Why People Abandon Inner Work and the Path to the Temple of Secrets

By Bernhard Guenther, November 19, 2025

Chapters: 

• • Are you familiar with this pattern?
  • Everyone wants the truth, until…
  • The Law of Seven and The Necessity of Disillusionment
  • The Intervals: Where Everything Falls Apart
  • Nothing Remains the Same
  • The Necessity of Shocks To Awaken
  • Two Types of Shocks
  • A Global Shock: The COVID Pandemic
  • Why Shocks Are Essential for Inner Work
  • The Importance of Spiritual Will, Sincerity, and Humility
  • Spiritual Pride and the Luciferic Temptation
  • The Temple of Secrets

Are you familiar with this pattern?

You feel the need to make fundamental changes within yourself and in your life.

It might start with something simple, such as working out, losing weight, or eating healthier.

Or perhaps you feel the pull to delve deeper into psycho-spiritual work, such as shadow work, inner child healing, somatic trauma release, relationship work, or establishing a regular practice, like meditation, sincere prayer, Qi Gong, Tai Qi, Breath Work, or the Yoga Asanas.

You’re inspired. You start reading, watching videos, maybe even sign up for a class, course, retreat, or workshop to deepen the process and implement what you’ve learned into daily life.

But at some point, the excitement fades.

You don’t finish the book, the course, or the workshop. You stop practicing consistently.

Old patterns creep back in. You get distracted.

You tell yourself all kinds of excuses about why you can’t do this work right now, why you can’t finish that book, practice, or course. Maybe you blame the content, the practices, the teacher, or external circumstances.

Perhaps you start complaining and projecting onto others how “they” are not “doing the work,” whether it’s your partner, friends, family, or people in the world, but it is really your own unconscious projection about how you feel about yourself.

Complaining is often a subtle form of victim consciousness that the wounded ego indulges in. And it’s incredibly tempting. That’s why the spiritual warrior attitude of no complaining is one of the hardest to embody, because it forces you to face yourself directly.

Perhaps you start giving unsolicited advice to people who don’t ask for it, when, in truth, you need to apply what you’re preaching more sincerely.

Offering guidance and advice without being asked is an infringement on free will. Even when driven by good intentions, it can create unnecessary resistance and sometimes make things worse.

Maybe you tell yourself you don’t need to do this work, that you’re already advanced and know it all. But in truth, the ego has hijacked the process.

You mistake a spiritualized persona for genuine awakening, using philosophical or spiritual ideas to bypass the more challenging somatic, psychological, and emotional work.

What feels like evolution is often subtle pride, avoiding the deeper work while believing you’re more evolved than others.

You might tell yourself the classic excuse: “I don’t have time” or “This isn’t the right time.”

Or you think you’re doing the work, but really, you’re just intellectualizing. You confuse mental awareness with transformation, mistaking the collection of knowledge and information for genuine understanding and embodied wisdom.

You talk about your triggers and issues, but never truly integrate or embody the healing.

And so you keep lying to yourself, wasting time and energy, imagining you’re on the path of awakening, while your false persona hijacked the process long ago.

I can relate to all of this. I’ve lied to myself plenty of times. I’ve had my own excuses and rationalizations.

And the same resistance still comes up at times if I don’t push through inertia, distraction, avoidance, or the traps of self-pity (”poor me”) and self-importance (“better than”). Two sides of the same narcissistic ego, which we all have to varying degrees.

I’ve also observed this pattern in many people I’ve worked with over the years.

Why do so many seekers begin the inner work but drop out halfway?

Why do courses, books, and practices that once sparked insight end up abandoned, half-read, half-done, and half-integrated?

Why do we start journeys of transformation, only to find ourselves months or years later back in the same unconscious patterns and dynamics we tried to break free from?

We live in a time where access to spiritual knowledge has never been easier. We read the books, watch the videos, take the courses, meditate, journal our shadows, and set New Year’s resolutions.

But most of us don’t follow through. We get distracted. We get “too busy.”

We sabotage ourselves. We fall at the first wave of resistance.

Real inner work isn’t comfortable. It demands everything the wounded ego is built to avoid: facing the shadow, feeling the emotions we repressed, breaking free from childhood wounding and conditioning, and stepping into radical truth.

Here’s the deeper truth.

We lack the sincerity, spiritual will, inner fire, and determination, along with full self-responsibility, humility, and radical honesty, to walk the path all the way through.

Especially when resistance appears and it becomes uncomfortable.

Everyone wants the truth, until…

Everyone wants the truth, until it reveals aspects of themselves they’d rather not see, or it doesn’t match their preferred idea of what “awakening” should look like.

