SPIRITUAL TERMINOLOGY AND MEANINGS
Browse spiritual terminology and meanings by letter:
Sacred Union
What is sacred union?
The phrase sacred union refers to an internal recognition, balance, and integration of the masculine and feminine energies within an individual, as well as a subsequent external physical relationship between two fully balanced and integrated beings.Sacred Union Within
Within an individual, sacred union is the end result of the alchemical process of balancing and integrating one’s masculine and feminine archetypal energies, and learning to tap into those qualities within one’s self.
Individual issues that are overcome through the balance and integration of masculine and feminine archetypal energies include, but are not limited to:
- Codependency
- Control issues
- Attachment trauma
- People pleasing/fawning
- Fear of commitment
- Fear of intimacy
- Lack of integrity
- Unhealthy boundaries
- Jealousy
Sacred Union Relationships
When a person reaches sacred union within themselves, and then enters into a relationship with another individual or individuals who have done the same, the relationship itself is referred to as a sacred union. Some people also view this as a “twin flame” relationship. Sacred union relationships are not defined by sexual polarity, gender roles, or traditional relationship structures, but rather by the qualities of the relationship itself.
A sacred union relationship exhibits the following:
- Healthy interdependence
- Personal sovereignty between partners
- Healthy respect for boundaries
- Emotional integrity and honesty
- Deep connection and intimacy
The Masculine and Feminine Are Not Gender Roles
The understanding that the Divine Masculine and Divine Feminine are a part of everyone, regardless of sex or gender identity, and are fundamental forces observed in all of nature debunks the concept of gender essentialism. It is important that spiritual practitioners and followers understand that the concept of the Divine Feminine does not reinforce gender identity or gender roles, but rather, renders them inconsequential.
A person of any sex may identify anywhere on the energetic spectrum between masculine and feminine at any given time, and will always exhibit qualities of both. As spiritual practitioners, the goal is to learn how to consciously embody any masculine or feminine qualities necessary to create a balanced and harmonious energy. This process is described in the occult concept of alchemy, and is depicted archetypally by various hermaphroditic deities.
Twin Flames
It should be noted that there is an entire romanticized lore about sacred union in online spiritual circles that is often depicted under the title of a “twin flame relationship.” Many of the concepts and culture around twin flame relationships – including “runner” and “chaser”, and “twin flame separation” – glorify toxic and abusive relationship patterns, codependency, gender essentialism, toxic monogamy, and cishet patriarchy. A true sacred union aims to deconstruct toxic relationship patterns, not reinforce them.
LEARN MORE
How Energy Workers Can Harm Clients When They Aren’t Trauma Informed
Even the most well-intentioned energy workers, coaches, and spiritual practitioners can harm their clients if they don’t understand trauma. Here’s a personal story about how an energy worker harmed me.
Mapping out the Wellness-to-White Supremacy Pipeline
The wellness-to-white supremacy pipeline – aka the crunchy-to-alt-right pipeline – may be something you heard of. This describes the pattern of indoctrination of people within the wellness world into the alt-right. Today, I’m going to show you how New Agers are uniquely susceptible to it, which might explain why so many fall for conspiracy theories and become born-again Christians.
How Spiritual Materialism and the Coaching Industry Help Bankroll the Climate Crisis
The New Age obsession with wealth manifestation and abundance is helping to destroy the planet. If by ascension, you meant mass extinction, then yeah. That light work is workin’ it alright.
Sexism’s Feminine Rebrand: How Polarity Doctrine Sells Repackaged Patriarchy in the Form of Benevolent Sexism
Learn how New Age spirituality becomes anti-feminist and repositions sexism as a good thing by appealing to a very specific type sexism known as benevolent sexism.
How White Supremacy Shows Up In New Age Spirituality
The answer to this one might surprise you.
How to Spot Spiritual Frauds Online
If I’ve done anything over the eight year span of writing this blog, I hope I’ve taught you discernment. Today I’m giving you a few tools to help you discern whether or not you should be putting your trust in someone online, whether it be a spiritual teacher or coach.
