Inspiring your spiritual journey
3. October 2021 • Katja Laurien
Effort has a bad reputation in the spiritual world. It’s associated with stress, resistance and action which is out of alignment. On the spiritual path we attempt to do things from a place of ease, guidance and allowance. Whereas this is definitely desirable, I noticed that we tend to forget that we took our ego with us on this path which tends to twist and turn spiritual concepts to its own needs and desires.
Read more2. May 2021 • Katja Laurien
Everyone who has walked the spiritual path will have experienced themselves using spiritual practices in order to avoid facing painful emotions or unwanted truths. We do this by thinking rigidly positive and denying the negative (“Me, angry? No way!”) or by rationalizing how we should feel instead of simply acknowledging what is going on inside of us (“I can’t be angry. Anger arises from the ego and I am NOT my ego!
Read more4. April 2021 • Katja Laurien
Walking the spiritual path can be very confusing and exhausting. I’ve personally been plagued very often with the question why we’re equipped with an ego and a soul at the same time. And how come it’s easier for most people to follow their ego instead of their soul? Why is the voice of our soul so quiet compared to the voice of our ego? The fact that I couldn’t really come to a satisfying solution at times made me doubt the relevance of a spiritual lifestyle.
Read more3. January 2021 • Katja Laurien
This year one of my New Year’s resolutions is getting rid of my moral judgments. I’ve been wanting to stop judging people for a very long time, but this decision never went further than my mind. In my heart, I just didn’t manage to really pull through and I kept finding an excuse for myself why I was “allowed” to judge. My anchor was my morality. For some reason I’ve developed an overly strict (and rigid) morality for which even my parents sometimes make fun of me (obviously, they are not the ones who taught me to me to be almost autistically moral).
Read more6. September 2020 • Katja Laurien
This is the final post of a series of posts about understanding and dealing with our defense mechanisms which can help us see through the illusions we create in life. Therefore I’d recommend you first read the first two posts before continuing with this one. The approach I’ve been describing in these series is based on the work of the Dutch psychologist Ingeborg Bosch and her book “Illusions - How to escape the labyrinth of destructive emotions”.
Read more5. July 2020 • Katja Laurien
The past months I’ve gone through an emotionally very turbulent period. This was not the first roller coaster I’d been through, but the fact that I couldn’t really pinpoint the problem, made it very confusing to me. I didn’t really understand what was going one with me, but I wisely decided to switch off my brain and just watch my thoughts, feelings and behaviour. Thanks to my dedicated meditation practice, it was not that difficult to stay in the observing mode.
Read more7. July 2019 • Katja Laurien
This post is not necessarily meant for people who just think a lot. Here I am specifically talking about the monkey mind: The uncontrollable mind that seems to drag you from one horror-scenario to another and puts the worst scenario on repeat. Trying to stop this internal chatter is in vain as long as you don’t understand the root of this mind-circus. The monkey mind is in fact just a very useful trick of the ego.
Read more3. March 2019 • Katja Laurien
Shame is human, it’s natural and it can be very healthy! Yes, if you deal with your shame in a conscious way it can actually be a cleansing proces. Shame becomes toxic when you either ignore it or allow it to take control over you. They key is to actively and consciously face your shame and feel it. And that’s exactly the goal of writing this post: facing my own shame and let it wash all over me.
Read more3. February 2019 • Katja Laurien
I think it’s important to have a very close look at perfectionism. Why? Because it’s one of the nasty personality traits that can be advertised as virtues. People seem to find it fancy to be a perfectionist, often mention it as their weaknesses during a job interview. Yes, it is a weakness and we should treat it as such. If we would all be aware of the fact that perfectionism is nothing more than ego’s disguise of its lack of self-esteem, there wouldn’t be anything glamorous about it anymore.
Read more6. January 2019 • Katja Laurien
If you hear voices in your head, no worries. You’re not crazy, we all hear them. Hearing them better and clearer is even a sign of increased sanity. There are so many voices in our head (the ego, the higher Self, the inner child, the inner critic etc.) it seems like there’s an entire village in our heads. Distinguishing between these voices helps us to control them and to stay sane.
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