The most important question you can ask is: Why do I want to do this work? Why do I do what I do?

If there’s even a trace of ambition to “become somebody”, whether a coach, therapist, teacher, content creator, or spiritual influencer, as the main driving force behind doing psycho-spiritual work, then sincerity is already lost.

The ego has hijacked the process.

And with that hijacking comes an entry point for interference by hostile forces and Luciferic beings, who feed off spiritual ambition and grandiosity and will lead you even more astray while you “dream of being awake,” as it is often described in the esoteric tradition.

This doesn’t mean that doing this work professionally or wanting to help others is inherently wrong.

However, ideally, that path emerges organically from deep personal experience and sincere inner transformation, following many years of study and inner work, much like the journey of the wounded healer, rather than from a drive for recognition, success, or ambition.

Psycho-spiritual inner work is not a career. It’s not a hobby or a pastime.

If done correctly, it is a destructive process that will question everything you think you want and desire, and expose the lies you tell yourself.

I’ve had to face this in myself, more than once. I’ve seen the same temptation in many others. It’s part of the journey.

So the real question is: Do you truly want to awaken, or just be happy in your dream state?

“The truth of the matter is that most people who say they want awakening don’t actually want to awaken. They want their version of awakening.

What they actually want is to be really happy in their dream state. And that’s okay, if that’s as far as they’ve evolved.

However, the real, sincere impulse toward enlightenment is something that extends far beyond the desire to improve our dream state.

It is an impulse that is willing to subject itself to whatever is needed in order to wake up.

The authentic impulse toward enlightenment is that internal prayer asking for whatever it is that will bring us to a full awakening, no matter whether it turns out to be wonderful or terrible.

It is an impulse that puts no conditions on what we have to go through.”

– Adyashanti

Unless we meet that with effort, sincerity, humility, and a decision to stay with the process no matter what, all transformation will hit a wall, or worse, mutate into bypassing, pride, delusion, or collapse.

“This authentic impulse can be a bit frightening, because when you feel it, you know it is real.

When you have let go of all conditions, when you have let go of how you want your own awakening to be and what you want the journey to be like, you have let go of your illusion of control.

Enlightenment is a destructive process. It has nothing to do with becoming better or being happier.

Enlightenment is the crumbling away of untruth. It’s seeing through the facade of pretense. It’s the complete eradication of everything we imagined to be true.

In my experience, everyone will say they want to discover the Truth, right up until they realize that the Truth will rob them of their deepest-held ideas, beliefs, hopes, and dreams.

The freedom of enlightenment means much more than the experience of love and peace. It means discovering a Truth that will turn your view of yourself and life upside down.

For one who is truly ready, this will be unimaginably liberating. But for one who is still clinging in any way, this will be extremely challenging indeed.

How does one know if they are ready? One is ready when they are willing to be absolutely consumed when they are willing to be fuel for a fire without end.”

– Adyashanti

To make things even more complex, there are occult forces, real non-physical beings, and entities known to all esoteric traditions that feed on our resistance and actively try to interfere with the process. They don’t want you to awaken.

This article explores what it really takes to cross that threshold, what derails us, what sustains us, and the inner fire of spiritual will that must be awakened and applied for true transformation to unfold.

All esoteric traditions speak of this: the temptation to abandon the Work through interference, resistance, and distractions.

And they all point to the same antidotes: spiritual will, sincerity, and humility.

The Law of Seven and The Necessity of Disillusionment

One of the great illusions of modern life is the belief that we are consistent, that once we begin something with passion or determination, we’ll continue in a straight line toward its fulfillment.

But as the Russian mystic Gurdjieff observed in In Search of the Miraculous (and as Mouravieff later expanded on in Gnosis), nothing in nature, including human thought, feeling, or action, moves in a straight line.

All processes unfold in waves, cycles, and curves, inevitably hitting friction points where the original direction weakens, shifts, or even reverses entirely.

This is the essence of the esoteric Law of Seven, also known as the Law of Octaves.

It reveals a hidden pattern behind a common phenomenon: the inability to follow through with sincere psycho-spiritual work, the kind that actually leads out of the matrix and toward embodied awakening.

The Law of Seven explains why so many people begin inner work, spiritual practices, or transformational journeys with genuine inspiration, only to falter, self-sabotage, or abandon the process entirely.

We don’t just stall. Often, we regress. We lose our aim, drift off course, or even reverse direction, without realizing it.

