Nine Hidden Obstacles to Spiritual Awakening

Part 8 of the article series “The Path to Spiritual Enlightenment” (numbered Part 7 on wanvig.no), published in Norwegian in the magazine Medium (no. 5, 2025) and on wanvig.no. An earlier English version is on wanvig.no/en.

For many years, I have guided people on the path toward spiritual awakening. And time and again I have seen the same pattern: people with a deep and heartfelt desire to awaken, who nevertheless never arrive. Not because the goal is unattainable. But because they stumble over the same obstacles, caught in the same traps, without knowing what is holding them back.

Nine causes recur. They explain why 99 percent of all seekers never cross the threshold into spiritual enlightenment, and they are worth knowing for you who want to avoid the traps. For you who want to complete the journey, not just begin it.

Real spiritual awakening is not a reward you can achieve through performance. Nor is it a mystical state reserved for holy masters on distant mountaintops in the Himalayas, or monks who have meditated for decades in remote monasteries.

Awakening is something else entirely.

It is a process, raw, real, and often painfully challenging, in which everything that is not you must fall away. It is an inner journey that demands that you meet what you have fled from your whole life, let go of what you have clung to in desperation, and dare to step forward in your naked, unfiltered truth. Without defenses. Without excuses. Without the safe masks you have hidden behind since childhood.

It is only when you see what stands in the way, truly see it, without turning your gaze away, that you can begin to move past it. And perhaps you will discover something surprising: What you long for has never been far away. It has only been hidden behind everything you thought you had to be in order to be accepted, loved, and worthy.

Many seek, but few truly find their way, and then it is easy to believe that the path to spiritual enlightenment is hidden behind a distant and inaccessible fog. That it requires special abilities, unusual circumstances, or a whole life in an ashram.

But the truth is more uncomfortable and direct than we like to admit.

Most never arrive, not because the goal is unattainable, but because they turn back when the journey begins to get hard. When the comfort zone is challenged and old patterns must be released, many choose to return to the familiar and safe. Even if it means remaining trapped in their own limitation. Even if it means living half a life, a life in the shadow of what they could truly have been.

The nine obstacles below are a reminder of why so many stumble just before the doors open, and of why true spiritual awakening is the most demanding, and most liberating, thing you will ever experience. They are an invitation to look deeper into the mirror and recognize what is holding you back from your own liberation.

Most never arrive, not because the goal is unattainable, but because they turn back when the journey begins to get hard.

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For it is only when you see your own blockages clearly that you can begin the real journey toward freedom.

Through more than two decades as a guide, mentor, and teacher, I have seen a clear pattern that repeats itself time and again. There are nine main reasons why most people never get to experience the deeper truth about who they really are in this life. Despite a heartfelt desire for growth and awakening, many remain stuck in illusions, fear, and old identities, and thereby miss the life-transforming realization of their true self.

Here are the nine most crucial reasons why many never complete life’s most important journey:

1. You lack a qualified guide, teacher, or guru

You cannot see with your eyes what can only be recognized through the deepest stillness of the heart.

The path toward true spiritual awakening is not a highway with clear signs and rest stops. It is a narrow, often invisible trail that winds through the unknown. It can neither be understood with logic nor mastered with willpower alone. Without a guide who has walked this path before you, it is easy to get lost in the endless labyrinths of the mind, caught in the play of thought and the ego’s seductive illusions.

But the mind cannot free the mind.

It is like trying to lift yourself by your own hair. No matter how hard you try, you remain caught in the same system. It was only when I found a guide who could see me, truly see me and not just hear my words, that something began to loosen.

In our modern culture, it is common to misunderstand what a guru, guide, or teacher really is. Many associate it with control, submission, or authoritarian dominance. They picture cult leaders who demand blind obedience, or spiritual masters who put themselves on a pedestal high above their students.

But a real guide does not seek power.

A true guide is rather a living mirror that reflects your true nature back to you. Not to lead you where you “should” go, but to remind you of who you really are, beneath all the layers of imprints, fear, and defenses. A good guide does not point to themselves, but to the light that already burns in you. The flame that has always been there, waiting to be discovered.

