Thursday, 3 July 2025

Navigating the everyday Struggles of a Spiritual Seeker

The spiritual path promises profound transformation, inner peace, and enlightenment. Yet anyone who has walked this road knows it's rarely as smooth as the books make it seem. Today, let's shed light on the struggles that spiritual seekers rarely talk about openly—and more importantly, how to navigate them with grace. 

Number 1. The Comparison Trap: When Other People's Light Dims Your Own

We all have been there: scrolling through social media and seeing someone posting about their "life-changing" meditation retreat while we're struggling to sit still for five minutes? Or read about a teacher who achieved enlightenment at 25 while you're still wrestling with the same anxieties you had years ago? Welcome to the comparison trap—perhaps the most common pitfall on the spiritual journey. 

The Reality Check: Everyone's path unfolds differently. That person posting about their breakthrough may have been struggling silently for years before that moment. You don’t know how they live or how they feel. And it does not matter! Your journey isn't behind schedule; it's uniquely yours. 

The Practice: When comparison arises, pause and notice. I am comparing something incomparable. And it’s all in my mind: the image of me, the image of the other, and it’s the same mind that creates these images and then compares them. A lot of drama, but it’s all just thoughts and images. See that and let it be. It is not something to fight with, as you would give it more power, but rater notice it as it is and it dissolves. 


Number 2. Spiritual Bypassing: When Enlightenment Becomes Avoidance 

"I don't get angry anymore—I've transcended that emotion." "Everything happens for a reason, so I don't need to grieve this loss." "I'm sending love and light instead of setting boundaries." “There is no one here”, so I don’t need to look at my life, beliefs and old programs. Sound familiar? This is spiritual bypassing—using spiritual concepts to avoid dealing with human emotions and real-world challenges.

The Reality Check: True spirituality doesn't mean floating above human experience; it means diving deeper into it with awareness and compassion. Your anger, sadness, and frustration aren't obstacles to overcome, they're part of being human and all is allowed. 

The Practice: Next time you catch yourself spiritually bypassing, try this: "I notice I'm having a human experience right now, and that's perfectly okay." Feel the emotion fully, then ask what it's trying to tell you. Sometimes the most spiritual thing you can do is cry, set a boundary, or ask for help. 

Number 3. The Perfect Practice Myth: When More Becomes the Enemy of Enough 

Many seekers believe they need an elaborate morning routine, hours of meditation, or expensive retreats to make "real" progress. This perfectionist mindset often leads to all-or-nothing thinking: either you're doing it "right" or you're failing and there is something wrong with you. 

The Reality Check: The most profound transformations often come from simple, consistent practices. Sometimes it’s enough to take a deep breath, stop and listen. What is here right now? 

The Practice: Choose one simple practice you can do daily, even on your worst days. It might be three conscious breaths upon waking, expressing gratitude before meals, or taking a mindful walk. Consistency creates transformation, not complexity. 

Number 4. Information Overload: When Learning Becomes Another Form of Avoiding 

In our information-rich age, it's easy to become a spiritual consumer rather than a spiritual practitioner. We read endless books, attend workshops, and collect teachings like trophies, but somehow still feel empty. 

The Reality Check: Knowledge without practice is just spiritual entertainment. One teaching deeply integrated is worth more than a hundred concepts intellectually understood. 

The Practice: Can you live one day without reading or watching YouTube videos? Without guided meditations, energy transmissions, healings by other people and tune in into your own deeper wisdom? It’s already here waiting to be acknowledged. 

Number 5. The Ego's Spiritual Identity: When Seeking Becomes Another Way to Be Special

Sometimes our spiritual journey becomes another way for the ego to feel superior. We develop a "spiritual identity" that looks down on those who aren't as "evolved" or "awakened." We use spiritual language to justify judgment or create separation. And it may seem that being right is above being free. But is it? 

The Reality Check: True spiritual maturity often looks remarkably ordinary. The most awakened people you meet might never mention their practice. They're simply present, kind, and genuinely interested in others. They don’t brag, don’t call themselves awakened or enlightened, rather their presence speaks for itself and has a flavor of freedom and simplicity. 