It explains why:

• We start a psycho-spiritual practice, course, or new habit with inspiration, only to drop it weeks or months later.
• We set out to pursue truth, but end up entangled in dogma and self-righteousness.
• We begin with sincerity and focus, but find ourselves slipping into mechanical routine, avoidance, or even quiet resentment.

As Gurdjieff pointed out, most people don’t even notice when this reversal happens. We continue to believe that we are doing what we originally intended, even though the essence of our aim has long been lost.

It all happens mechanically and unconsciously.

This is why Gurdjieff compared the average human being to a machine. Unless we become conscious of this dynamic, it governs our lives.

It is also one of the key ways the matrix keeps us asleep, allowing us to believe we are “doing,” when we are merely reacting, trapped in mechanical patterns, mistaking programmed action for free will.

Gurdjieff insisted that man is not truly doing anything because he does not know himself.

What we call “doing” is really just a series of conditioned responses and unconscious reactions to external influences and unconscious drives, until we begin to work on ourselves consciously, to “grow the soul” and bring forth the true Self.

”You often think in a very naive way,” [Gurdjieff] said. “You already think you can do. To get rid of this conviction is more difficult than anything else for a man.

You do not understand all the complexity of your organization and you do not realize that every effort, in addition to the results desired, even if it gives these, gives thousands of unexpected and often undesirable results, and the chief thing that you forget is that you are not beginning from the beginning with a nice clean, new machine.

There stand behind you many years of a wrong and stupid life, of indulgence in every kind of weakness, of shutting your eyes to your own errors, of striving to avoid all unpleasant truths, of constant lying to yourselves, of self-justification, of blaming others, and so on.

The evolution of man is the evolution of his consciousness. And ‘consciousness’ cannot evolve unconsciously. The evolution of man is the evolution of his will, and ‘will’ cannot evolve involuntarily. The evolution, of man is the evolution of his power of doing, and ‘doing’ cannot be the result of things which ‘happen.’

People do not know what man is. They have to do with a very complex machine, far more complex than a railway engine, a motorcar, or an aeroplane—but they know nothing, or almost nothing, about the construction, working, or possibilities of this machine.”

– P. D. Ouspensky, In Search of the Miraculous

What Gurdjieff refers to as “the machine” is directly tied to the esoteric axiom “Know Thyself.”

It means recognizing all the parts within us that we mistake for the true “I”: the inner child sub-personalities, trauma-based beliefs, social/cultural conditioning, and adaptive identifications.

Our mental, emotional, and physical bodies also each have their own “identities”, needs, preferences, and blind spots.

Most people never pause to question who or what within them is actually speaking, thinking, acting, feeling, or reacting. They automatically identify it all as the same “I,” without realizing the fragmentation at play.

To observe all of this without flinching and starting the process of differentiation is the beginning of real self-knowledge.

This process, if entered sincerely, will lead to disillusionment, the dissolving of false identifications, the transmutation of the ego-personality, and the rebirth of the true Self in the fire of inner transmutation.

In esoteric work, this disillusionment is known as moral bankruptcy.

As Mouravieff writes:

“When man goes in search of the Way [toward Awakening], it generally means something in him has collapsed. This collapse is usually preceded by a re-evaluation of values, brought on by accumulated shocks and negative emotions.

Success rarely awakens man; it usually puts him deeper to sleep. From an esoteric point of view, disagreeable shocks are a better foundation for the Work than happy accidents.

If a man is strong and sincere, he won’t look away from implacable reality. He’ll accept what he sees in himself, however uncomfortable. That’s the threshold to the real path.

But if he justifies himself, hides behind logic or moral righteousness, and refuses to see, he turns his back on the Way.

We repeat, no one reaches the path with Access to the Way without first passing through an interior collapse—a moral bankruptcy [disillusionment].”

– Mouravieff, Gnosis

The Intervals: Where Everything Falls Apart

The Law of Seven is also called the Law of Octaves because it mirrors the structure of a musical octave: seven notes (do-re-me-fa-sol-la-si) forming a complete octave, with two key intervals, or “shocks”, where extra energy or assistance is required to keep the process moving in the intended direction.

In psycho-spiritual work, these intervals are where the real test begins. Without a conscious “shock” of effort, sincerity, attention, or grace, the original direction of the process begins to falter.

These points are where energy naturally drops, and resistance intensifies.

These are points of natural resistance where energy drops and the process begins to falter:

The first between Mi and Fa. The second between Si and Do

Unless these gaps are bridged via a “shock”, the process will:

• Deviate from its original direction
• Stagnate or become mechanical
• Reverse and regress into its opposite

This is why spiritual inspiration can turn into indifference, why knowledge can become dogma and “know-it-all”, and why relationships can drift into staleness, unconscious patterns, and codependency, mistaken for “love.”

