The Spiritual Trap Nobody Warned Me About || By Phannie Krentzman
I got stuck in the acceptance phase (and nobody warned me). In my early twenties I went in search of the meaning of life. I was riddled with the pain and suffering of existence and desperately wanted to know that there was something more – more joy, more happiness, more satisfaction, more freedom. I couldn’t see the point of going through the success steps society was selling. I wanted something more. I didn’t know what it was exactly, but I knew it had to be out there somewhere.
This longing is what I’ve come to discover is what all humans are striving for, but as a culture we’ve forgotten that our joy and success come from within, not from climbing corporate or spiritual ladders, acquiring ‘things’, traveling for the status and the Insta posts. The drive that gets us to do anything at its root is the drive to live as the freedom we were born with, as the love that emerges all things.
We don’t know that and we often don’t arrive at that when we set out on our journeys of remembering. I certainly didn’t. Most of what I went for in my early days were the opposites of what I wanted to get away from. New cities, new friends, new jobs, anywhere where I didn’t have to have to feel how I felt when I left home. What I found in this early expression of my prison pattern is that I loved to start over. The newness of experiences would clean my slate of baggage and past experience. I could start over, I could feel free. But the same things kept happening. I kept ending up in the same situations from which I was trying to escape– having to sacrifice what I wanted or cared about to keep a job, or relationship, or passion. In every iteration of my journey it kept being reinforced that I couldn’t have what I wanted, and the rage and sadness I felt from that drove me to numb myself and fall asleep to anything that I may have in my heart to express or experience.
Luckily for me, I have quite a bit of awareness alongside my avoidance of conflict or assertion. I noticed very early that the common denominator to my life experiences were me. This awareness turned my journey inwards to discover what I was doing to keep ending up in these circumstances I was constantly trying to outrun.
Like most of us in the early days of our spiritual awakenings, we look to yoga for our answers, and I fell right into that. I jumped completely into Kundalini Yoga. I was suicidally depressed at this time and was willing to try anything to find some sort of joy again. To make a long story short, the gift I was given (from a very rigorous and committed and ultimately a bit traumatic cult-like yoga experience) was presence.
In coming to actual presence in my many varied movement styles, I discovered how much we are never really present; how we just live in the stories in our heads and miss what’s actually happening within and around us all the time.
I got really good at being present. I was a master of just accepting things the way they are and going with the flow. Staying in the present moment for me was very enjoyable, but it came with a dark side no one warned me about. You see, we all have different (only 9 if you can believe it) personality types. And my personality type loves to be directionless and make no waves. So though I had achieved a kind of bliss in my presence, I still wasn’t fulfilling my heart – creating what matters most to me and my contribution to humanity.
The purpose of presence is to be able to be in this moment, free of the stories and confines of your past pains or your future worries. But that isn’t where it stops. You see, when you arrive in presence, you are being and your being emerges your becoming. The whispers of your intuition, the voice of your soul saying to you, follow this, it is who you were born to become. So don’t get stuck like I did in acceptance of what is. Do the work to arrive into your presence, enjoy the wonder of the world and be open and follow those deep-seeded desires that want to blossom through you.
About the Author: Phannie has a long career of being a movement artist, movement and embodiment educator and creator. During her career as a professional dancer, studio owner, and company founder, she spent her time uncovering what is true and real in this world. Originally used as tools to create content for performances with strong messaging about the human experience, she created the embodiment teachings and methodology of the Radical Love Movement.
Phannie has dedicated her life to authentic expression and understanding how consciousness works. She now has alchemical structure to support others in discovery and application of their authentic selves expressed through the body.
