Why Your Spiritual Path Got Harder, Not Easier

When people first start meditating or walking a spiritual path, something lovely usually happens. A deep peace arrives, almost as a gift. The mind quiets, the heart opens, and for a while it feels like they've found the door they were always looking for. Then, often months or years in, it turns. The peace recedes. In its place comes turbulence, old fears surfacing, a sense of one inner battle after another. And almost everyone reads it the same way: I've lost it. I'm doing this wrong. I've fallen backward.

They haven't. What looks like falling backward is almost always the opposite. It's the climb.

The grace period, and what comes after it

Most paths open with a kind of advance. "When you start something, you get a grace period," I tell people, "where the peace is given to you as grace. But then you begin to deal with your enemy. These intrusions are all the unresolved psychological and spiritual material you weren't ready to face until now."

That early peace was never the destination. It was an encouragement, a taste of what's possible, given to get you walking. What surfaces afterward isn't the practice failing. It's the practice working. The quiet brought you deep enough that the things which were always there, the old wounds and patterns, can finally rise up to be cleared. That's uncomfortable precisely because something real is moving.

This stage is so well known that the great contemplatives gave it a name. Five centuries ago, the mystic St. John of the Cross called it the dark night of the soul, the season when the early sweetness withdraws and the deeper work begins. It is not a detour off the path. It is the path.

You climbed, which is why it's harder

Here's the picture that reframes the whole thing. "As you go further up the mountain," I tell my students, "you come across new challenges that didn't exist lower down. There's actually more peace higher up, but you have to pass through these stages to reach it. These are initiations. You deserve a round of applause for getting here, because you weren't ready for this before."

Read that slowly. The difficulty is not evidence that you've fallen. It's evidence that you've climbed. You're being asked to grow into a steadier, deeper peace than the one you started with, and that kind of growth always has a cost at the threshold. The struggle and the progress are the same event, seen from two sides.

How to come through it

Two things carry you across. The first is to claim your own strength instead of bracing against the storm. "Say, 'I am choosing to come into my power, and I am choosing to receive support,'" I tell people. "A good thing to call yourself is simply: I am a powerful soul. Write it down, again and again. It builds a strength that pushes the rest gently to the side."

The second is to be kind to the parts of you that are kicking up, because most of them were old protectors that once kept you safe and are now out of date. "These parts had a role that was useful before," I explain. "Thank them. Say, 'I appreciate you, but I don't need this anymore,' and let them rest. You're relieving them of a burden so you can take care of things from a higher place." None of this is a war against a demon outside you. It's meeting your own old patterns with strength on one side and tenderness on the other, and walking on. This inner terrain is exactly what the Awakened Spirit work in our training maps out in detail, so that the rough stretch becomes something you can navigate rather than something that frightens you off the path.

So if the peace you found has given way to struggle, take heart. You are not failing the path. You are deep enough on it that the real work has begun, and there is more peace waiting on the far side of this than there ever was at the start. The hard stretch isn't the end of the climb. It's the proof you're on it.

Questions people ask

Why did my spiritual practice get harder after a peaceful start? The early peace is often a "grace period." Once you're walking, deeper unresolved material surfaces to be cleared. The difficulty is a sign the practice is working and you've reached a new stage.

Does a hard patch mean I'm doing it wrong? Usually the opposite. These thresholds, sometimes called initiations or the dark night of the soul, tend to appear precisely because you've grown ready to face what you couldn't before. There's deeper peace on the other side.

How do I get through it? Claim your own strength ("I am a powerful soul"), and meet the old inner patterns with gratitude rather than war, letting the ones that no longer serve you rest. Steady practice and good support carry you through.

Michael Mackintosh has been pioneering spiritual life coaching since 2004 and certifying coaches since 2012. His free guided meditations have earned 85,000+ five-star reviews on Insight Timer, and he has helped students across 25+ countries create lives they love. He is the founder of Awakened Academy.

If you're in one of the harder stretches of the path, The Awakened Life video series is a free place to steady yourself, or book a free Sacred Session and talk it through, no pressure, no pitch unless it's a fit.

Sources

• St. John of the Cross. Dark Night of the Soul (16th-century mystical text on the necessary obscurity of the deeper stages of the spiritual path).

Lots of love 🙏 Michael

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