And most importantly, this is why we abandon the very work that could transform us, and often don’t even realize we’ve done it.

The First Interval: From Mi to Fa

This is where the initial momentum of a process begins to wane. In psycho-spiritual terms:

• The novelty of a new practice, course, or healing modality wears off.
• Emotional resistance or discomfort arises as shadow material and inner child wounds come to the surface.
• Life’s distractions suddenly feel more urgent or attractive.
• The unconscious pushes back to maintain the familiar.
• Entity interference increases, amplifying doubt, apathy, self-criticism, and confusion, as well as excuses and laziness.
• Spiritual pride may arise subtly. “I’ve done this before,” “I don’t need to do this”, or “I already know this,” serve as a rationalization to disengage.

The Second Interval: From Si to Do (before a new octave)

This interval is more crucial. It comes just before the breakthrough or integration:

• A real shift is close, but the ego resists surrender to a higher truth.
• Fear of the unknown, facing the lies of the ego, or identity dissolution, surfaces.
• Old habits, distractions, or addictive patterns suddenly return with force.
• Hostile forces may escalate interference: triggering doubt, inflating pride, or weaponizing flattery.
• Spiritual pride resurfaces as a protective mechanism: “I’ve already integrated this”, or “This is basic. I’m beyond this now”, “I need something more advanced or special.” (This relates to the Luciferic temptation, which will be addressed later on in this article)

This is often where people walk away from the work, not in failure, but in the illusion of completion and the illusory belief that they are “awake.”

Nothing Remains the Same

The Law of Seven teaches that nothing stays level. Every process is either:

• Ascending (developing, integrating, transforming), or
• Descending (degenerating, fragmenting, becoming mechanical)

If we do not actively ascend through effort and presence, we will inevitably descend and even potentially disintegrate. There is no neutral zone.

And many people deceive themselves, clinging to the form of the work, doing it very mechanically and not sincerely, while its essence has died.

That said, it’s important not to get overly fixated on the specific musical notes or turn the Law of Seven into an abstract mental puzzle.

It’s not about mapping every moment to “Mi” or “Si.” The octave is a model that points to a cosmic law of movement, development, and decay.

In life, we go through many octaves, nested within each other, often simultaneously, across different areas, including health, relationships, work, career, spiritual practice, and more.

Each contains its own intervals. These friction points may appear at different stages depending on a person’s karma, soul path, and current level of consciousness.

The key is not to memorize the theory but to recognize when you’re at an interval, when resistance arises, when the path grows dim, when old patterns return, and to respond with conscious effort, not collapse or rationalization.

The Necessity of Shocks To Awaken

“Awakening is possible only for those who seek it and want it, for those who are ready to struggle with themselves and work on themselves for a very long time and very persistently in order to attain it.

Speaking in general, what is necessary to awaken a sleeping man? A good shock is necessary. But when a man is fast asleep, one shock is not enough. A long period of continual shocks is needed.”

– G.I. Gurdjieff

The only way to complete an octave and to stay aligned with our original intention and bring it to fruition is to apply conscious shocks at the moments of resistance.

A shock, in this context, is an intentional or accidental influx of energy or influence that revives the process and helps it cross a critical threshold.

Without these shocks, transformation simply does not occur. The momentum dies, and the person defaults back into mechanical repetition, slipping back into a state of “sleep” while pretending to be awake.

At its core, a shock does one or more of the following:

• Re-energizes a process at the moment it begins to stall
• Realigns a person with their original aim, or deepens it
• Interrupts mechanical habits or unconscious drift
• Helps to hone attention, stay focused, and cut out distractions
• Opens the possibility for conscious choice and inner alchemy

A shock doesn’t always feel dramatic. It may be subtle, a conscious moment of presence, a decision to stay with discomfort instead of avoiding it. But it changes the trajectory. Without it, the process collapses into entropy and mechanical unconsciousness.

Two Types of Shocks

1. Conscious Shocks

These are intentional efforts we make to counter unconscious resistance, rekindle the flame of sincerity, and reaffirm our commitment to our goal. They might take the form of:

• Self-remembering (establishing the non-reactive inner witness), returning to presence when caught in identification, projection, or emotional reaction
• Conscious effort, choosing to act against inertia, even when it’s uncomfortable or frustrating
• Reconnecting to the original aim, remembering why you began the work in the first place
• Support from others: remaining open to feedback, reflection, or honest encouragement from those walking the path, or from a trusted teacher or therapist.