In a time when quick fixes and superficial spirituality are sold as salvation on every street corner, the ancient understanding of the relationship between guide and student has been forgotten. We live in a culture that celebrates individualism and independence above all else. “I don’t need any help,” we think. “I can manage this myself.”

But this attitude keeps us trapped.

The relationship between guide and student is absolutely crucial, not to make you dependent, but to make you free. For without a living anchor, without someone who knows the way through the darkness, it is like trying to cross a stormy sea without a compass. You can sail for years and still never reach land.

Many, like Columbus, never land where they thought they were heading, if they land at all. They confuse movement with progress and remain caught in an endless circling in their own mind. Year after year. Decade after decade. Always seeking, never finding.

In our time, even the deepest spiritual search is often reduced to superficial scrolling through TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram. We are fed fragments of insight, inspiring quotes, and beautiful guided meditations, all available in an instant, all just as quickly forgotten. We collect knowledge as if it were pebbles on the beach, without understanding that what we truly need is a guide who can show us the ocean.

Artificial intelligence can simulate answers, mirror wisdom, and even formulate deep truths that sound impressive. But there is something AI can never give you:

Presence.

The gaze that sees you. The silence between the words. The intuitive power that knows when you need a gentle hand, or a radical mirror that shows you what you do not want to see. The living presence that can hold the space when everything falls apart, and that can celebrate with you when the breakthrough comes.

Spiritual awakening is not information.

It is transformation.

It does not happen by devouring more content, but by meeting yourself in what cannot be clicked past or scrolled away from. It requires a human being who can stand at your side in the darkness, who has been there themselves, and who knows that there is light on the other side.

No algorithm knows your soul’s path. No video can walk with you into the darkness where you lose yourself in order to find something greater. And without a living guide, a human being who sees you, mirrors you, and holds the space for your deepest process of development, you are in danger of confusing spiritual inspiration with real transformation.

It is the difference between hearing the music and becoming the one who plays it.

No algorithm knows your soul’s path. No video can walk with you into the darkness where you lose yourself in order to find something greater.

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2. You refuse to let the old you die

Real spiritual awakening is something other than becoming a better version of yourself. It is not a gradual improvement or a friendly adjustment of the personality, like upgrading the software on your phone or furnishing a new room in the house.

It is a breakdown.

A breakthrough.

A radical, merciless dissolution of everything you thought you were.

Not a symbolic death, but an existential annihilation of the identity you have worn like armor your whole life: the roles, the masks, the stories you have told about yourself in order to survive. “I am the capable one.” “I am the strong one.” “I am the one who always copes.” All of this must die for the second birth to begin (see Part 2 of the series, “Killing the Ego Through Shamanic Death”).

It is an inner purification in which everything that is not real must perish. The one you have built up through a whole life, consciously and unconsciously, carefully and strategically, often in deep pain and despair, must be burned down to ashes. Not adjusted or improved, but torn down completely.

For it is only when the old has died that the new can be born.

The caterpillar transforming into a butterfly does not improve itself gradually, stone by stone like a house under renovation. No, it dissolves completely in the darkness of its own cocoon. The form, the structure, the identity, the body itself: everything it was becomes a kind of soup. A formless mass without recognizable features. And it is from this apparent destruction that something entirely new emerges. Something that never could have come into being if the caterpillar had clung to its old form.

In the same way, you must melt, without promises, without a safety net, without guarantees, and enter the total void. It is frightening. It feels like dying. Because it is dying, not physically, but in every other way that matters.

This is where most people turn back.

They gaze into the sacred fire of the flames, feel the heat against their skin, sense what awaits, and quietly back away into the familiar routines of the comfort zone. Safe, but imprisoning. Familiar, but suffocating. They choose the known hell over the unknown heaven.

They cling to their identity as if it were their life buoy, without understanding that it is precisely what is holding them down, trapped beneath the surface of what they could truly become. They grab for the sinking ship instead of swimming toward land.

But here lies the mystery and the freedom:

Only when you dare to go through your shamanic death, in yourself, for yourself, with full trust in the process, can your soul finally become free. It cannot fly until the ego has stopped fighting to survive. The butterfly cannot fly as long as the caterpillar refuses to let go.

