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What is Spiritual Ascension?
382 Plays1 year ago
What is spiritual ascension exactly, and why does it seem so hard? In this episode, Laura Coe and Kevin Kaiser explore the opportunities and perils of spiritual growth, what it all means, and what the Akashic Records have to say about it.
* Join us at Little Soul School, a community of people dedicated to soul growth, soul learning, and accessing the Akashic Records, a place that hold all of our souls’ histories—everything we’ve done in all of our lifetimes. If you’re looking for a deeper connection to yourself and a place to experiment and learn in a non-judgmental, open community of people, join us at https://littlesoul.school. No woo-woo, no fluff. Just fun and connection.
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Website: www.lauracoe.com
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Website: www.kevinkaiser.co
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Transcript
Introduction to 'Soul School' and Spiritual Growth
00:00:00
Speaker
You're listening to Soul School with Laura Ko and Kevin Kaiser. On this show, we dive into life's biggest questions. Who are we? What are we here to do? And how can we fearlessly live as our truest, deepest selves? Soul School is the spiritual education you never received. So if you're ready, join us as we explore together. Soul School is in session. Hey everybody, welcome to this week's show. I'm Kevin Kaiser and here with
00:00:30
Speaker
the wonderful Laura Ko. Hey Laura. Hey Kevin, how are you?
00:00:35
Speaker
I'm great. So let's dive right in. Today, this week, we're talking about spiritual growth and ascension. And we thought we would talk about sort of the opportunities, the perils of it, and then some of our own lessons, the things that we feel like we've gotten right, we've gotten wrong, if you want to call it that, like things that have been clear, things that have not been clear. And also like all of the things that we've learned by working with
00:01:06
Speaker
hundreds and hundreds of people collectively over the years around these ideas of spiritual growth.
Defining Spiritual Growth and Ascension
00:01:12
Speaker
So there are many places to enter in, but let me just start with, okay, so how do you define spiritual growth versus ascension? Because these words are sort of used interchangeably. Yeah. I'm so excited for this topic. That's great, right? It's so funny how much I nerd out on this.
00:01:35
Speaker
Spiritual growth, right? Like this was one that truly kicked my ass. Like I had this one upside down for I think most of my life. I think baked into culture is this idea of getting somewhere, right? With everything. We want to attain a goal. We want to feel like we're moving forward. We want to be getting it right, right? So I approached and I think a lot of people do spirituality from the framework of getting it right.
00:02:05
Speaker
Um, and so a lot of people come to me for Akashic record readings and they're like, am I in the right path? And where am I on that path? Exactly. Where am I exactly on that path?
The Non-hierarchy of Spiritual Evolution
00:02:15
Speaker
Like 2%. Yeah. And, and, and I mean, actually joking aside, there's actually a lot of anxieties, you know, around, um, I've gone off my path. I'm on the wrong path and all this stuff. And so in it comes, I think this, this idea of like spiritual elitism. So, so one,
00:02:35
Speaker
What does it mean to have spiritual evolution? It means that you're learning and growing without a hierarchical perspective of what that means, right? So a kindergartner is properly in kindergarten. A PhD student is properly in their PhD
00:02:55
Speaker
We would never want to swap them, nor would we judge either for being in a retrospective place. It's perfect, right? But when we think about soul evolution, we think, well, if I'm in kindergarten, that's slow or bad or wrong, or I want to be more advanced, or if I'm in a PhD program, I got it, right? It's this really gross sense of being better.
00:03:24
Speaker
I don't know that somehow some people are not evolved enough. And by not evolved enough, right, we mean
00:03:33
Speaker
I haven't overcome all the negative vibrational energies. Right. Yeah. So, um, you know, I spent a lot of years trying to not feel negative feelings. It's truly like, Oh, that worked out for you. Yeah. I became like very like walking around, like, um, um, it's like a,
00:04:01
Speaker
It's almost like holding your breath is all I can say, right? It felt like I was trying so hard to get it right all the time and minimize the quote, negative expressions of life, right? And it's tough. I mean, it's tough because life is challenging and things come up and they are hard. And if you feel that a sense of shame
00:04:26
Speaker
that you're experiencing anger or you're experiencing feeling like a victim one day or, you know, whatever it is, sad, unworthy, that there's something wrong with you in that moment. So that's what I had to re
00:04:47
Speaker
redefine for myself.