Performative Vulnerability
“Vulnerability porn or performative vulnerability” looks like sharing highly curated intimate details of one’s life for the sake of engagement, virtue signaling, and at the end of the day, sales. This brand of faux authenticity still only shows you a small piece of the whole picture. As with everything, it’s often not the action itself, but rather, the motivation behind it. Let’s explore.
Did You Choose This Life?
Question submission: “I have to read conversations with God again. What about the theory where our divine self (soul/whatever) chose this existence/the experiences that we are living now?”
Money Mindsets and Poverty Consciousness
Time to talk about “abundance” mindsets and whether or not you can really get rich by simply thinking positive thoughts. The sordid history of this popular concept might surprise you.
Check Your Spiritual Elitism
It’s important that we recognize when and how systems of oppression and classism show up in our community and in our own spiritual and business practices. Here’s a few ways that may be happening and what you can do about it.
Spiritual Narcissism
For those in the know, “spiritual ego” is quite rampant in the spiritual community. The more mainstream spirituality has become in the west, the more it has been influenced by individualistic Western cultural values, resulting in what social science has now termed spiritual narcissism.
Your Perspective isn’t Valid if it Contradicts Objective Reality
A common misconception that many spiritual people have is that spirituality tells us that we each create our own reality. What many often don’t realize, however, is that reality isn’t what is subjective –– your experience of it is what is subjective. The personal beliefs and opinions formed by those experiences are may not be valid, particularly compared to someone else’s.
Law of Attraction
One of the most common confusions in spirituality – and the most damaging – is the Law of Attraction. So today, I’m explaining what the Law of Attraction really is, and how almost all New Agers have had it all wrong this entire time.
How Patriarchy Shows up in Spirituality
You might think spirituality is supposed to be void of cultural programming. After all, it’s supposed to push us to question all of those things. But does it, really? Especially when it comes to the Divine Masculine and Feminine, patriarchy seeps in. Here’s how to identify it.
How Ableism Shows Up in Spirituality
I made a post on Instagram last week about ableism and spirituality which has sparked some conversations that further demonstrate how ableism is so deeply embedded in our beliefs and culture. I’m going to really dig into this today and ask you to critically examine some of your own spiritually-based beliefs and biases.
Healing Will Not Make You Wealthy
Have you noticed this new trend in spiritual business coaching that’s selling healing as a means to obtain a seven-figure business?
Do Your Negative Thoughts Manifest Disease?
Question from a reader: “I have a fear that I may have cancer. I’m just 19 years old and I eat well and healthy. This thought comes at random times and I’m afraid that I may manifest this crazy thought. But sometimes I shrug it off easily. I’m really confused since I don’t know how to stop these thoughts and be free of this.”
Disembodied Spirituality: Is it Really Zen or is it Dissociation?
Spirituality and holistic wellness is supposed to be about the mind, body, and spirit, but a lot of toxic, ungrounded spirituality completely ignores the entire body part and only focuses on the mind or the spirit. Here’s how to discern whether or not a spiritual teacher/teaching is disembodied (and thus, not holistic).
What Everyone Needs To Know About Narcissism
I talk about narcissism a lot and in varying ways, and I see it spoken about with a lack of important context online, so I wanted to make sure that everyone understands it all appropriately. Here’s what you need to know.
How to Know if your Spiritual Teacher is a Narcissist
Spiritual professions are an area ripe for manipulation due to the lack of structure, cohesion in teachings, no governing body to regulate them, and a host of wide-eyed people in pain seeking answers from gurus. Here’s some tips on identifying patterns of behavior from a narcissist disguised as a “light worker.”
The End of Suffering
What if I told you that we don’t incarnate on earth to learn lessons, we don’t make contracts with other souls to experience abuse, and that we’re not here to suffer? How would you react?
How Toxic Spirituality Taught You To Gaslight yourself
Toxic spirituality is mired in spiritual narcissism. As such, many of us experience symptoms of narcissistic abuse under the guise of spiritual teachings. Gaslighting is a spiritual abuse tactic used to keep followers under the thumb of narcissistic cult leaders. Here’s how it’s subtly affected you.
How Some Spiritual Beliefs Breed Codependency
The flip side of spiritual narcissism is spiritual codependency. Do you think you’re responsible for manifesting all of the shit people and situations that have come into your life? It might be time to reexamine that frame of mind.
