them into someone who looks and feels ten times better because of their haircut and the way they dress.  That’s the power of spending time and money on your appearance – it gives yourself and others the message ‘I honour, love and celebrate my physical aspect.’  And that’s important if you are out of balance with spirituality.

Another way to honour your physicality is to exercise regularly – walking is OK but something that raises your heart rate on a regular basis is even better.  I walk a couple of miles per day but presently I don’t have activities such as cardio which raise my heart rate.  I have done in the past, though and I have noticed the difference it makes to feeling physically present.

________________________________________________________

Symptom of Imbalance #3: you don’t want to do anything non-spiritual – it bores you.

Suggestion: Have some non-spiritual activities in your life whether it bores you or not.

This sounds obvious but having a variety of activities in your life (some of which are nothing to do with spirituality) is important.  The reason why most people don’t need this article is because most normal people have jobs that keep them grounded.  If you work in personal development and spirituality (or if you work alone), you will need some sort of antidote to being in your head and to being alone.  That antidote could be a fun hobby that you do regularly that brings you into contact with people you wouldn’t normally meet.

If you are really out of balance, you WILL have lost the taste for non-spiritual activities and in that case, I suggest a healing session with a professional to help you to bring about more balance into your life.  The taste for normal human activities is one that you need to recover bit by bit, and it comes back as you put your focus there for a while so don’t worry if you are passionate about nothing but spirituality or your inner world for a while even as you explore other interests.  The desire for more normal, human stuff will come back once you focus on it.

Another Suggestion: Make sure you have some non-spiritual people in your life

Make sure that you don’t avoid social contact with people who don’t share your worldview.  In my opinion, being able to relate to people from all walks of life (including those who aren’t overtly into personal or spiritual development) is important for balance.  I know very spiritual people who don’t like having friends who aren’t spiritual but I think that you don’t need to share your worldview with everyone.  Not everyone needs to be acquainted with every single part of you that exists – after all, you are a multi-faceted person and there is more to you than your spirituality.

I agree that if you’re very intimate with someone, you will probably want to share that part of you, but not with everyone who crosses your path.  If you do, you can miss out on what you CAN share with other non-spiritual, non personal–development type people.

________________________________________________________

Symptom of Imbalance #4: you spend loads of time working on your beliefs, goals and plans but you rarely create real change in your life or accomplish anything

Suggestion: Get out of your head and just take the next obvious step in front of you.

When you have a lot of energy in your upper chakras, you may need to get something done, but you can be stuck in planning, visualizing, dreaming, theorizing, tying yourself up in knots and going nowhere fast with that.  At those times, you will need to turn your brain and mind’s eye off and just ask yourself – what is the next step that I could take now to move towards what I want (even if it is really a baby step).  And take it.  That takes you straight out of the realm of ideas and into the realm of action.

________________________________________________________

Symptom of Imbalance #5: The world seems like a very harsh and tragic place all the time

Suggestion: Stop taking everything so seriously and go and have some fun (stimulates the sacral chakra)

Spiritual, empathic people can feel people’s plight and are often thinking about how to save the world.  From there it’s not an easy transition to having fun and seeing the light side of life, yet you need that too as a human being.  Remember that life is not just a school and your purpose isn’t to save the world from itself.  Life is also a fun playground, so switch off from your spiritual mission and make sure you do something that really tickles you regularly.  This isn’t about going for a walk on your own or something dull like that.  I mean real fun.  Go and see a stand-up comedy act, see a friend who makes you laugh really hard, go dancing, etc.  Connect with the naughty, fun and playful you.  Find something that you can do regularly in your week to fill this need for fun and playing.

________________________________________________________

Symptom of Imbalance #6: You are neglecting the practical side of your life

Suggestion: Focus attention on your finances and physical survival (stimulates the root chakra)

Checking your bank balance every day is good because it connects you to your financial reality.  Making a budget is very grounding because it reins your energy in and makes you aware of your present limitations, as unappealing as that will sound to most people.

Cleaning, organizing and tidying is especially good for grounding, as is attending to errands and all those little jobs you have been meaning to do for a while. Preparing food, cooking and baking are all very grounding too. All those aspects of physical life that you would rather run away from are exactly what you need to attend to, in order to stay grounded.

________________________________________________________

FINALLY…

All this talk of cooking, baking and budgeting is all helpful stuff to some degree, but let’s get to the heart of the issue.

If you are out of balance with your spirituality (i.e. addicted to spirituality), you’re running away from something or someone. Imbalanced spirituality is a form of escapism that can become an addiction.

What are you trying to escape from?

It could be a past situation that is too difficult to address and process in a normal, human, emotional way, so you spiritualize it. It could be someone who hurt you. In order to cope with such situations, people can begin to look for an explanation of why such things have happened to them. It’s the spiritual person’s version of finding God after something bad happens. Spirituality is something that should enrich your life, support you and guide you. But it should not be something you depend on like a crutch, an escape mechanism or something that stops you from living life to the fullest. You should not be obsessed with finding out WHY something happened to you or what you are learning from events. Those things can reveal themselves later, in good time.

Here’s a good way of knowing what you could be escaping from:

• What is the thing you still cry about for seemingly no reason? (especially when you’re ill, feeling down or PMS-ing)
• If you shy away from reality, is it because you have anxiety issues that stop you from having a life?
• What is still breaking your heart if you’re honest with yourself?
• What do you dislike about your life that you want to change?

At some point, we all have wounds that make us want to stay in bed and hide away from the world. There are very few people who reach a certain age and have no wounds at all. Find out what yours are and address them in a human, emotional way. We can resolve things on the level of spirit, but we must bring the healing down into the emotional and physical plane for anything to change. Sometimes action needs to be taken to put them to bed.

If you feel your spiritual addiction is connected to something traumatic that happened in the past (or to someone else), you might want to think about booking a cord cutting session with me or with someone else. I am passionate about this technique because it is the one that has helped me most with overcoming my spiritual addiction.

What about you? What keeps you from engaging fully with life?