Maybe It's Just Not Your Path

And that's okay.

An acquaintance recently told me about how he’d practiced in his magickal tradition for years until finally, one day, the spirits of that tradition quit speaking to him - and the spirits of a different tradition got louder. He found this all confusing and sounded rather disappointed that the spirits of the first tradition stopped reaching out.

But to me, it was actually pretty clear. One tradition was no longer speaking to him because it was no longer his path to walk, and he was being led to explore something else. His perception of the definition of that spiritual path no longer fit him. Just because you choose a spiritual tradition to belong to, doesn’t mean you will stay there. You will change as a person and your beliefs or practices will change as a result. And that’s okay. You don’t have to stay on a spiritual path that no longer suits you. There’s no shame in that.

Years back, another person I knew who was practicing Daemonolatry came to me one day out of the blue and told me that he felt he had grown beyond Daemonolatry and he no longer felt there was anything new for him to learn. Hence, he was moving on.

My experience had been vastly different than his and I could have argued with him, but I didn’t. Spirituality is not one size fits all and not all spiritual groups, practices, or ideas are right for everyone. Not everyone grows under the same umbrella of ideas and beliefs.

I also understood that from his perception of how he perceived and defined the label Daemonolatry, he wasn’t growing or moving forward and wasn’t being challenged enough, or learning enough because he was working within his understanding - and that understanding had limits. He had already decided Daemonolatry, in the way he understood and defined it, wasn’t right for him, and so it wasn’t.

When we get to that point in any spiritual practice where it doesn’t connect with us anymore — it doesn’t necessarily mean there is something wrong with the spiritual tradition, or the people who do find the practice beneficial to their personal growth and enlightenment - or the label representative of them. It doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with us. More often than not, it means that tradition just wasn’t right for us. Or perhaps we needed that particular spiritual practice or label at that time, but once we’d gained what we needed from it, we moved on.

This friend ended up moving to a spiritual practice he was more excited about and is much happier there. Yes, we’re still friends and I’m happy that he found something that fit him better.

So, it’s okay to shed what no longer serves us and to move on to what does. Sometimes we just have to accept that the things we used to identify with are no longer part of us. That’s the nature of spiritual growth and change.