Recently, I coached a woman whose spiritual resume was more impressive than most teachers I know. She’d spent fifteen years and tens of thousands of dollars pursuing spiritual awakening through every conceivable path. Yet as she spoke about her spiritual journey, I felt something heavy in her heart: exhaustion. Deep, bone-weary spiritual exhaustion.

“Gabriel,” she said, “I’ve done everything. I know more about consciousness and spirituality than I ever imagined possible. So why do I feel I’m still further from peace than when I started? Something is missing. What am I doing wrong?”

I recognized myself in her question. I recognized all of us spiritual seekers, seeking to awaken spiritually while sometimes running away from the very thing we want.

If you’ve ever wondered why enlightenment feels so elusive despite your sincere efforts, I want to share something that might surprise you. There’s a paradox at the heart of spiritual awakening that nobody talks about: the paradox of enlightenment. Understanding it changes everything.

The Paradox of Enlightenment: Why Your Spiritual Journey Might Be Leading You Away from the Light

When you feel angry, confused, vulnerable, and upset, where do you go?

You go to a doctor or psychiatrist, a priest, a therapist, a coach, a healer, a specialist, a social worker, a palm reader, or an astrologer.

You take up religion, are born again, get into philosophy, become an agnostic, an atheist, take the Insight or Landmark Seminars, tap your forehead with EFT.

You get all your chakras balanced, your DNA activated, try some reflexology, some kinesiology, go for ear acupuncture, do iridology, hot stone therapy, and get healed with lights, sounds, and crystal bowls.

You meditate, chant mantras, and drink green tea. Try magic mushrooms and psychedelics. Get Reiki, try the Pentecostals, do the Rosary, breathe of fire, speak in tongues, pray, implore, declare and beseech.

You get centered, heart-centered, learn NLP, try actualizations, visualizations, feelingizations, study psychology, do a past life regression, join a Jungian or dream interpretation group.

You get into Rolfing, the Alexander Technique, Feldenkrais, jog, jazzercise, Zumba, spirit dance, trans-dance, practice yoga. You have colonics, get into nutrition, and aerobics, hang upside down, wear psychic jewelry on your nose.

You see your homeopath, chiropractor, naturopath. Or try transactional analysis, discover your Enneagram or Myers-Briggs type, get your meridians balanced, and join a Conscious Something group.

You take antidepressants, get tranquilizers, get some hormone shots and flu shots, try tissue salts, and have your minerals analyzed and balanced. Take Rescue Remedy. Learn astral projection and listen to messages from the Galactic Federation.

You become a vegetarian. Give up sugar. Eat only cabbage. Try macrobiotics, go organic, go raw, non-dairy, and eat no GMOs. Try fasting and intermittent fasting. Take amino acids and anti-acids. Go to health spas. Cook with exotic ingredients. Eat fermented foods. Take brain enzymes, Bach flower remedies, and eat only grapefruit.

You meet with Native American medicine men and do a sweat lodge. Connect with the Pleiades. Go on a vision quest. Find your Animal Guide or Spirit Guide and build them an altar. You invoke your ancestors’ spirit, the four directions, the spirits of the wild, feed elementals you can’t see.

You go to the Amazon jungle and visit a shaman. Go on a retreat. Sing tribal chants. Relive past lives. Visit the underworld and retrieve your soul. Scream primal screams. Take medicine plants, ayahuasca, peyote, San Pedro, Santa Maria, iboga. Hold hands in a circle, sing, drum, dance, and get high.

You go to India. Try to find your soulmate, eat, pray, and love. Find a new guru. Take off your clothes. Get blessed by Baba Somebody. Swim in the Ganges naked. Stare at the sun, howl at the moon. Shave your head. Eat with your fingers, get messy, and take cold showers. Sing Kirtan songs with people you’ve never met but now call your spiritual family.

You try hypnotic regression. Time-line therapy. Do psychodrama. Punch pillows. Write letters to your parents and your future self. Join a marriage encounter group, and discover your Imago. Go to Unity. Go to Agape. Go to Bible study groups. Write affirmations and stick them to a mirror. Make a vision board.

You get re-birthed. Read Angel Cards. Do the Tarot cards. Get into the occult. Study magic. Work with a kahuna. Join a mystery school. Learn a secret handshake. Try color therapy, swim with the dolphins, and listen to subliminal and Paraliminal tapes. Study Zen and cast the I-Ching.

You take a shamanic journey. Walk the Camino de Santiago. Go on a pilgrimage. Visit Mecca. Walk barefoot. Walk on your hands and knees. Hug a tree. Hike up a mountain, sit on a rock, and watch the sunrise and sunset. Read Nostradamus. Prepare for the worst and hope for the best.

You go to Tibet, become a monk, and sell your Ferrari. Chase after holy men. Meet the Dalai Lama. Try to find Babaji. Become a yogi. Renounce sex, watching television, going to the movies, and social media. Wear some yellow robes. Join a cult. You try Chinese herbs, moxibustion, shiatsu, acupressure, and feng-shui.

You try to improve the ecology. Save the environment. Save the planet. Walk for love, against injustice and war, and for peace. Get an aura reading. Carry a crystal. Carry a gratitude rock. Get a Hindu sidereal astrological interpretation. Visit a trans-medium.

You go for sex therapy. Try Tantric massage and tantric sex. Join a polyamorous group. Travel to Fatima and Lourdes. Soak in the hot springs. Wear therapeutic wooden sandals. Get grounded. Get connected. Get centered again. Raise your kundalini. Inhale more prana in, and exhale out the black negativity.