This was also the original role of a guru: to provide “shocks” via guidance, mirrors, and accountability as necessary for growth.

These shocks often don’t feel good.

They often come through inner friction. It could be choosing to meditate instead of scrolling on social media, staying present with an emotional trigger instead of reacting, or picking the practice back up after you’ve avoided it.

Gurdjieff also called this “conscious suffering”, to not give in mechanically to our urges and desires of the lower nature and the mechanically programmed ego-personality with its sub-personalities, which we mistake for our real “I.”

Without conscious shocks, there is no transformation. The process becomes mechanical and degenerates.

2. External Shocks

These come from life itself. They are often unexpected and beyond our control, but they interrupt inertia and offer the possibility of awakening. However, they are double-edged.

If not met consciously, they can also lead to fragmentation, regression, and a downward spiral (even potentially leading to suicide).

• A divorce, breakup, betrayal, or serious illness
• Financial crisis or loss of livelihood
• The death of a loved one
• A global disruption (e.g., pandemic, war, economic collapse), and natural disasters
• A book, film, dream, or encounter that pierces through the sleep state
• Meeting a teacher or a moment of Divine grace.

These moments can shake us loose from identification and surface-level goals. They can strip us of illusions and force us to re-evaluate our lives. If received with humility, presence, and a sincere aspiration for truth, they can open powerful gateways to transformation.

But if resisted, denied, or filtered through pride, blame, and victim consciousness, they will only deepen the sleep state.

A Global Shock: The COVID Pandemic

A global collective shock was the COVID pandemic, with all the lies, fear-mongering, and propaganda that came with it. It triggered a mass fear of death, lockdowns, social ostracism, and widespread mistrust.

It tore apart families and relationships over the vaccine issue and political polarization, destroyed countless businesses, and shattered the livelihoods of millions. It left a massive psychic scar across the collective.

From 2020 to 2022, I observed two primary responses to the crisis.

On one side, it pushed people deeper into trauma and dissociation, getting stuck in freeze, fight, or flight. They believed the official narrative and fear-mongering without questioning and took the vaccine. Their nervous systems went into survival mode. Many never came out of it.

On the other side, I saw people begin to “wake up.” The shock compelled them to reevaluate the official narrative, not just regarding the pandemic, but also concerning politics, media, education, science, health, history, and the system itself.

But even that awakening took two different paths.

Some fell deeper into the rabbit hole of conspiracy theories, but the focus remained entirely external. It led to disintegration. Everything became a psy-op. Everything was seen as a trap.

This is its own trauma response, a schizoid state rooted in hyper-vigilance and paranoia.

It leads to disembodiment, dissociation, and black-and-white thinking. The nervous system stays dysregulated. It typically leads to a “black pill” mindset characterized by doom and gloom, stuck in fear.

However, others used the shock as a means of initiation. It became the disillusionment necessary to access the Way, as described by Mouravieff above.

They didn’t just question official narratives, but they questioned their own lives: their choices, relationships, desires, life goals, and deeper purpose.

It led them to the most important question of all: Who am I?

That’s why I’ve said: any crisis, no matter how severe, has a teaching function. Every shock, whether personal or collective, carries the potential seed of deeper awakening. It depends on how we meet it.

Shock ≠ Suffering for Its Own Sake

It’s important to clarify: a shock is not simply a disruption. It’s not about pain or struggle for its own sake.

A true shock introduces new energy that breaks the loop of unconscious repetition, allowing the process to continue along its original trajectory, or evolve into something higher.

Because most people are mechanical in their habits and deeply avoid discomfort, many shocks arrive in the form of crisis.

But suffering alone doesn’t awaken. Only conscious engagement with the shock allows it to fulfill its transformative function.

The real tragedy is that when potential shocks arise, emotional triggers, shadow confrontations, conflicts, life hardships, and failed relationships, most people tend to avoid, escape, and often blame others.

They succumb to self-pity, blaming the world and others for their misery. The opportunity is lost until next time (or next lifetime), when the next shock may be even more severe.

Why Shocks Are Essential for Inner Work

In psycho-spiritual development, the pattern is always the same:

1. You begin with a sincere aim to change, awaken, or break a pattern.
2. You initiate the work, meditation, journaling, shadow integration, spiritual study, and inner inquiry.
3. Resistance inevitably arises: discomfort, boredom, fear, distraction, doubt, apathy, spiritual pride.
4. The process starts to falter. Unless a shock is introduced, internally or externally, it weakens or collapses.

This is where most people fall off.

They misinterpret the resistance as a sign to stop, when in fact it’s a threshold to go deeper. The ego offers endless excuses, rationalizations, and justifications. Or it inflates itself and says, “I’ve already done this,” “I don’t need this anymore.”