The Practice: Notice when you feel spiritually superior or different from others. In those moments, remember that everyone is doing their best with their current level of awareness. The person who annoys you most might be your greatest teacher in disguise. See if you can thank them for a lesson and see what that lesson is for you in the moment. 

Number 6. Impatience with Results: When Transformation Feels Too Slow

We live in an instant-gratification culture, and unfortunately, we often bring this expectation to our spiritual practice. When we don't feel dramatically different after months of meditation or years of seeking, doubt creeps in. “I must be doing something wrong, because after all this time I should be feeling differently”. 

The Reality Check: Spiritual growth is more like tending a garden than flipping a switch. Most transformation happens so gradually that we don't notice it until we look back and realize how much we've changed. And you can see the change while looking back- some old ways have fallen away, same old situations feel different and you respond in a lighter way. 

The Practice: Keep a simple journal noting small shifts in your daily experience. Perhaps you didn't react as strongly to criticism, felt more comfortable in silence, or found compassion for someone who usually irritates you. These seemingly minor changes are actually profound victories. 

Moving Forward with Compassion 

The spiritual path isn't about becoming perfect; it's about becoming more fully human. Every struggle you face, every doubt that arises, every moment you feel like giving up -these aren't signs you're failing. They're simply part of the journey. 

What we call blocks are invitations in disguise. What feels like a trap is an emotion that is waiting to be felt. Remember, the very fact that you're aware of these struggles means you're already more conscious than most. Be patient with yourself. Be kind to your human experience. And trust that every step forward, no matter how small, is moving you toward the peace and wisdom you seek. The path isn't always easy, but it's always worth it. 

Write to me, I want to hear from you.

 Answer these questions: 

 Have you ever tried self-inquiry, if not, why not? 

 When it comes to awakening, what is your biggest struggle right now? 

 What is your biggest question that you would like me to address around awakening?



Thursday, 13 October 2022

Direct Pointing Sessions on Video

Starting this Saturday watch recordings of Direct Pointing sessions and follow Jim’s journey of discovery. A new video will be released every Saturday for five weeks. Subscribe to the channel to get notified when a new part comes out. 

Jim came to the Liberation Unleashed forum and was open to share his process with everyone, just like people in Gateless Gatecrashers and Liberation Unleashed books. This is a self-inquiry on video, where I ask questions and Jim has to look and find answers by himself. You can use this video as a guide for you too. When a question is asked, before watching Jim’s reply, first answer it for yourself. 

Hope you enjoy this and if you find it helpful, share with your friends!



Monday, 27 July 2020

What is your heart’s deepest longing?

Very often the heart wants peace. There's also wanting freedom, wanting to expand, to love deeper, to be open, to be recognized, to heal. It's good to know what the heart wants, so that we can give it to it. And that literally means giving it your own attention. Attention works like a key and the heart is like a lock.

So if you give your attention to the heart over and over again, during the day, multiple times, five seconds, five minutes, it doesn't matter. It's just remembering to put that attention into your heart and feeling what is actually there, like honestly here, nurturing the heart. 

This is the path to inner peace, to feeling more spaciousness, more stillness, more feeling at home, at ease, relaxed in your own being. When the heart gets what it wants, then it rests at peace here. It's like - nothing to do, nowhere to go, but be here, simply enjoying and allowing energy from the heart to flow freely, to feel that love, to love unconditionally. The heart wants is to love and to feel loved and give more love. 

That's your own sense of love. It's coming from within. The love is not outside and it's not something that you have to catch and bring it to your heart. It's something that is coming from inside and it resonates with other hearts and it can share that energy between them.

More on Youtube. 

Sunday, 5 July 2020

YouTube Video Series: Finding Inner Peace

Sitting at home for a long time gave me a good opportunity to re-examine what is the most important and meaningful for me. 

I enjoy so much working with my clients assisting them with self-inquiry. It’s a great joy for me to witness and be part of the self-discovery process, where clarity gets revealed. It is great to be able to give real value and help my clients to relax in life, to find lasting peace and joy in everyday living. 