Awakening demands everything. And gives everything back, but not until you have let everything go.

3. You seek comfort, not truth

Comfort is perhaps the most subtle and quiet prison there is.

It whispers soothing words in your ear, soft as silk: “You are safe here. Everything works, doesn’t it? Why risk disturbing what already works? Why put everything at stake for something you don’t even know exists? Think of everything you have built up. Think of everything you could lose.”

But behind this seductive whispering hides a creeping stagnation. A slow, almost imperceptible standstill that gradually drains life of color and meaning. It is like a golden cage that keeps you trapped, not with locks and chains, but with promises of safety and predictability. The cage may be beautiful, may be comfortable, may even be enviable to others. But it is still a cage. And you are still trapped.

Real spiritual awakening never happens in the warm embrace of the comfort zone.

It blossoms in the chaos. It grows in the aftershocks of the earthquake, takes shape in the eye of the storm, and finds its power in the deepest abysses of pain. It is in these moments, when everything you took for granted is torn away, when the ground beneath your feet suddenly disappears, that the essential, your true nature, can finally step forward in all its naked clarity.

I learned this the hard way. In 2003, when the burnout forced me to my knees, it was not comfort that saved me. It was the breakdown. It was the loss of everything I thought defined me. It was the total dissolution of the identity I had spent a whole life building. And it was only in this darkness that the light began to seep in.

While comfort wants to keep you unchanged and “safe,” truth has an entirely different agenda.

It wants to transform you completely. To break down all false structures. To tear down the walls you have built around your heart: the walls that protect you, yes, but that also shut out love, connection, and life itself. Truth wants your real essence to shine through without filter, without dimming, without compromise.

And what about your soul?

It longs for something entirely different from safety and comfort. It does not seek what is pleasant or easy, but what is true and real. It would rather have a naked truth that burns than a comfortable lie that suffocates.

Whatever price must be paid.

4. People disappear from your life, and you think it is a mistake

When you begin to awaken, when you start your real spiritual transformation, much changes in your life, including your relationships.

The people who loved and accepted you as you were may not recognize themselves in the one you are becoming. The new you is foreign to them, unsettling, even threatening. Some will pull away in confusion or fear, unsure of how to relate to the change. Others will openly condemn your choices, call you self-absorbed, naive, or lost. And still others will be left standing on the sidelines, confused, disappointed, or afraid of what you have become.

This hurts.

It hurts so much to see people you love pull away. To see old friends become strangers. To experience family members no longer understanding you. It feels like a betrayal, like a loss, like proof that you have done something wrong.

But remember this:

You have done nothing wrong.

You have simply stopped playing a role that was never really yours. You have laid down the mask and begun to show your true face. And the true face is not always the face others want to see. It does not fit into their picture of you, their expectations of you, their need for you to remain unchanged.

Most people who meet this painful reality of relationships disappearing choose to go back. Back to the old friends, the safe relationships, the predictable jobs, and the superficial conversations that felt so “safe.” They put the mask back on, suppress what has awakened in them, and pretend that nothing has changed.

But this apparent safety is built on a fundamental lie:

That you must dim your light, hide your truth, and deny your own essence in order to be loved and accepted. That love is conditional on your remaining who the other wants you to be.

When you awaken to your true self, you will see who loves you without masks, and who only loved your echo. It is a painful but necessary process in which you discover that some people were drawn to the role you played, not to who you really are. They loved the actor, not the human being behind the character.

Like when an actor takes off the costume after the performance, and the audience realizes that the person on stage was an illusion. A beautiful illusion, perhaps, but an illusion nonetheless.

When you awaken to your true self, you will see who loves you without masks, and who only loved your echo.

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Some will miss the illusion more than the real you. And that is all right. For those who love your real self, those who can see you and love what they see, will find you.

5. You want a map and guarantees, but get only an open landscape

The world has taught you that everything can be planned. Career, education, retirement, and vacation. You have been conditioned to believe that every journey requires a detailed roadmap, a GPS coordinate for every stop along the way, a precise timetable for arrival. We live in a culture obsessed with control and predictability.

So you ask: “What are the steps to awakening? Give me a recipe. A checklist. A guaranteed method. How long does it take? What can I expect along the way? How do I know I am on the right path?”

