Spiritual Growth Is a Hot Mess, Not a Ladder

Why healing feels more like circling a drain than climbing a staircase

This post was inspired by Cynthia Bourgeault’s course “Practicing Living Presence: Discovering the Mind of Christ Within,” especially her teachings on Chapter Two of Kabir Helminski’s Living Presence. If you’ve ever wondered why the spiritual path feels more like circling a drain than ascending a staircase, you’re in good company. Cynthia’s reflections on spiraling growth, remorse as a sacred entry point, and the illusion of linear progress offer a refreshingly honest framework for inner transformation. What follows is a grounded, irreverent take on why your healing journey might feel messy—and why that mess is a sign you’re right where you need to be.

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You know what’s cute? The idea that you’re “leveling up.” Like healing is a video game and your trauma just hands you a shiny badge once you’ve meditated enough times without checking your phone.

But let’s get real. If spiritual growth had a shape, it wouldn’t be a golden escalator to heaven. It would be a spiral. A dizzying, sometimes vomit-inducing spiral that loops you right back to your core issues—just at a deeper, more humiliating angle.

Virgin Monk Boy has seen it a thousand times. The fresh-faced seeker, eyes wide with divine hunger, floats out of a silent retreat declaring, “I’ve transcended my ego.” Two days later, they’re rage-crying into a Trader Joe’s bag because someone cut them off in traffic. Again.

“I Thought I Was Over This” — Famous Last Words of the Inner Work Novice

Thomas Keating, bless his contemplative bones, tried to warn us. He said the spiritual journey is a spiral staircase—you return to the same wounds, the same grief, the same codependency meltdowns. But with each revolution, you come at it from a slightly freer place. The pain’s still there, but now it’s got subtitles.

You didn’t fail because your rage resurfaced. You’re just orbiting a little closer to the truth.

Spiritual growth is not about reaching the summit. It’s about descending so deeply into your own being that your delusions collapse from exhaustion.

Your False Self Wants a Map. Your True Self Waits in the Fog.

Cynthia Bourgeault, interpreting Kabir Helminski’s Living Presence, says we start this work not with clarity but with a great ache. Remorse, not reward, is the real entry point.

You don’t embark on this path because everything’s great. You start because the culture’s junk food no longer fills you. Because church feels like a performance. Because your body says no when the world says yes.

And then, like Brendan the Navigator, you drift in spiritual fog for years. Cynthia calls this limbo. Virgin Monk Boy calls it “the awkward puberty of the soul.”

No clarity. No guru on speed dial. Just longing and fog.

And guess what? That fog is holy.

Hustle Spirituality Wants Results. Real Practice Offers Surrender.

Modern spirituality loves its metrics: 30-day challenges, manifestation dashboards, kundalini-boosting smoothie recipes.

But real transformation isn’t a productivity hack. You don’t optimize your way into presence. You surrender into it. Over and over.

Cynthia breaks it down: the false self wants enhancement. It wants to add spiritual practices to its resumé. But the actual journey? It’s about melting. Dismantling. Composting the ego's job title until something real can grow.

Spiritual work is not a ladder. It’s not about getting better. It’s about getting free.

The Myth of Spiritual Progress

We are so addicted to “progress” that we mistake loopbacks for failure. As if revisiting our grief means we’re back at square one. But the mystics knew better.

Each loop on the spiral is a deeper layer peeling off. Each revisit means you’re strong enough to hold more of the truth this time.

Cynthia even shares the brutal physics of this: after a big spiritual breakthrough, your ego often collapses under the weight of what it just lost. Cue the post-retreat meltdown.

If you’ve ever come home from a silent retreat only to have the worst fight of your marriage within 48 hours, congratulations. You’re normal.

That’s the pendulum swing of inner work. Virgin Monk Boy likes to call it “God’s version of sore muscles.”

The Three-Legged Race of Inner Healing

According to Cynthia, we heal at different speeds:

• The Mind grasps things first. “Ah yes, I have a mother wound.”

• The Emotions follow... slowly, often erratically.

• The Body? That wise, stubborn mammal may take decades.

You might understand your trauma, even forgive your abuser. But try telling your nervous system that when someone raises their voice.

Healing isn’t linear. It’s layered. And the body always gets the last word.

Can We Talk About “Leveling Up”?

Virgin Monk Boy has beef with this phrase.

"Leveling up" sounds like you're escaping the human condition. Like you're done with crying in your car or screaming into your steering wheel on a Tuesday.

But what if you're not meant to transcend being human?

What if you’re here to inhabit it more fully? To feel all of it—not perfectly, but presently?

The mystics never promised transcendence as escape. They pointed us deeper into life. Into the heartbreak. Into the silence. Into that odd mixture of peace and panic that happens when you’re just about to dissolve your last illusion.

You don’t climb out of your humanity. You let the divine flow through it.

The Spiral Isn't a Trap—It’s a Teaching

Cynthia said it best: “There are no clean breaks in the spiritual life.” No one graduates from anger. Or grief. Or the longing to be seen.

You just meet those guests again, later, in fancier clothes.

This is why so many ancient traditions leaned on repetition, imitation, and devotion—not instant enlightenment. You keep returning. Not because you’re failing. But because the sacred is infinite, and you’re being drawn deeper into it.

Each revisit is an invitation to bring more love to what you previously judged. To meet your pain not with analysis, but with presence.

No One Can Rush You—Not Even God

Here’s the wildest twist: God’s not in a hurry.

You don’t have to heal faster to earn favor. You don’t have to get “unstuck” to be worthy. In fact, Cynthia suggests your pace might be exactly the pace your soul needs to integrate wholeness without fragmentation.

She compares it to a boat’s hull speed. You can hoist all the sails you want, but if your vessel’s not built for it, you’ll capsize. Growth has to be digestible.

And the Holy doesn’t deal in spiritual indigestion.

Summary (for the Type-A Mystics Who Skimmed Everything Until Now)

• Progress is a spiral, not a ladder.

• Remorse is the portal, not the problem.

• Fog is not failure. It’s sacred waiting.

• Your false self wants results. Your true self just wants you to sit down and shut up.

• The path isn’t about “up.” It’s about through.

• Post-retreat meltdowns are not backslides. They’re ego detox.

• Your body takes longer. Let it.

• You’re not failing. You’re finally listening.

Closing Benediction from Virgin Monk Boy

So no, you’re not broken. You’re mid-spiral.

You’re composting your old narratives with equal parts snot, prayer, and stubbornness. You’re learning how to cry without self-pity and rage without story. You’re finding the sacred not in climbing, but in collapsing with grace.

And that, dear reader, is holy.

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Craving more gentle sass and sacred reality checks?

Subscribe to The Virgin Monk Boy Scrolls or buy him a coffee. He’s probably in the middle of another breakthrough breakdown right now.

—Virgin Monk Boy
(spiral-dweller, fog-walker, snack-based mystic-in-residence)

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