Narcissistic Empaths and the Narcissist / Empath Relationship
You’ll find a lot of wildly popular information on the internet talking about the relationship between narcissists and empaths, and how these two polar opposites ends up attracting each other. Surprise! They don’t. Here’s why.
The Fine Line Between Boundaries and Bypassing
Are you actually setting boundaries? Or are you using spiritual concepts to avoid accountability and having to face your own cognitive dissonance? Let’s discuss.
Why QAnon Infected The Spiritual and Wellness Communities
I’ve been receiving a lot of comments on my posts lately from people within the spiritual community and outside of it all saying the same thing: “I don’t understand how people got from spirituality to QAnon.” Hold my beer, I’m gonna draw you a diagram…
Have You Been the Victim of Spiritual Abuse?
I’ve seen (and been subjected to) spiritual abuse many times throughout my spiritual journey. I’ve compiled all the signs and symptoms of spiritual abuse that I’ve observed so that you can spot it.
How Separation Consciousness Masks Itself In Spiritual Unity
One of the main goals of spirituality is to move away from separation consciousness and ascend by achieving unity consciousness, but separation consciousness has infiltrated spirituality (!). Are you unknowingly embodying separation consciousness in the name of spirituality?
The Shadow of Spirituality
The time has come for the spiritual community to confront its own shadow.
Abuse and The Law of Attraction
For a community that is supposed to be focused on love, light, and healing, New Agers have invented and contributed to some of the most toxic, harmful, bullshit ideologies on the planet, and nine times out of ten, the Law of Attraction is behind it. Here’s what everybody gets wrong about LOA.
5 Toxic People To Avoid On Your Spiritual Journey
There’s five people we all meet on our spiritual journey that we wish we hadn’t. Here’s who they are, how to spot them, why you should avoid them.
Materialistic Spirituality
I don’t talk about manifesting a lot, even though it’s all the rage. Here’s why.
Do We Manifest Abusive Experiences?
It’s time to talk about toxic spiritual concepts and its contribution to victim shaming and the enabling of abusive dynamics.
Do Not Look Away
This post might make you uncomfortable. Can you sit with that discomfort long enough to figure out where it’s coming from? Let’s find out.
I Quit
The day I thought would never come has arrived. This the end of In My Sacred Space.
Confessions of Avoidant Attachment Personality
Reflections and ruminations about self-destructive behavioral patterns and how they affect interpersonal relationships, particularly those of a romantic nature.
A Year Without Sex
One year ago, I stopped having sex. Here’s why.
Collective Feminine Rage
A larger collective theme that has been going on since this time last year when #MeToo first broke the silence is the core wounding of women and the feminine. Globally, for centuries, women have been violently raped, murdered, suppressed, controlled, burned as witches and enslaved as sex servants. We’ve never been truly safe, and we’re really pissed off about it.
Vulnerability, Intimacy, and Deepening Relationships
Creating deep, meaningful relationships was a major goal of mine when I moved to New York. I picked quite the challenging city for it, but I seem to be figuring it out, and I think what I’m discovering is something that’s needed here, of all places.
Aligning With Your True Self
I’ve always been fascinated with how accurately (or inaccurately) people perceive me and whether or not I present myself as I actually am. Today I’ve got a little exercise for you to help me find out.
Cultivating Radical Vulnerability
SURPRISE! You get another blog post. I’m not going to lie, this is probably one of my favorites that I’ve written to date.
The Healing Spiral
Healing is not a linear process, but rather, an upward spiral of sorts. You process things cyclically and each time it comes around, you peel back another layer and get closer to your core. That’s certainly been true for me over the last several months, and I do feel like I’m starting to reach the pinnacle of it all. Finally.
How to NOT Sexually Harass a Woman and Mind Your Own Fucking Business
Surprise! You get a Saturday post because Ash is fired the fuck up. Get ready for an earful of F bombs and a whole lot of “Fuck off!”
When You Continually Find Yourself in Abusive Relationships
I feel very much like I live feeling everyone is part of myself. However I seem to always have abusive people involved in my life. How can I improve my situation? So far only my faith in God is keeping me strong but there are only so many roads we can travel.