But the truth is brutal in its simplicity:

There are none.

No sequence, no guarantees, no recipe. It is like sailing in unknown waters without a compass, where the old maps no longer match the terrain. Every time you think you have found the way, the landscape changes. Every time you think you have understood the rules, it turns out the rules do not apply.

The way forward often feels like a breakdown, a total dissolution of everything you thought was solid and reliable. It does not run straight ahead like a highway with clear mile markers, but winds in spirals, cycles, and sudden relapses. What feels like progress one day can seem like a setback the next. You can feel enlightened in the morning and completely lost in the evening.

Stillness feels like emptiness.

Progress feels like loss.

Everything you thought you knew, everything you held to be true, falls apart like a house of cards in the wind. It is like being an explorer in unknown terrain, where every step can lead to a new abyss or an unexpected revelation. And you do not know which until you have taken the step.

This is not a mistake.

This is the door.

It is the very entrance to a deeper reality, where the map must be replaced with trust, and control must give way to surrender. Where you learn to trust the process even when you do not understand it, and to continue even when you cannot see the way.

6. Your own mind will become your greatest opponent

When the ego understands that its days are numbered, it fights like a wounded animal in a corner.

It mobilizes all its resources in a desperate attempt to survive. It has, after all, spent a whole life building itself up, creating structures and defense mechanisms, keeping you “safe.” Now it sees the threat, and it will do anything to stop it.

It sabotages you with thoughts of fear, guilt, and inadequacy, like poisoned arrows shot from the shadows of your own consciousness. Thoughts you believed were your own, but which are really the ego’s desperate attempt to regain control.

It will shout that you are crazy.

That you are alone.

That you are heading for the abyss.

That you will lose everything you have.

Like a masterful manipulator, it will use every trick in the book, from subtle doubt to open fear. It will tell you that it is dangerous to continue, that it is safer to turn back, that you have already come far enough. “Why risk more?” it whispers. “Isn’t your life good enough as it is?”

But this is only the mind’s defense against losing control. Its desperate struggle to maintain the illusion of a separate self. It is like a hologram fighting to remain solid as the light begins to fade, like a shadow fighting against the sunrise.

The more you observe this drama, without reacting or identifying with it, the more it loses its power. Not by forcing it into silence; that would only strengthen the resistance, like pouring gasoline on the fire.

But by no longer believing its stories. By seeing through the illusion. By acknowledging the ego for what it is: a protective mechanism that has served its purpose, but that must now let go so that you can fly.

7. You fear the silence

Silence feels empty at first.

Like a dark room where the walls seem to shrink inward. Lonely. Unknown. Frightening in its absolute presence. We are not accustomed to silence. The world around us fills every moment with noise: music, conversations, notifications, news, an endless stream of impressions that keeps silence at bay.

But silence is not empty.

It is full of you.

Full of your true essence. Your real self that has waited patiently, perhaps for years, to be rediscovered. Silence is not absence, it is presence. Not emptiness, but fullness of another kind.

In silence, alone without distractions, without the noise from social media, TV, radio, or endless conversations, you lose everything that is not real. Layer after layer falls away. It is like taking off old clothes until you stand naked before the mirror. Vulnerable. Exposed. With nowhere to hide, with nothing to distract you from what you see.

And you meet, perhaps for the first time, the naked, unfiltered version of yourself. The one you have always been, but have seldom dared to look at.

It hurts.

It is uncomfortable.

It can feel unbearable.

But it is also here that the true connection to the creative force, to the sacred, to the boundless begins to sprout. In this silence you find not the emptiness you feared, but a fullness you never knew existed. Not absence, but presence. Not death, but life in its purest, most intense form.

No one awakens in the crowd.

Awakening happens in the darkness: in the silence between the heartbeats, in the pauses between the thoughts, in the sacred space where everything artificial disappears and only the real remains. This is where you find yourself. And this is where you find home.

8. You believe awakening is about learning more, instead of letting go of everything

Spiritual awakening is not about accumulating more knowledge or more experiences. It is not about reading more books, attending more retreats, mastering more techniques.

It is about a deep and fundamental process: letting go.

