From Clarity to Chaos and Back Again: Breaking Free from the Spiritual Pendulum
The spiritual path is not a straight line. It rises in moments of clarity, falls into confusion, rises again with new insight, then sinks once more into suffering. Some days, you feel boundless, as if awakening is just within reach. Other days, the old patterns return with a force. This is the yo-yo of seeking, the oscillation between expansion and contraction, between glimpses of truth and the pull of conditioning.
Why does this happen? Why does the light seem so near, yet so easily lost? And is this fluctuation a mistake, or does it reveal something deeper?
The Illusion of Progress
The mind is obsessed with progress. It wants a path with achievements and a final destination where all struggle ends. It believes that awakening is a ladder where you move one step at a time, until finally reaching the summit where all suffering dissolves.
But reality does not move like this. It moves in spirals and in cycles.
Look at nature. The ocean surges forward, then recedes. The breath rises, then falls. Even the heart contracts after every expansion. This movement is not a failure. It is life itself.
The problem is not the up-and-down movement. The problem is your resistance to the down. When clarity comes, you cling to it, desperate to make it permanent. When confusion returns, you fight it, believing it should not be there. And in this resistance, suffering is intensified.
The truth is, the lows are not proof of failure. They are both part of a larger unfolding, one that cannot be measured in linear terms.
The Pull of the Old
Every expansion shakes loose the old structures of the mind. When a deep insight arrives, it cracks the foundation of the conditioned self. But this does not mean the conditioning disappears overnight. The old patterns do not simply surrender. They push back.
This is why after moments of deep clarity, there is a return of the very fears and identifications that seemed to have dissolved. Not because awakening has been lost, but because what is unresolved is surfacing. The deeper the clarity, the deeper the unconscious material that rises to meet it.
Many seekers mistake this as regression. They believe they are “falling back” into ignorance. But this is not a backward step, it is the mind attempting to integrate what has been seen. It is an invitation to meet the old, not as an enemy, but as something that was simply waiting for the right moment to be acknowledged.
If this phase is met with resistance, the yo-yo effect becomes more pronounced, each rise is followed by a painful collapse. But if the lows are embraced with the same openness as the highs, the movement begins to soften.
The real work is not in chasing the highs. It is in learning how to meet the lows without rejection.
The Importance of Foundational Work
Most seekers focus on transcendence. They long for the dissolution of the ego, for states of bliss and oneness. But without a solid foundation, these glimpses become fleeting, unable to take root. A house built without a foundation cannot withstand the storm. A tree without deep roots is easily uprooted. In the same way, a seeker without deep inner grounding will be thrown by every shift in experience.
What is foundational work? It is the deep, often overlooked practice of stabilizing awareness in the midst of ordinary life. It is the work of acceptance and deep listening to all parts of oneself, including the painful and fearful parts.
It is this foundation that determines whether the spiritual experiences and insights are just a passing experience or something that permeates every aspect of being.
Beyond the Yo-Yo: Resting in the Ground of Being
What happens when the fluctuations of the mind are no longer resisted? What happens when both clarity and confusion are allowed to arise without clinging or rejection?
A subtle shift occurs. You begin to notice that underneath the movement there is something that does not move.
This unmoving presence is not another experience. It is not another state that comes and goes. It is the ground upon which all experience arises. It is the stillness that remains untouched, no matter how high or low the yo-yo swings.
This is what the fluctuations were trying to reveal all along!
The highs will still come. The lows will still come. But the seeker is no longer tossed between them. There is a deep knowing that none of it defines what they are.
When this is seen, the yo-yo does not need to stop. It simply loses its power to disturb. The seeker no longer chases one end or resists the other. And in this effortless allowing, the whole movement becomes something else entirely.
