How To Cultivate A Healthy Spiritual Practice That Is Free From Toxic Positivity
New age spirituality is highly saturated with wishes of love and light, and good vibes only. It's hard not to see why. The past few years have certainly not been easy for us as Pluto in Capricorn influences extreme societal changes. Toxic positivity has become rampant in spiritual spaces in retaliation to all the hardships we've faced as a global community. It affirms the notion that spirituality is the disillusion and erasure of reality and a means of escaping mortal challenges.
What Is Toxic Positivity?
Toxic positivity is a harmful management of emotional experiences. It has become intertwined with modern spiritual movements and become a practice of evading or rejecting difficult human emotions, such as sadness, pain, or anger. Toxic positivity perpetuates the idea that love, light, and a happy mental attitude are the only way to be a spiritually aligned person. Through this dysfunctional practice, a sense of goodness is projected onto states of being and life experiences that are light, relatable, and openly accepted and understood. Likewise, badness is projected onto states of being and life experiences that are heavy, difficult to manage, and require more time, care, and closer inspection to acknowledge and understand.
Why Is It Harmful?
Shutting out perceivably negative things and experiences does nothing to remove darkness from the world and instead lessens your understanding of and ability to navigate life's unpleasantries. Toxic positivity is a harmful practice because its impacts are superficial, while internally, they keep you disconnected from your humanness and reality. It might sound good, but excessive positivity is dismissive of the balance of light and shadow that encapsulates the universe and breeds ignorance, denial, guilt, shame, and a severe lack of social and personal awareness. We cannot begin to heal ourselves and the world around us if we only acknowledge one-half of existence and overlook the healing dimensions of the darkness.
What Are The Signs Of Toxic Positivity And Harmful Spiritual Practice?
You run away from deep emotions that feel unfamiliar and challenging.
You live in denial of reality to maintain a spiritual, otherworldly, fairy, or god-like persona and image (it's all very Neptunian and ungrounded).
Your practice feels forced because you're avoiding your authentic self (spirituality shouldn't feel like you're trying too hard. You are already a spiritual being!).
You hyper-analyze everything that happens to you in search of deeper meaning instead of being present through all your experiences (observe and feel things at the moment, reflect at the end).
You dismiss difficult real-world experiences or ignore your problems and believe that faith is enough to change one's fate (not destiny, there's a difference).
An awareness of your divinity has caused you to lose touch with your human nature and humility (It sounds like an overactive crown chakra).
You recite generic and unspecific quotes to try to positive-think your way out of a difficult situation.
You believe you've brought bad experiences upon yourself if you don't maintain a hyper-positive attitude (karma determines your fate in future existences and is not equivalent to manifesting misfortune in this existence).
Maintain A Healthy Practice By Staying Grounded And Balanced
Having a balanced connection to your human and divine self will help you to escape the choppy waters of toxic positivity and harmful spiritual practice. Stay grounded in your energy, and spend equal amounts of time growing as an individual, connecting with the people around you, and working through your personal challenges as you develop your belief system and connection to the universe (or God, source, spirit).
Allow your faith to fill you with optimism and validation; let it enrich your life with a deeper understanding of what it means to be human. Allow your humanness to comfort your soul and anchor you further into your purpose and presence. Be true to yourself and develop an honest relationship with life that honors and respects the light and shadow of raw human experience.
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