This is perhaps the most paradoxical truth on the spiritual path. We live in a culture that tells us that more is better, that knowledge is power, that growth means adding. But awakening is the opposite.

Awakening is not an intellectual exercise. It is an existential transformation that demands that you dare to stand face to face with your own truth, not by adding more, but by removing everything that hides what you already are.

You must be willing to let go of all the external things you have used as crutches on your spiritual journey. The doctrines that gave you security. The books that promised answers. The rituals that gave structure and meaning. The spiritual identities you have built up with pride and invested years in developing.

Awakening is not an intellectual exercise. It is an existential transformation that demands that you dare to stand face to face with your own truth, not by adding more, but by removing everything that hides what you already are.

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You must dare to let go of everything you thought defined your worth as a human being. Everything you believed made you special, developed, advanced, or worthy. For the one you really are, beneath all the layers of imprints and protection, needs no improvement or upgrade.

It needs only the freedom to be.

9. You stop at discomfort

Most people instinctively pull back when they meet pain on the spiritual path.

They interpret the discomfort as a danger signal, a sign that something has gone wrong or that they have taken the wrong direction. “This can’t be right,” they think. “Awakening should feel good, not painful. I must have done something wrong. Maybe this path isn’t for me.”

But this interpretation turns the truth on its head.

Pain is not a stop signal.

It is the very portal to deeper insight and development.

Pain, whether it shows up in the body as tension and unease, or in the mind as fear and resistance, is a strong signal that something in your life has reached its breaking point. It is a messenger that shows you exactly where you have held on to what no longer serves your growth. Where you have clung to patterns that have expired. Where you have refused to let go of what is holding you back.

Pain points. It shows the way. It reveals what must change.

If you can find the courage to remain in this fire, without fleeing into old patterns, without distracting yourself with food, alcohol, work, or entertainment, without judging the experience as “good” or “bad,” then the real transformation begins to unfold.

It is only when you stop fighting the pain, when you give up every attempt to escape it, that you can move through it. Like a birth: you cannot avoid the pain and still get the child. The pain is part of the process, not a sign that something is wrong.

And on the other side awaits something you never could have imagined.

The only promise that matters

This path comes without assurances or guarantees.

It does not promise you a life filled with comfort and convenience. It does not guarantee success in the eyes of the world or recognition from others. It cannot promise you stability, predictability, or that everything will work out the way you want.

The only promise this path gives you is:

Your own true essence.

The real, unadulterated version of yourself. The part that has always been there, patiently waiting behind all the masks you have worn, behind the layers of fear that have protected you, behind the need for control that has ruled you, behind the pain that has shaped you. The part of you that is older than your name, deeper than your personality, truer than the story you have told about yourself.

This essence stands ready to step forward in all its power.

When you finally find the courage to let go of everything that is not true.

Ask yourself this one question: “What am I still afraid of losing, which deep down I know I never really owned?”

When I guide students on the journey toward spiritual enlightenment, I find it crucial to point out the most common pitfalls along the way. Being aware of these challenges before you take your first steps gives you an invaluable advantage: You can meet them with clarity instead of letting them become hidden obstacles that sabotage you in the dark.

Then you can turn a 99 percent probability of failure into a 99 percent chance of success.

In this way you strengthen the possibility that the journey toward your highest potential, perhaps the most important journey you will make in this life, is not interrupted, but completed. Does not end in disappointment, but in freedom.

Do you want to go deeper? In the podcast “The Journey to Self-Realization” (in Norwegian), Amina and I walk through the same terrain in conversation: episode 41, “De 9 fallgruvene som stopper de fleste” (The 9 pitfalls that stop most people), and episode 33, “Hvorfor du trenger en guide på veien til enhet” (Why you need a guide on the path to unity). On my blog you will find more articles on the path to Unity. See also “Killing the Ego Through Shamanic Death” (Part 2 of the series).

If you want to walk the path yourself, it begins at the Yggdrasil Shamanic School with our free online course on primordial shamanism: Nature’s Path to Freedom and Self-Realization – Shamanism, Rituals, and Rune Magic – Twilight Between Two Worlds. No path could begin more simply. How far it reaches is up to you.