Deepening your spiritual practice comes with a cost, and here’s how you can stay protected.
Reaching or activating your higher self, expanding your consciousness, disrupting old cycles, and releasing what no longer serves you comes at a cost and will piss a lot of people off.
Deepening your spiritual practice involves expanding your consciousness beyond everything you think you know, including the physical illusions, stories and ideologies instilled in you by your environment, culture, space and time. Part of enlightenment, and seeing beyond the third dimension, is recognising that many of the beliefs, identities and narratives we carry were never consciously chosen. They were inherited, conditioned and passed down through systems, institutions, culture and society long before we had the capacity to question them.
What sounds freeing and liberating, in reality, comes at the cost of disrupting long-standing cycles of submission. That, in turn, is going to unsettle a lot of people, particularly those who have long benefited from your silence, compliance, self-abandonment or willingness to make yourself smaller so they could remain comfortable. Liberation changes relationships because it changes the terms on which they were built.
Activating your higher self goes far beyond fleeting moments of 'activation' or 'intention-setting' without meaningful follow-through. It requires radical self-accountability: honestly recognising the current state of your nervous system, confronting difficult truths and sitting with discomfort that many spend their lives avoiding. This path demands consistent practice, discipline and discernment. It is for those who are genuinely committed to cultivating authenticity, freedom and liberation in pursuit of faith and truth.
Selective ‘self-work’ can only get you so far and will continue to resurface in your life as recurring cycles, issues, and challenges.
Activating your higher self is not something that can be done in a fleeting moment; it's a raw, sacred path of unravelling your deepest layers and meeting your sensitivities with honesty and compassion. It is the lifelong practice of reshaping one's neuroplasticity and capacity to transform both the self and the physical world by releasing inherited conditioning, unresolved grief, fear, shame, limiting beliefs, and survival patterns that were never truly yours. In creating space for what no longer serves you to fall away, you begin to remember what has always been beneath it: your innate wisdom, discernment, agency and wholeness.
This path is neither comfortable nor passive. It demands a willingness to question the stories you tell yourself, examine the identities you've inherited and release the illusions that have kept you disconnected from yourself and others. Not everyone is willing to undertake this work. For some, the ego becomes deeply attached to self-serving narratives, unjust ideologies, power and control, and identities that offer certainty at the expense of truth. These attachments keep us stagnant, unconscious and disconnected from genuine morality, compassion and accountability. Spiritual disconnection persists wherever illusion is protected over truth and integrity. It is only through repeated ego deaths, truth-based faith and the courage to relinquish what is false that authentic transformation becomes possible.
Activating the ‘life of your dreams’
Activating the ‘life of your dreams’ sometimes means taking a step back or resetting your life by taking a hard look not just at yourself but at the deceptions and illusions you’ve been complicit in, too. Deconditioning and rewiring your brain involves a level of integrity that calls out the behaviours, both within yourself and in others, that have kept you stagnant and in harmful cycles of remaining small and passive.
Buzzwords floating around modern spirituality, Western psychology and self-development, like 'deconditioning', 'rewiring' and countless others, sound compelling until they're put to test through genuine practice. Your ability to 'rewire' your brain is contingent on your soul's rhythm, progression and the sincerity of your intention. Are you pursuing this as a quick fix, or from a place of genuine commitment to alignment?
Once again, only those who are sincerely committed to the process of deep, authentic healing will be met with divine support, guidance, protection and compassion. It is this commitment that leads us along the path of remembrance, reclamation and, ultimately, closeness to Allah (SWT).
So I ask you: what state is your soul’s rhythm in? What behaviours, actions and decisions have brought you closer to, or further away from, your full potential? Have you been living from a place of love or fear? How do you truly show up for yourself and for others? How do you treat the people in your everyday life? How close have you remained to the Divine in recent years from a place of authenticity? What efforts, habits and daily practices keep you accountable? How do you respond when things don't go your way? How much space do you allow the people in your life to live freely, and how do you support them?
Deepening your spiritual practice teaches you to:
say no with conviction
make your own decisions even if they challenge convention and inherited traditions
accept (or expect) being misunderstood for choosing truth over approval
remain rooted in faith, values and integrity while building the life you genuinely desire
respond (or not) instead of reacting to external noise, disruption and behaviour
cultivate relationships grounded in mutual alignment, mutuality and respect
welcome love rooted in faith, ease and reciprocity
expand your capacity for meaningful work, purpose and aligned career progression.
This kind of transformation can unsettle people. It often reveals who benefited from your passivity, fear or self-abandonment, and who struggles when you begin living with greater authenticity and self-respect.
Protecting your energy from depletion, spiritual disruption and harmful influences also becomes part of the practice:
be discerning about what you share and with whom
choose trusted, neutral people who can offer sincere guidance in good faith
spend time in nature, watch the trees and the water move
return to your body through somatic practices, breathwork (deep pranayama) and yoga (asana, stillness and meditation)
become radically private, selective and intentional. You don't need to share everything with everyone
structure your social and personal life in ways that genuinely support your nervous system and long-term wellbeing, rather than living according to expectation, obligation or convention
honour your body's need for rest, solitude and silence without guilt
stay close to practices that reconnect you to Allah (SWT), remembrance (dhikr), prayer, gratitude and sincere reflection
regularly audit the people, environments and habits you allow to influence your inner world.
Journal and reflection prompts
Use the following prompts to gently examine where you are in your spiritual practice. Return to them regularly and notice what shifts over time.
What parts of my identity were inherited rather than consciously chosen?
Where in my life am I choosing comfort over truth?
What fears keep me attached to people, roles or environments that no longer align with my values?
What does my nervous system need from me in this current season?
When do I feel most connected to Allah (SWT), and what consistently draws me away?
If I trusted myself completely, what decision would I make today?
What am I being invited to release, and what am I being asked to become?
Perhaps the journey back to ourselves has always been about remembering who the Divine created you to be before fear, conditioning, and the world convinced you otherwise.
‘Til next time,
Huda
