What are the ‘indirect’ and ‘direct’ spiritual paths?

Today I really want to talk about the difference between the direct and the indirect paths and what I feel the benefits of each are and the potential pitfalls of each path.

There is a lot of confusion out there on social media, in respect of spiritual paths and spiritual development. People will make reference to certain practices, certain techniques and not reference the tradition or the path that it comes from. Sometimes I wish that during the early days of my personal spiritual awakening that I had had access to social media, because there many amazing creators with great information and advice out there for people who are going through different stages of the awakening journey. At other times I am actually quite grateful that most of my spiritual awakening took place before these were really conversations that were discussed on social media and before we had social media in the various formats that exist today.

I say that because I think that, for a lot of people having a spiritual awakening, they go onto social media to try and understand what is happening to them. To make sense of what they are experiencing, and it can be very difficult to navigate with the amount of (often conflicting) information and advice out there. It creates a lot of confusion for people during a time that is already very confusing for the individual. Western society has entered such a dense material state that matters that are spiritual are either dismissed as ‘woo woo’ or the person is medicated rather than helped through their experience.

I predominantly focus on an embodied and grounded path of spiritual development. When I am creating content for social media, I try to create from the perspective of ‘is this information helpful, grounded and embodied to someone on their spiritual journey?’

Don't get me wrong, I love deeply studying higher level esoteric concepts, (often those things deemed by society as ‘woo woo’. But I try to keep in mind that, during the mass awakening period that we are currently in, I am talking to people going through various different stages of the awakening journey.

Each individuals journey is unique to them and they are going to be drawn to different practices in different paths based on what their soul has experienced in previous incarnations. We all have a magnetic centre and we are constantly working with and strengthening this magnetic centre. This centre will pull you towards certain paths, teachers and practices. It is never a surprise when somebody is drawn to a specific path, practice or teacher when you look at it from the Akashic Records perspective, as there is often a connection across many incarnations.

All paths can be categorised are either ‘direct’ or ‘indirect’. I am a firm believer of a balance of both for most people and I will explain why.

The ‘indirect path’ is also sometimes referred to as the ‘progressive path’. This is the path of self-improvement and where will find most spiritual teachers and practices. This can include practices such as breathwork, certain yoga practices, practices and techniques to help you with your shadow work and to help you with your inner child healing etcetera.

From an energetic perspective this is the journey through the lower primary chakras (Eastern traditions) or energy centres (Western traditions). Most people who are going through their spiritual awakening have an awakening experience (the experience itself is different for everyone). They start to really self reflect on their behaviour, their experiences and they want to understand themselves from a soul level perspective.

This journey traditionally begins at the root chakra/first energy centre which can mean inner child work, ancestral work and nervous system regulation. Once they have established a feeling of safety and security (i.e. balanced the root chakra/first energy centre) they move into the sacral chakra/second energy centre. At this stage it is about understanding and accepting that all emotions are valid and that you may have gone through much of your life repressing certain emotions. There tends to be a focus on somatic practices to help you get into the body and move through those stuck emotions. There is also the need at this stage to honour all emotions. If you have been taught, for example, that anger is an unsafe or bad emotion it is at this stage you learn how to transmute and alchemise, rather than repress it.

As people move into the solar plexus/third energy centre they start to take radical self-responsibility and want to move out of victim consciousness. The nuance here is that they may have experienced situtations in which they were indeed a victim. But they now understand that they are only causing themselves more suffering by staying in the identification of being a victim. They realise that they can start to take more of an active role in their own life and begin to see that they are co-creators of their own reality. Many people come into spiritual development and spiritual teachings at the solar plexus/third energy centre through the conversations that are very popular at the moment around manifestation and the ‘I create my own reality’ teachings. Unfortunately, the belief of ‘I am the creator of my own reality’ can hinder the individuals growth and the essential movement towards the heart chakra/fourth energy centre, where there is a need to surrender and start connecting to Source consciousness.

To complicate matter, this is not usually a linear process as I have set out above. What often happens is you cycle through these various energy centres over and over again. It is completely norma. You may also find that you work on more than one of these energy centres at a time.

The practices used are connected to the indirect paths. The purpose of the indirect paths and the practices associated with those paths is essentially clearing the energy bodies and moving the energetic stagnation through. In doing so, space is made for the direct path.

With indirect practices, you are constantly working towards an end. You are in the position of ‘seeker’. It is very normal for people to spend many years on the indirect path transmuting, neutralising karma and healing from traumas experience. But the ego is still very involved in the indirect path.

When people have that first initial awakening experience they often believe that they have experienced full ‘ego death’. This is rarely the case. The ego may have indeed been weakened but for most there is still an ego. If you stay with indirect practices only for too long, you develop a strong spiritual ego because the need for constant self-improvement gives sustenance to the ego. It retains the idea of that being a separate self. It is very normal for somebody to reach a stage while they are undertaking these practices on the indirect path where they become frustrated with what feels like a constant need to fix themself. At that stage their magnetic starts to draw into them direct path practices and teachings.

The direct path is this remembrance you a unconditional love. You are Source consciousness experiencing itself. The only real practice in a direct path is constant abidance in the frequency of unconditional love. This can be difficult to begin with as you will find you have to constantly bring your awareness and attention back throughout your normal daily life.

From the energetic perspective this abidance in unconditional love is the heart chakra/fourth energy centre awareness. You will often hear words such as surrender, gratitude, humility, compassion, kindness associated with the direct path. At this stage the focus is being rather than doing. You are not seeking. You are not trying to change yourself or the life circumstances around you. You are in complete acceptance.

On the direct path, you are essentially surrendering that lowest, egoic self for your higher self You are embodying your soul. If somebody goes into direct path practices before their magnetic centre has really called them to the direct path they can focused on teachings such as ‘the world is just an illusion’. which can lead to spiritual bypassing. It can of course be really difficult for somebody if they come across direct path teachings too early and try to connect to that unconditional love if they have energetic blocks to being able to connect to that and can spend time doing this practice while not actually feel anything from it.

It is completely reasonable that you walk both paths for a time, balancing the indirect and the direct. For example you may spend time utilising indirect practices because you know you have got XYZ work to do. But you may also add some time and just to sit in that frequency of unconditional love.

When people come to learn how to access their own Akashic records. That is the first thing that they noticed that going into the Akashic records is sitting in that frequency of unconditional love. And it's a beautiful experience for them. But it doesn't mean that because they have started that work, that it's time to just drop all of the indirect path practices, because there can be lots of things, holding them back to being able to be the clearest channels that they have the potential to be.

The key is to be very aware of your ego in this process and focus on humility as much as possible. The more time you spend giving credit to unconditional love to Source consciousness and less time giving credit to yourself, the more you are practicing humility.

Someone who has genuinely attained, enlightenment will not tell you that they have attained enlightenment. What you will find with them is they are extremely humble.

If you have made it all the way to the end of this post, well done! I appreciate that it is a little longer than my normal blog post, but I think it is important to really explain these topics as best as I can and sometimes that means going into a bit more detail.