I just wish that more people could find peace in their own sense of being. How could I get the message across to more people? Here something new has taken up my focus and interest: I have created a YouTube video series called Finding Inner Peace in your own sense of being. 

Today I am releasing the first part. 

Using my experience of hundreds of hours of guiding to the sense of being I have set up a course of self-inquiry. I share questions and metaphors and give a different perspective to look at what is always here, but goes unnoticed. I invite you to take part in this experience. It’s like an experiment where you can answer given questions for yourself and see what you learn, what else you discover, what new insights come. You do not have to agree or disagree with my ideas, the important thing is that you find out what you really think and feel. 

In this course, I invite you to examine different aspects of your experience and that leads you into recognizing and connecting to what is true for you. 

The first video is about obstacles to inner peace, what they are, and how to turn them into allies. It is a big question — how to deal with fear, resistance, and distraction? I invite you to see them differently and use them as your stepping stones towards inner freedom. 

Second video looks at expectations, and how they obstruct seeing what is here with ideas of what this should be. It’s one of the biggest challenges on the path to peace, as we all have them. And they keep running “not enough” program until examined. 

In the third video, I invite you to take a fresh look at the mind, what you know about your own mind, how you think, how is imagination working in your own experience, what has language got to do with it. How to get the mind to end the struggle and fight what is?

The fourth video is about heart and feelings. How to find inner peace within and with all these feelings. I will invite you to explore and find out what is your heart’s biggest longing. Once it is known, you can satisfy it, by giving your attention to it. Then the constant sense of deep longing can self-release. Thereof more spaciousness and peace are felt in your own being. 

Then we will look at the body and what this body is in actual experience. I will invite you to reevaluate the assumed default perception and description of the body and rediscover what is going on in your experience. 

This is just for the starters. Subscribe to my channel if you like to be notified when the next video is released and let’s get into this self-inquiry together. :) Invite your friends. Write about what you would like to explore. I will post a new video on Sundays. 

I also want to say that I am new to video content creation and I have so much to learn. It is fun and quite a challenge. It takes many hours of work to get a video made as I am learning on the go. Hope that you will see the quality improvement with each video. 

Enjoy exploring. 

With love. 







Tuesday, 2 June 2020

What Are You Looking For?


Do you often stop and evaluate, what is it that you are looking for precisely?

Seeking energy always wants something. Something else, than what is here. It needs to understand, to get, to achieve, to be heard, to be validated, etc. It’s a nonstop drive that is literally saying, what is here, what I have, what I am is not enough. And so we are on a carousel of trying to get something, to fix, to satisfy the thirst of seeking.

When you ask this question of yourself, what is the answer? What are you looking for in life?

The ultimate answer is peace. That’s like the last question after all the other questions have ceased. How to find inner peace in life? How to be at peace with yourself and others? How to be at rest, always? All the tensions and contractions want to release, naturally. But how to get there?

This peace, stillness, spaciousness, silence is always here underneath all turbulence. It takes noticing. It is here when you look AT it. Then looking for something else shifts to looking at this that is. The peace is found here, underneath all thinking and feeling- like a background in which all the waves of happenings are free to come and go. It's like diving deeply in the experience that is happening now and being aware of all the waves at the mind level and at the same time being aware of being aware. What is that knows of all the waves and peace?

Peace does not come and go. It’s here now, even this moment. What are you focusing on, what is attention landing on? Is it peace or tension? To get to peace, first, we need to meet that tension that is asking for our attention. Being aware of contracted energy, meeting it with respect and kindness, non-judgment, allowing, welcoming allows that contraction to self-release. And what is here when tension dissolves? Space. And peace is here when you are resting as that space. It is inside your own heart. There is also joy there, the joy of being, that’s is sweet and innocent. And that is available in every moment.

It takes a noticing and looking at what is presently here.


For more info on how I can assist you to find what you are looking for, please visit my website.
www.Ilonaciunaite.com