And most importantly: You cannot depend on external shocks alone.

If you don’t develop the inner capacity to apply conscious shocks, to supply your own “alarm clocks,” as Gurdjieff put it, you will always remain dependent on outer catastrophe to be the “shock” to wake you out of your slumber.

That’s the deeper meaning of spiritual maturity: learning how to introduce shocks at the right moment, before the process breaks down.

And the more you can apply these shocks through will, sincerity, and humility, the less outer events will destabilize you. You begin to receive guidance from within through the emerging true Self aligned with the Divine.

A shock is a fork in the road. Each time it arrives, you are given the chance to either fall back asleep or wake up a little more.

The Importance of Spiritual Will, Sincerity, and Humility

At the heart of true transformation lies a triad that is often overlooked or misunderstood: spiritual will, sincerity, and humility.

Without these three, no practice, teaching, or modality, no matter how advanced, can penetrate the unconscious resistance, ego defenses, or the interference of hostile forces that block the path of awakening.

Spiritual Will

Spiritual will is not the same as egoic will or forceful doing. It’s not about pushing or striving from the personality. It’s certainly not ambition. It may use the ego as its instrument, but it originates from deep within the soul, a movement to align with the Divine.

It is the inner fire that remains steady when inspiration fades.

It is the strength to choose truth over comfort.

It is the capacity to stay present with discomfort rather than escape, to recommit when part of you wants to quit.

It is the ability to feel all feelings, without suppressing, repressing, escaping, or projecting them onto others or blaming them for it.

It’s the force needed to push through the resistance of the ego and hostile forces that interfere with any seeker, tempt him, or distract him.

It’s the force behind a conscious shock, the spark that keeps the fire burning.

Spiritual Will is also needed in surrender to God unconditionally, and aligning with Divine Will.

There is a big misconception about “surrender” in spirituality. Many people believe that being spiritual means being passive, as if “God” will take care of everything and remove all pain and suffering without any effort on their own.

They think all they have to do is pray, go with the flow, or only do spiritual practices when they feel like it.

It is a dangerous misconception because it opens the door to the hostile forces.

Spiritual surrender is an active force. You must cultivate your will in order to offer it to the Divine.

You don’t become a servant of the Divine by passivity. You become a vessel by forging a will capable of saying with sincerity: “I want what You want.”

“The most important thing is the capacity of attention and concentration, it is that which one must work at and develop. From the point of view of action, it is the will: you must work and build up an unshakable will.

From the intellectual point of view, you must work and build up a power of concentration which nothing can shake. And if you have both, concentration and will, you will be a genius and nothing will resist you.

And when you have a will, you will be able to say to the Divine: “I want what You want.” But not before that. Because in order to want what the Divine wants, you must have a will, otherwise you can will nothing at all.”

– The Mother, Mirra Alfassa

Sincerity

But spiritual will cannot function without sincerity.

Sincerity is the radical honesty to see yourself clearly, without spiritual makeup, without pretense. It’s the willingness to admit: I am not as conscious as I think I am.

Sincerity is the sword that cuts through self-deception, spiritual bypassing, and inflated narratives. It strips away the ego’s disguises, the stories we tell ourselves to avoid seeing the raw truth of who we are, what drives us, and where we still hide.

It demands that we face life without self-deception and without victim/blame consciousness.

It’s easy to appear sincere on the surface, to say the right words, put on a smiley face, adopt the right persona, or project a polished image, and yet be fundamentally insincere in the deeper work.

To be sincere means to confront your own lies, especially the ones you tell yourself. It enables you to engage the parts of yourself you might otherwise prefer to avoid.

No knowledge, information, psycho-spiritual modality, technique, mantra, or spiritual system can compensate for a lack of sincerity.

Hostile forces can easily manipulate those who are insincere and dishonest with themselves.

Sincerity is spiritual protection. It creates a frequency that aligns you with the Divine, making it harder for deceptive forces to reach you. It is the attitude of engaging in the work without excuses and committing fully to it.

“The way stands open to anyone whose will is sincere.”

– Rudolf Steiner

“Sincerity is the key. You have to be willing to see everything. Being this sincere with yourself may not be easy at first. You may see aspects of yourself that you don’t want to see. Nonetheless, this is where awakening moves; awakening moves toward and into that which is not awake.”

– Adyashanti

“To be sincere, all the parts of the being must be united in their aspiration for the Divine. Sincerity is the key to the divine doors. All division in the being is an insincerity which opens the door to the adverse forces.