Everyone Laments The Death of the Institution of Marriage, But Maybe it Needs to Die
It seems like every day we’re bombarded with the statistic that 50% of marriages today end in divorce (even though that hasn’t been true since the 70s and 80s). Have you ever considered that maybe the reason that the institution of marriage seems to be failing so hard is because it’s an outdated dinosaur of a concept that can’t survive in the new paradigm?
How To Spot A Narcissist and Narcissistic Abuse
Actual narcissistic personality disorder is one of the most misunderstood disorders by the general public and often confused with simply being ego-centric, which is not considered a disorder.
Let’s Talk About Sex: Part 2
On Monday I started the first half of my post talking about sex and spirituality. I touched on just how out-of-touch our society is when it comes to sex and even ourselves, and all the things that are causing us to be blocked from experiencing true joy with our bodies and our hearts.
So how do we begin to undo what has been done?
Let’s Talk About Sex
Sex is probably one of, if not the most misunderstood, taboo subject on the planet in our current culture. So many people have shame and discomfort around sex, many of us aren’t even completely aware of it. I would wager that there’s a very large percentage of people out there who are engaging in sex under varying degrees of emotional numbness.
Soulmates
Some people say we each have a soulmate and they are “the one” for us. Other people say we have many soulmates, and still others say there is no such thing as a soulmate, for we are all soulmates. So who’s definition is correct?
How Energy Workers Can Harm Clients When They Aren’t Trauma Informed
Even the most well-intentioned energy workers, coaches, and spiritual practitioners can harm their clients if they don’t understand trauma. Here’s a personal story about how an energy worker harmed me.
Mapping out the Wellness-to-White Supremacy Pipeline
The wellness-to-white supremacy pipeline – aka the crunchy-to-alt-right pipeline – may be something you heard of. This describes the pattern of indoctrination of people within the wellness world into the alt-right. Today, I’m going to show you how New Agers are uniquely susceptible to it, which might explain why so many fall for conspiracy theories and become born-again Christians.
How Spiritual Materialism and the Coaching Industry Help Bankroll the Climate Crisis
The New Age obsession with wealth manifestation and abundance is helping to destroy the planet. If by ascension, you meant mass extinction, then yeah. That light work is workin’ it alright.
Sexism’s Feminine Rebrand: How Polarity Doctrine Sells Repackaged Patriarchy in the Form of Benevolent Sexism
Learn how New Age spirituality becomes anti-feminist and repositions sexism as a good thing by appealing to a very specific type sexism known as benevolent sexism.
How White Supremacy Shows Up In New Age Spirituality
The answer to this one might surprise you.
How to Spot Spiritual Frauds Online
If I’ve done anything over the eight year span of writing this blog, I hope I’ve taught you discernment. Today I’m giving you a few tools to help you discern whether or not you should be putting your trust in someone online, whether it be a spiritual teacher or coach.
Performative Vulnerability
“Vulnerability porn or performative vulnerability” looks like sharing highly curated intimate details of one’s life for the sake of engagement, virtue signaling, and at the end of the day, sales. This brand of faux authenticity still only shows you a small piece of the whole picture. As with everything, it’s often not the action itself, but rather, the motivation behind it. Let’s explore.
Did You Choose This Life?
Question submission: “I have to read conversations with God again. What about the theory where our divine self (soul/whatever) chose this existence/the experiences that we are living now?”
Money Mindsets and Poverty Consciousness
Time to talk about “abundance” mindsets and whether or not you can really get rich by simply thinking positive thoughts. The sordid history of this popular concept might surprise you.
Check Your Spiritual Elitism
It’s important that we recognize when and how systems of oppression and classism show up in our community and in our own spiritual and business practices. Here’s a few ways that may be happening and what you can do about it.
Spiritual Narcissism
For those in the know, “spiritual ego” is quite rampant in the spiritual community. The more mainstream spirituality has become in the west, the more it has been influenced by individualistic Western cultural values, resulting in what social science has now termed spiritual narcissism.
Your Perspective isn’t Valid if it Contradicts Objective Reality
A common misconception that many spiritual people have is that spirituality tells us that we each create our own reality. What many often don’t realize, however, is that reality isn’t what is subjective –– your experience of it is what is subjective. The personal beliefs and opinions formed by those experiences are may not be valid, particularly compared to someone else’s.