You try golden needle acupuncture. Drink colloidal gold. Check out snake and bear gallbladders, Tiger, and Lion’s teeth. Try chakra breathing, holotropic breathing, belly breathing. Get your aura cleansed. Smudge your home with salvia and sage. Meditate in the great pyramids of Egypt, Mexico, or under a wooden one you built at home.

You take more courses, masterclasses, and workshops. Buy lots of books that you never read. Watch Oprah, TED Talks, and Gaiam TV. Subscribe to lots of journals, email newsletters, websites, and podcasts. Attend every webinar, teleconference, and online Summit you can find – especially the free ones. Download all the mp3s, mp4s, and pdfs your computer can fit. Like and share every inspiring post on your Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook feed. Become a guru or shaman yourself.

You, me, and countless others have tried these things—some of us have tried them all—as part of our endless search for something we call ‘Enlightenment,’ which promises an answer to our human suffering, pain, confusion, and shame.

Reading this list, you might feel seen. You might feel called out. You might even feel a little defensive, thinking, “But some of these practices have genuinely helped me!” And you’d be right. Many of these approaches offer real value and healing. I’m not arguing against them.

But here’s what I want you to consider: What if the very seeking itself—this constant reaching outside ourselves for the next technique, teacher, or transformation—has become a sophisticated form of avoidance? What if our spiritual seeking has become another way to run from the one place where true awakening actually lives?

Let that sink in.

What if enlightenment isn’t something we find “out there” in the world, and that’s precisely why we can’t seem to grasp it? What if the great teacher Osho was pointing to something profound when he said that every person is born Zorba the Greek and must learn to die as Zorba the Buddha—not by abandoning our humanity, but by fully embracing it?

The Paradox of Enlightenment

“That which gives light must endure the burning.”

– Victor Frankl

In my own journey, I discovered something that shattered everything I thought I knew about spiritual awakening. During my darkest period—facing financial ruin, the death of my mother, and a dark night of the soul—I noticed that the more desperately I tried to transcend my pain through spiritual practices, the more intense it became.

It was as if life was saying, “You cannot rise above what you refuse to embrace.”

This led me to understand what I now call the Paradox of Enlightenment:

The more you chase after the light, the more you have to confront your darkness.

But here’s the part that changes everything: The path towards the light requires you first to love and embrace ALL of your humanity – your light, darkness, and shadows – BEFORE you can even attempt to become ‘enlightened’.

Carl Jung captured this beautifully: “One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.”

Let that sink in for a moment.

This would make enlightenment an inside job, wouldn’t it? It would also make it available to you here and now, wouldn’t it? So why do we keep looking for it outside of ourselves?

The answer might surprise you: because facing our own darkness requires a kind of courage that our culture doesn’t teach us. It requires what I call becoming a Heart Warrior—someone who has learned to meet their shadows with compassion rather than condemnation.

To experience ‘enlightenment,’ you first have to stop giving a darn about it and instead get shamelessly real and connected to what makes you fully human and connected to the humanity in others. All this so that you can eventually transcend it and finally arrive at the Lightness of your being.

The Heart as Sacred Container

Over years of guiding others through their spiritual journeys, I’ve discovered something profound: your heart is the only space vast enough to hold both your light and your darkness without needing to choose between them.

Your heart doesn’t judge your anger as unspiritual. It doesn’t condemn your jealousy as a character flaw. It doesn’t reject your fear as evidence of insufficient faith. Your heart simply holds whatever arises with infinite tenderness, the way a loving parent holds a crying child.

This is why fully embracing both your light and darkness requires courage and radical self-compassion. Becoming a Heart Warrior means learning to use your heart as the only unconditionally loving and compassionate space where your light can embrace your darkness; and where Zorba the Greek and Zorba the Buddha can dance together.

What This Means for Your Journey

If you’ve been on the spiritual path for any length of time, you’ve probably experienced moments where you felt close to some breakthrough, only to find yourself confronting deeper layers of fear, anger, or shame. Rather than seeing this as failure, what if you recognized it as the path working exactly as it should?

What if your shadows aren’t obstacles to enlightenment but doorways to it?

What if your most challenging emotions aren’t evidence of spiritual inadequacy but invitations to discover the love that can hold anything?

This doesn’t mean wallowing in darkness or abandoning practices that serve you. It means approaching your humanity—all of it—with the same reverence you’d offer to the sacred. Because that’s exactly what it is.

Your anger carries wisdom about your boundaries. Your fear points toward what matters most to you. Your sadness reveals the depth of your capacity to love. When met with curiosity rather than judgment, even your most difficult emotions become teachers.

Final Thoughts

We often approach spiritual growth like achievement—another thing to excel at. True growth happens when you surrender the need to be spiritually “successful.”

We’ve been taught that spiritual growth is about becoming more than human. The truth is precisely the opposite: it’s about becoming fully human, embracing every aspect of this embodied experience with presence and love.

So here’s my invitation to you: What if you stopped trying to fix, improve, or transcend yourself and instead began the radical experiment of falling in love with who you actually are—shadows and light together?

What if enlightenment isn’t about becoming someone else but about discovering the luminous awareness that has always been present, even in your darkest moments?

What if the very seeking that has exhausted you could transform into a coming home to yourself?

This is the paradox of enlightenment in its fullest expression: the more authentically you embrace your complete humanity, the more naturally your essential light begins to shine. Not because you’ve eliminated your shadows, but because you’ve learned to love them.

Your spiritual journey is uniquely yours. You can’t follow someone else’s formula and expect it to resonate with your soul’s particular curriculum.

—Gabriel

PS. When you're ready, here are several ways I can support you on your journey.
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