Hostile forces are tolerated in the world only because they put man’s sincerity to the test. The day that man becomes integrally sincere, they will pass away, for there will no longer be any reason for their existence”

– The Mother, Mirra Alfassa

Yet the ego can easily hijack the concept of sincerity. When someone says, “But I am sincere!” it’s often a sign they’re lying to themselves. Being convinced of one’s own total sincerity is usually a form of unconscious insincerity, a red flag of ego inflation.

“When you are sure that you have attained absolute sincerity, you may be certain that you have plunged into falsehood.”

– The Mother, Mirra Alfassa

A true sign of sincerity is not certainty, but the capacity to see and admit all the parts within oneself that are not sincere, and still commit to the work anyway.

The same goes for those who claim to be “humble.” The very need to say it is usually a sign that humility is lacking.

We become more sincere as we progress, but the state of absolute sincerity is enlightenment.

Humility

Sincerity goes together with humility.

Humility is not to be confused with performative modesty or self-deprecation, nor with making yourself small and calling it virtue.

It is a deeper recognition that your ego-personality, with all its sub-personalities and inner child parts (which most people mistakenly identify as the true Self), can hijack the process at any time.

It can manifest as self-diminishment and a ‘poor-me’ attitude, or as inflation and grandiosity.

Humility is the ultimate protection against hostile forces and the Luciferic temptation that feeds on spiritual pride, which is one of the most common traps for seekers.

You can see it in the pop-spiritual New Age scene all over social media, where people focus more on image and performance than on sincere inner work.

The inner voice that says, “You don’t need this,” “You’ve already done this,” or “You’re already advanced,” is a classic sign of Luciferic entity influence and interference.

It’s important to see it for what it is, without getting pulled into it. Everyone encounters this at some point on the path.

Adyashanti referred to it as the grip of spiritual pride and superiority.

It is something every sincere seeker must face. It is also how the ego hijacks the work and spiritualizes itself, leading to inflation and, in more extreme cases, to the kind of spiritual narcissism that is widespread today.

This is why humility is so essential. Whenever there is spiritual pride, a sense of specialness, or the feeling of being above others, it creates an opening for Luciferic interference.

Spiritual Pride and the Luciferic Temptation

Rudolf Steiner described how Luciferic forces operate through subtle spiritual pride and self-sufficiency.

They convince the seeker that they no longer need devotional or embodied practices.

They promise shortcuts and suggest that awakening can happen without effort, mistaking intellectual understanding for realization.

It all sounds reasonable and flattering from the perspective of the inflated ego, which is easily mistaken for the true Self.

Lucifer’s influence often feels like mystical euphoria or spiritual elevation. But the ego becomes spiritualized instead of being transformed and surrendered. It adopts a spiritual identity that quietly judges others as less awakened or evolved.

Luciferic spirituality promises light, but it avoids friction. It rejects discipline, humility, and the inner alchemical process needed to face shadow material and integrate what has been suppressed or projected.

The doorway for these influences is usually an unhealed childhood wound, the need to be seen, to be special, to be recognized as wise or awakened.

Luciferic forces feed on grandiosity, spiritual delusion, and subtle superiority. They give the illusion of spiritual progress while avoiding the real inner work of transformation.

From an esoteric perspective, believing you are awake while you are still asleep is more dangerous than simply being asleep and knowing it. The illusion of being awake creates a false sense of certainty that is hard to break.

Overestimating your level of consciousness and identifying with labels such as starseed, lightworker, spiritual teacher, or even just a “spiritual person”, can often foster a false sense of specialness. That blocks the humility needed for grounded inner work.

Your true soul-being doesn’t need any of these labels and identifications. Only the ego attaches to them.

The spiritual ego is harder to dismantle than the ego of someone still asleep in the matrix. This is the core of spiritual narcissism, which is becoming more and more common.

The illusion of being chosen, being awakened, or having already “done the work” becomes a mask for unresolved childhood wounds, insecurity, and unprocessed trauma.

Whether someone identifies as an ambassador for alien races, a contactee for the Galactic Federation, or a self-righteous born-again Christian who believes they have exclusive access to God, it all feeds the same inflation.

Any identity that reinforces spiritual specialness becomes a trap.

It also opens the door to hostile forces.

Hostile entities, often posing as beings of light, feed on spiritual inflation and self-importance. They flatter the seeker and reinforce the illusion of progress through seductive downloads or visions, while keeping the person locked in delusion.

The New Age astral circus is full of deceptive distractions, channelings of alien beings, so-called light codes, DNA activations, Light language, and ascension fantasies.