Law of Attraction
One of the most common confusions in spirituality – and the most damaging – is the Law of Attraction. So today, I’m explaining what the Law of Attraction really is, and how almost all New Agers have had it all wrong this entire time.
How Patriarchy Shows up in Spirituality
You might think spirituality is supposed to be void of cultural programming. After all, it’s supposed to push us to question all of those things. But does it, really? Especially when it comes to the Divine Masculine and Feminine, patriarchy seeps in. Here’s how to identify it.
How Ableism Shows Up in Spirituality
I made a post on Instagram last week about ableism and spirituality which has sparked some conversations that further demonstrate how ableism is so deeply embedded in our beliefs and culture. I’m going to really dig into this today and ask you to critically examine some of your own spiritually-based beliefs and biases.
Healing Will Not Make You Wealthy
Have you noticed this new trend in spiritual business coaching that’s selling healing as a means to obtain a seven-figure business?
Do Your Negative Thoughts Manifest Disease?
Question from a reader: “I have a fear that I may have cancer. I’m just 19 years old and I eat well and healthy. This thought comes at random times and I’m afraid that I may manifest this crazy thought. But sometimes I shrug it off easily. I’m really confused since I don’t know how to stop these thoughts and be free of this.”
Disembodied Spirituality: Is it Really Zen or is it Dissociation?
Spirituality and holistic wellness is supposed to be about the mind, body, and spirit, but a lot of toxic, ungrounded spirituality completely ignores the entire body part and only focuses on the mind or the spirit. Here’s how to discern whether or not a spiritual teacher/teaching is disembodied (and thus, not holistic).
What Everyone Needs To Know About Narcissism
I talk about narcissism a lot and in varying ways, and I see it spoken about with a lack of important context online, so I wanted to make sure that everyone understands it all appropriately. Here’s what you need to know.
How to Know if your Spiritual Teacher is a Narcissist
Spiritual professions are an area ripe for manipulation due to the lack of structure, cohesion in teachings, no governing body to regulate them, and a host of wide-eyed people in pain seeking answers from gurus. Here’s some tips on identifying patterns of behavior from a narcissist disguised as a “light worker.”
The End of Suffering
What if I told you that we don’t incarnate on earth to learn lessons, we don’t make contracts with other souls to experience abuse, and that we’re not here to suffer? How would you react?
How Toxic Spirituality Taught You To Gaslight yourself
Toxic spirituality is mired in spiritual narcissism. As such, many of us experience symptoms of narcissistic abuse under the guise of spiritual teachings. Gaslighting is a spiritual abuse tactic used to keep followers under the thumb of narcissistic cult leaders. Here’s how it’s subtly affected you.
How Some Spiritual Beliefs Breed Codependency
The flip side of spiritual narcissism is spiritual codependency. Do you think you’re responsible for manifesting all of the shit people and situations that have come into your life? It might be time to reexamine that frame of mind.
Narcissistic Empaths and the Narcissist / Empath Relationship
You’ll find a lot of wildly popular information on the internet talking about the relationship between narcissists and empaths, and how these two polar opposites ends up attracting each other. Surprise! They don’t. Here’s why.
The Fine Line Between Boundaries and Bypassing
Are you actually setting boundaries? Or are you using spiritual concepts to avoid accountability and having to face your own cognitive dissonance? Let’s discuss.
Why QAnon Infected The Spiritual and Wellness Communities
I’ve been receiving a lot of comments on my posts lately from people within the spiritual community and outside of it all saying the same thing: “I don’t understand how people got from spirituality to QAnon.” Hold my beer, I’m gonna draw you a diagram…
Have You Been the Victim of Spiritual Abuse?
I’ve seen (and been subjected to) spiritual abuse many times throughout my spiritual journey. I’ve compiled all the signs and symptoms of spiritual abuse that I’ve observed so that you can spot it.
How Separation Consciousness Masks Itself In Spiritual Unity
One of the main goals of spirituality is to move away from separation consciousness and ascend by achieving unity consciousness, but separation consciousness has infiltrated spirituality (!). Are you unknowingly embodying separation consciousness in the name of spirituality?
The Shadow of Spirituality
The time has come for the spiritual community to confront its own shadow.
