The Sacred Role of Struggle on the Spiritual Path

Dear fellow spiritual traveler,

I’ve been putting out content on the Internet for over 14 years. During this decade-plus time period, I’ve had the great fortune to witness, observe, and take part in the resurgence of spirituality alongside the advent of social media in our modern-day society. Witnessing us remember our innate connection with the Divine and reclaim it as a collective has been the gift of a lifetime to witness and take part in.

At the same time, over these years, something has troubled me and given me pause: a mass belief has formed that says “truly spiritual people don’t struggle.” I have witnessed this in many of my private clients over the years; good-hearted, intuitive, soulful people devoted to a spiritual path saying something to me like, “When I struggle, I am doing something wrong, I am in a “low vibrational” state, and I, therefore, need to figure out what I'm doing wrong and fix it so that I can get out of the struggle and enter back into a “high vibrational” state.”

This belief system is incorrect and harmful to the soul—because struggle plays a sacred role in our spiritual paths. We have become (and are still increasingly becoming) a society that has lost touch with the sacred roles of struggle, stress, discomfort, and challenge in our lives.

My intention in writing this blog post is to invite us all to more deeply reclaim the sacred roles each of these experiences play in our lives so that we can live our lives fully as spiritual beings having a human experience and reclaim our power in the process.

The Importance of Struggle

One of my dearest teachers, Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh, taught us, “When you know how to suffer, you suffer much less. When you know how to make good use of suffering, you can create very wonderful things like compassion, understanding, love, and happiness. It’s like the mud and the lotus flower. You cannot grow lotus flowers if you do not have the mud. So, those of us who know how to make good use of the mud can grow beautiful lotus flowers.”

As you journey along your soul’s curriculum, face the unique challenges that your soul is here to face, and learn the specific lessons that your soul is here to learn, I want you to know this: It’s important to struggle with something. Somewhere along the way, we internalized the message that we’re not supposed to struggle.

In order for us to remain alive, our heart MUST expand and it MUST contract — or we die. The landscape of our lives is the same. In order for us to feel fully alive, we need to accept, allow, and embrace the full spectrum of the human experience. We must expand in joy and delight, and we must contract in struggle and challenge. Both are necessary.

When we’re growing, it’s uncomfortable. THIS IS GOOD! A huge disservice has been done to the collective in spiritual growth and personal development spaces because the orientation has been towards how to get rid of challenging experiences instead of how to navigate and growth through them.

That contraction — learning to receive its medicine, messily and wildly grow through it, not wallow in it, and learn to use the tools that are right for us to help us navigate through is key.

The Cycle of Growth

When you set an intention or make a decision around something you would like to embody, experience, or manifest, you will have that brief period of expansion in which you feel so lit up by that new adventure you’re ready to go on. And then, you’ll be in a contraction. You’re going to descend down into the shadow…into the lesson…into the struggle…in that challenge…so that you can face it, learn from it, integrate it, and expand once again to manifest your desires. 

And then, you’ll repeat this. Over and over again. It’s a cycle of growth. There is a seasonal intelligence to our own growth — just like nature itself.

A Prayer for Embracing Struggle

Spirit, thank you for helping me honor
the full spectrum of my human experience.
May I face my struggles with reverence, trust, and devotion.
May I grow through what I go through,
and may my healing serve the whole.

With care,
Heather