Jeffrey Allen shares five ways to push past spiritual practice roadblocks: meditate first thing in the morning for consistency, reconnect with your larger goal when motivation drops, see the urge to quit as a sign of breakthrough, avoid overloading yourself, and treat sleepiness during practice as progress, not failure.
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Hi, I'm Geoffrey Allen, an energy healer and spiritual teacher. And I want to give you five tips to overcoming spiritual roadblocks. This is really important because spiritual growth is not supposed to be difficult. But over the years, I've noticed with myself and also my students that there are some common patterns. We get into some places where we get stuck easily in our spiritual growth and. And it feels like it's difficult, and sometimes we even give up. So I want to give you five tips today to get you through those roadblocks in a very easy way so you can enjoy your spiritual growth. Now, tip number one has to do with that sense of feeling, like there's no time or you're not sure when you're going to put this new spiritual practice into your busy schedule. So say you're trying to do a meditation. It's five or ten minutes a day. What I recommend is that you do the spiritual practice first thing in the morning, because when you wake up, your mind is rested and your body is rested and you're ready to really tune in in a very easy way and get the biggest benefit from that training. Now, also, you'll notice if you do it first thing in the morning that you'll have more time during your day because you're more relaxed, you're more present during the day, so things will actually go much smoother. It's a way to save you a lot of time. Now, the second tip has to do with when you're feeling like you have no motivation to. To do your practice. So say you just don't feel like you want to do it or it's just hard to get into it. And what I suggest there is that you need to focus on the bigger picture. You want to remember, why are you doing the spiritual growth? What are you trying to get to? So what is the goal for feeling happier or feeling more joyous in your life or improving your relationships? Whatever your goal is, if you remember that, your motivation comes back. If you're just focused on I've got to sit down for 10 minutes and do and meditate. Sometimes that can be a challenge. So tip number two is to shift your focus to that final goal or what you're trying to get out of your spiritual practice. Now, number three has to do with that roadblock when you feel like you just want to quit. So either it feels like the program is too hard or it's too challenging or you're struggling in some way. You know, there's a whole list of excuses we come up with when we Hit that point and decide, you know, I just need to quit this program. Maybe it's not for me, or I need to find another program. So what's happening there is that the program is actually helping you move through some of your resistance. So the tip here is you have to shift your perspective from, oh, I'm just about to have a breakdown and I need to stop into feeling like, oh, I'm about to have a breakthrough. Not a breakdown, a breakthrough. And that's why my resistance is coming up. That's why. That's why my mind is giving me lots of excuses why I should drop on a quit. As I'm about to push through whatever my old pattern was and move into a new state. And I see this all the time with students. When you're right up against the edge, just ready to make your biggest progress, people tend to drop out. So just remember that if you feel like you need to quit, probably you need to stay in just a little bit longer. You'll make it through that rough spot and move into a really easy and smooth state after that. So that's tip number three. Now, tip number four is kind of the opposite. So oftentimes we're in a program and we decide that it's working so well that we want to speed it up. So instead of doing one meditation a day, we do two or three or four. We start loading several programs together at the same time because we think we're going to get more benefit. Now what happens there is if you do this, you're going to get overwhelmed. You're actually going to push yourself to that point where you feel like quitting faster because you're going to overwhelm your system. Change is easier if you're going to kind of smoothly, right? And so you have to keep that in mind is just take things step by step. And sometimes you'll hear this called microlearning. When you're getting just a 3 minute or 5 minute or even a little 10 minute thing each day, that's just the right amount. It's enough learning to keep you moving forward. But it's not so much to push you into that state where you're getting overwhelmed or struggling or feeling like you need to drop out. So I recommend just taking it step by step. That's tip number four. The fifth tip has to do with once you're in the program and you're experiencing it. Oftentimes with spiritual growth, you'll feel like you're starting to fall asleep a little bit or you're going unconscious during meditation. And it just feels like maybe I'm not doing it right or this isn't for me. And somehow you feel like you're failing. Now, this is actually not the case either. See, what you have to understand is that spiritual growth is about your awareness and your consciousness. And the idea is to expand that consciousness beyond your normal waking state into some new experiences, some new consciousness. Well, guess what's in those places right now? Unconsciousness. Right. So that place you're trying to grow into right now is where you're unconscious. Otherwise you wouldn't need to grow into it. Now, as you move forward in your spiritual growth, you'll move into this unconscious place, and you'll tend to go a little unconscious. You'll tend to fall asleep or pass out or just get spacey for a few days. And most people think I'm failing or I'm not doing it right or I don't like it. So keep in mind when that happens, that you're succeeding, you're not failing. If you're falling asleep, that means you're going the right direction and you want to keep going because you're making great progress. So those are my five tips for spiritual growth. Remember again that spiritual growth is not supposed to be difficult. It's supposed to be really fun. So just keep in mind, if you feel like you have no time, then schedule first thing in the morning and do it every day. If you feel like you're not having motivation, remember to look at that bigger picture. Why are you in this? What are you trying to get out of it? If you feel like you need to quit, remember that that's exactly the time that you need to lean in a little bit. You're going to get the biggest benefit because you're about to have a huge breakthrough. If you feel like you need to go faster, just take it easy, slow down, trust the program that you're in, and just go step by step. And if you feel like you're failing because you're going unconscious, just remember that that's actually a sign of success rather than failure. I'd also love to hear if you have any tips or techniques that you use to help you get through your spiritual roadblocks and make your spiritual growth easier and more fun for you. Thanks for listening.