Abuse and The Law of Attraction
For a community that is supposed to be focused on love, light, and healing, New Agers have invented and contributed to some of the most toxic, harmful, bullshit ideologies on the planet, and nine times out of ten, the Law of Attraction is behind it. Here’s what everybody gets wrong about LOA.
5 Toxic People To Avoid On Your Spiritual Journey
There’s five people we all meet on our spiritual journey that we wish we hadn’t. Here’s who they are, how to spot them, why you should avoid them.
Materialistic Spirituality
I don’t talk about manifesting a lot, even though it’s all the rage. Here’s why.
Do We Manifest Abusive Experiences?
It’s time to talk about toxic spiritual concepts and its contribution to victim shaming and the enabling of abusive dynamics.
Do Not Look Away
This post might make you uncomfortable. Can you sit with that discomfort long enough to figure out where it’s coming from? Let’s find out.
I Quit
The day I thought would never come has arrived. This the end of In My Sacred Space.
Confessions of Avoidant Attachment Personality
Reflections and ruminations about self-destructive behavioral patterns and how they affect interpersonal relationships, particularly those of a romantic nature.
A Year Without Sex
One year ago, I stopped having sex. Here’s why.
Collective Feminine Rage
A larger collective theme that has been going on since this time last year when #MeToo first broke the silence is the core wounding of women and the feminine. Globally, for centuries, women have been violently raped, murdered, suppressed, controlled, burned as witches and enslaved as sex servants. We’ve never been truly safe, and we’re really pissed off about it.
Vulnerability, Intimacy, and Deepening Relationships
Creating deep, meaningful relationships was a major goal of mine when I moved to New York. I picked quite the challenging city for it, but I seem to be figuring it out, and I think what I’m discovering is something that’s needed here, of all places.
Aligning With Your True Self
I’ve always been fascinated with how accurately (or inaccurately) people perceive me and whether or not I present myself as I actually am. Today I’ve got a little exercise for you to help me find out.
Cultivating Radical Vulnerability
SURPRISE! You get another blog post. I’m not going to lie, this is probably one of my favorites that I’ve written to date.
The Healing Spiral
Healing is not a linear process, but rather, an upward spiral of sorts. You process things cyclically and each time it comes around, you peel back another layer and get closer to your core. That’s certainly been true for me over the last several months, and I do feel like I’m starting to reach the pinnacle of it all. Finally.
How to NOT Sexually Harass a Woman and Mind Your Own Fucking Business
Surprise! You get a Saturday post because Ash is fired the fuck up. Get ready for an earful of F bombs and a whole lot of “Fuck off!”
When You Continually Find Yourself in Abusive Relationships
I feel very much like I live feeling everyone is part of myself. However I seem to always have abusive people involved in my life. How can I improve my situation? So far only my faith in God is keeping me strong but there are only so many roads we can travel.
Everyone Laments The Death of the Institution of Marriage, But Maybe it Needs to Die
It seems like every day we’re bombarded with the statistic that 50% of marriages today end in divorce (even though that hasn’t been true since the 70s and 80s). Have you ever considered that maybe the reason that the institution of marriage seems to be failing so hard is because it’s an outdated dinosaur of a concept that can’t survive in the new paradigm?
How To Spot A Narcissist and Narcissistic Abuse
Actual narcissistic personality disorder is one of the most misunderstood disorders by the general public and often confused with simply being ego-centric, which is not considered a disorder.
Let’s Talk About Sex: Part 2
On Monday I started the first half of my post talking about sex and spirituality. I touched on just how out-of-touch our society is when it comes to sex and even ourselves, and all the things that are causing us to be blocked from experiencing true joy with our bodies and our hearts.
So how do we begin to undo what has been done?
Let’s Talk About Sex
Sex is probably one of, if not the most misunderstood, taboo subject on the planet in our current culture. So many people have shame and discomfort around sex, many of us aren’t even completely aware of it. I would wager that there’s a very large percentage of people out there who are engaging in sex under varying degrees of emotional numbness.
Soulmates
Some people say we each have a soulmate and they are “the one” for us. Other people say we have many soulmates, and still others say there is no such thing as a soulmate, for we are all soulmates. So who’s definition is correct?
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