Many people accept these claims at face value because “it resonates.”

However, the idea that resonance equals truth is one of the most perilous pitfalls in the current spiritual landscape. Resonance alone is not enough. It can just as easily reflect wishful thinking, trauma bonding, or manipulation.

As Gurdjieff said, the most dangerous state is to dream you are awake while still fully asleep.

This kind of illusion is harder to break than ignorance, because it is reinforced by pride, a sense of specialness, and a spiritual identity that believes it is already awake and possesses special knowledge.

It creates what the esoteric traditions call a false foundation.

That is much harder to dismantle than a typical ego-structure of someone who doesn’t claim to be awake, because it is fused with spiritual identification and inflation.

“A man must first of all understand certain things. He has thousands of false ideas and false conceptions, chiefly about himself, and he must get rid of some of them before beginning to acquire anything new.

Otherwise, the new will be built on a wrong foundation and the result will be worse than before.

In order to understand the interrelation of truth and falsehood in life, a man must understand falsehood in himself, the constant, incessant lies he tells himself.

One must know what the truth is and what a lie is, and first of all in oneself. And this nobody wants to know.”

– G.I. Gurdjieff

Activating the spiritual will with sincerity and humility is what guards the seeker against pride, distraction, and regression.

It helps navigate the inevitable initiatory fires, including the shocks, trials, and temptations, without falling back into unconsciousness or illusion.

These three qualities form the inner compass that keeps you on the path, especially when outer appearances are deceptive and inner resistance arises.

For a deeper dive into this topic, including personal experiences, practical guidance, and tips on how to apply these principles in everyday life, listen to our recent podcast episode: Spiritual Shocks – Why Souls Evolve Under Pressure (TCM #165).

The Temple of Secrets

To close, I leave you with a powerful esoteric parable from 1788 by Von Eckarthausen that encapsulates the journey, its temptations, and the indispensable role of humility in reaching the true Temple of Wisdom:

“The Temple of Secrets is located on a high mountain, and everywhere, thorns are covering the path leading to the Temple. The inconceivable, mysterious height of the mountain is the reason why many people doubt the existence of the Temple of Secrets.

Some think of it as a Fairy Tale, some consider it an old Myth and others believe it to be the Truth.

At the entrance of the narrow path stands Ignorance, with her sisters Stupidity and Laziness, and they tell awful tales to the travelers and of horrible adventures the travelers will encounter if they set foot on this path.

That is how lazy Human Beings and fearful Human Beings can easily be persuaded to turn back.

There are a few Human Beings on whom ignorance attempts her deceptions in vain. They climb up the first part of the thorny, steep path, and when they are about halfway up the mountain, they reach a plateau on which they find the Temple of Self-Love.

Next to this Temple stands Self-Conceit, Pride, and Know-it-All, and they offer the traveler a cup, out of which he drinks his own Self in great gulps and thereby becomes intoxicated with himself, with his own “I.”

These travelers then become so intoxicated with themselves that they imagine that their Temple, the Temple of Self-Love, is the Temple of Secrets, and there is nothing, but nothing, above them.

Desires, passions, and wantonness are the servants of these priests. However, those whose hearts search for the truth will not find satisfaction with this, and they will continue to search.

A few thousand steps from this Temple, you will find a very secluded little hut, inhabited by a hermit, with the following inscription above the door: The Residence of Humility.

The man who lives here guides the strangers to the residence of humility, which in turn leads them to Self-Recognition. This Divine Beauty becomes the traveler’s companion, and with her, he conquers the inaccessible mountain.

Whosoever tries to reach the Temple of Secrets without this Divine Beauty can very easily be misled by his Self-Love, and as a result, will follow the wrong path.

His greed for knowledge will lead him to the Temple of Curiosity.

The inhabitants of this Temple are: fraud, seduction, and deception, the founders of most of the secret societies, and those Human Beings who are in search of the Truth, and for the Temple of Secrets will, if they join these Secret Societies, be robbed of the ability to see with their Soul.

They are then led to the top of the mountain, where they fall into the abyss or into the labyrinth or maze, in which they will walk in circles for eternity without finding the Truth.

Humility alone is the best guide.

This alone will lead the seeker to the Master of Teachers of all secrets.

This Master Teacher is the pure will. This pure will becomes the friend of the highest of knowledge, and they enter into a bond of eternal union.

The knowledge of the effects of the Eternal Light of godliness in all created beings is True Magic in Theory. The conception of this Light, or the transition from the intellect to the Divine Will, is True Magic in Practice.”

– Von Eckarthausen, Magic: The Principles of Higher Knowledge, 1788