Unlearning for Spiritual Growth
00:04:50
Speaker
And it took a long time. And it wasn't really until I checked out the Adashanti stuff that I just love so much, but really heard his explanation around being in life totally. It's not that I hadn't heard these ideas before, right? So we hear things, we hear it in our head. And I kind of heard it, but I didn't really hear it until I was listening to
00:05:16
Speaker
one of the two books, I forget, I always mix them up, but one of the two, A Falling from Grace or End of Your World, and it was like, oh, I have to be in life fully, good or bad.
00:05:31
Speaker
And so spiritual evolution is we learn lessons over lifetimes, whatever it is, learning how to not be abusive, learning how to be not a victim, learning how to deal with forgiveness, whatever it is. And none of it is better or worse or right or wrong. And I'm not equally better or worse or right or wrong because I am still in the negative lower vibration or the more
00:06:03
Speaker
earlier level lessons that a soul might be learning.
Soul Evolution and the Akashic Realm
00:06:06
Speaker
How about that? Yeah. Yeah, I love that. And both of those Adyashanti books, amazing. I mean, they've been really pivotal to my own understanding over the past few years. One of the things that comes up for me quite a bit around the ideas of spiritual growth is that it really is this kind of unlearning
00:06:29
Speaker
are stripping away, right? They're kind of two sides to it. And this is where human language really just is completely inadequate because we're talking about
00:06:40
Speaker
like eternal lessons that are learned through a physical life, right? But it's like you're born in this wonder-filled, just presence wrapped in skin as a child, and then you start learning language.
00:07:01
Speaker
and thought is just language, and it's added to your effortless presence, your effortless being. So things are added to it, and these things accumulate, right? Like these algorithms and things that we learn. And then, for me, the path, if you wanna call it that, of spiritual growth is unlearning all of the things that were put on top that were added to you.
00:07:30
Speaker
So it's this kind of unlearning, this stripping away, which is why so many of the spiritual traditions say that, look, you're really just recognizing the truth. You're just realizing what is buried beneath all of the stuff that you've added on top, or that our culture is added on top.
00:07:54
Speaker
Yeah, part of what gets added on top is what you're talking about, that linear, you know, this is what spiritual growth looks like. Here's what it doesn't look like. If you're doing it this way, you're doing it right. If you do it this way, you're doing it wrong. And everybody has their ideas of what's right and wrong and who's better than others. And, you know, and it changes too all the time. Like, you know, if you want to grow fast, do breath work.
00:08:18
Speaker
well, no, it's not that anymore. It's cold plunging along with psychedelics or whatever it is. But it really is just this kind of unlearning while learning at the same time. So to me, it just seems like it's both of those things. That's right. From a very, very, very practical level,
00:08:46
Speaker
Right, from my perspective, which is always the Akashic realm, we come here over many incarnations to learn specific lessons that we created in our soul plan. So we evolve over time, even though there isn't time, we evolve over multiple lifetimes, and then we have an ascension. Our soul doesn't need to keep coming through this physical realm. It ascends to an ascended master, what have you, right? Nothing's better or worse. No life is more important than the other.
00:09:15
Speaker
no lesson is more meaningful, no time is meaningful, right? Like the lessons we learned early in our soul's inception, all the way to through the end, they're all of the same value. And then to your point, right, there's all this stuff that gets in the way. And there's all these ideas and frameworks and cultural views. And that one, this spiritual elitism, this idea of getting it right of like,
00:09:42
Speaker
If I get there, then I will feel more bliss, more happy. What is enlightenment? Oh, it's I'm above all of it. I feel amazing all the time. And it's like, oh God, that's not true. Oh God, it's not true, Kevin. And it like one created all of this disharmony in myself because I was trying so hard to get it right. And then when I was not capable of that, right? Cause life just kept dishing and I just kept feeling
00:10:09
Speaker
these lower vibrational negative experiences. And the shame is building. And it's like, what am I getting wrong? How come I can't figure this spiritual shit out, right? Like, truly. And it was until I realized that's not at all it's just being in a state of
00:10:30
Speaker
acceptance. I'm not resisting what is, and I'm not grasping for what I think I need, meaning I'm not grasping for the positive, you know, higher vibrational experiences, and I'm not resisting the lower ones. I'm just
00:10:45
Speaker
in my experience quote good quote bad and I'm extracting out the lessons that my soul needs in the moment right so that you can continue on this path that quite frankly I don't even know what I set up half the time right so it's a grand unfolding into the unknown which is really just my allowance for the present moment to be exactly what it needs to be without judgment
00:11:10
Speaker
And so it's tough because, one, there's this evolution of spirit. We don't even remember what we set up. Two, cultural norms are such that I was so misinformed about what it is to be a spirit in the human experience so that I could learn and grow from the soul level, right? I mean, all of these ideologies are just
00:11:39
Speaker
they're just impossible. They make it so difficult to do the soul work.
Music as a Metaphor for the Soul
00:11:43
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. And it, you know, in this whole process really requires faith, like in the truest sense that I can trust life. I can trust what's happening, right? Because, you know, it's like the truth will set you free.
00:11:59
Speaker
but it's gonna trigger you first to get your attention is the way all of that works because like life is the school and if your lesson or if your course of study is total inner freedom, like total inner peace, well-being that also then expresses itself through your life as your truest expression, well then life is gonna bring you opportunities
00:12:28
Speaker
and trigger you to clear out the stuff that blocks you. I tell people all the time, coaching clients, it's like, listen, one of the best things you can do is to go out and get triggered, get good and pissed off because those things that get triggered in you are the things that need to be
00:12:48
Speaker
you know, removed or just kind of cleared out of the way so that you can be more free. But like we take it, like you said, that resistance as proof that we're not, we're not doing it right. So no, it's actually proof that you are doing it right.
00:13:03
Speaker
You know, it's like go deep into that, like go face that, embrace it, do it even more because that's where the good stuff is. It could be this life and it could be what you brought in to heal in this life. It could be literal soul work. And I did a reading for this woman and she's like, why am I struggling? And I was like, let me look. And we looked at the soul plan and it took us to the past life. And the past life was multiple children, a husband that was an alcoholic,
00:13:33
Speaker
a really difficult relationship with the parent. And she's like, oh my God, I have the same thing going on in this life. And I was like, no way. I don't know this person at all. And so she has come back to keep learning, right? Through this embodiment, we set up lifetimes so that we can learn the lessons. In her case, it was about shame and self-worth. And this dynamic was the one her soul picked. And so sometimes it's cultural norms. Sometimes it's the true lesson that you're trying to
00:14:04
Speaker
experience to learn, right? Because that's the point is that for whatever reason, I don't know, the soul expression needs the embodiment to move it into the experiential knowing that helps evolve the soul. It seems like a difficult process. I wish it was a little less. But you know, this human living thing seems to help the soul growth.
The Illusion of Spiritual Materialism
00:14:32
Speaker
Yeah, I think in mental pictures and metaphors, and you know how I love words in etymology. The word for wind in so many different languages is the same word that's used for spirit.
00:14:49
Speaker
And I think about, if you think about a flute, and if you just held a flute up into the air and just expected the breeze to make music, it wouldn't work. The breath or the wind or the spirit has to be guided and directed through this physical thing in order to create music. And it's the same way. That's how I think about why on earth would a soul need a human
00:15:19
Speaker
life, right? Well, the human life is the instrument, and the breath blowing through it is this spirit, its soul, and they create each other, right? Like the breath by itself isn't music, it needs the instrument, and the instrument by itself
00:15:38
Speaker
is just a thing, you know, it needs the, the breath moving through it. And so, you know, and so it's just like, I kind of think of it as, you know, this, the learning and the practicing process of like learning an instrument, how to play an instrument feels to me like, Oh, well, that's what souls are doing in like kind of clumsily getting through stumbling through human life, learning things, making amazing music at the same time. Right.
00:16:06
Speaker
Yeah, completely. That's a beautiful, beautiful, beautiful metaphor. That's 100% how I see it too. Yeah. And it also sets up life as play. Alan Watt said something one time about symphonies. He's like, nobody ever worked a symphony or ever worked a piece of art, right? You play a symphony. You play music.
00:16:31
Speaker
And I really do think that at some point we have these realizations of, oh, wow, like this game? Was it? We took it way more seriously than we really needed to. We actually created the resistance in our life and we learned from it. And I think it comes back to that point of hierarchy, right? Like, why do we take it seriously? In my opinion, right, it's that there's a
00:17:01
Speaker
there's a lack of play to life because there's this desperate need to get it right. And there's this deep internal judge that lives within all of us that keeps reminding us of our lack, right? Not good enough, not lovable, right? At the core, what is the deepest fear that everybody holds? Lovability.
00:17:28
Speaker
Right? Worthiness, worthy of love. And so if that's truly at stake and you believe that the attainments of life, maybe the practical success stuff, or you move into the spiritual life and you say, oh my God, if I don't find enlightenment, what does that mean about me? Right? I must suck. And it's like, wow, you know, we just attach this achievement-based mindset
00:17:57
Speaker
which never can be satisfied, ever. The most successful people don't feel good. And a lot of people are chasing after spirituality, truly chasing it. And I was too, I kept being like,
00:18:16
Speaker
When am I gonna hold this experience, right? And what I meant was, how do I just stay happy all the time? How do I stay authentic all the time? And then I learned, yeah, no, no, no, it's this waving thing and you have to go through it. But as much as I felt I got that, I was trying to cut the negative stuff short. I didn't wanna be in that. And so the shift was bad days, whatever.
00:18:45
Speaker
whatever they're just there they're perfectly fine and i just kind of like turned in order and i'm just like
00:18:54
Speaker
Exactly. And it's, and it's, and it's always relative. It's like bad compared to what, um, you know, because about a week ago, like I just had this really crappy day. I was just feeling, you know, kind of bleak and what doesn't happen very often. And I just happened to turn on the news and saw the story about Ukraine, what's happening in Ukraine.
00:19:20
Speaker
depending on what people have, or just figuring out how to survive. And in that instant, I had this thought of, man, my bad is not that bad. No, it's always relative to our expectation of what we think the day should be, right? Exactly. And that's the thing. It's like, what is it supposed to be? It's like, it's only hard because I have expectations that it must be a certain way.
00:19:48
Speaker
And the mind is constantly seeking and resisting, right? And it's that that creates all of the suffering. And I think what I hear and what you're saying is it's just realizing that. It's like life is challenging. You are going to have challenges such as life. Say la vie, you know? Embrace it. See what it has to teach you. Yep. You're not a more evolved soul.
00:20:17
Speaker
a more spiritual person if you can get outside of the human experience. That is not the answer. I thought it was. I think a lot of people do. It is being deeply in it and allowing it to be true for as long as it needs to be true. I mean, sometimes I just wake up and I'm like,
00:20:41
Speaker
Let me do some deep breathing and it clears whatever is going on. Sometimes a nice meditation does. Sometimes it just does not. And I get to the end of the day and I feel just as crappy as in the beginning of the day. But I'm not struggling because I'm okay with that. I'm okay with the discomfort. It's not wrong.
00:20:59
Speaker
It shouldn't be, I'm not resisting it, I'm not struggling with it. The dialoguing, right? Like, why is this happening? Why do I feel this way? And I woke up this morning and I can't shake it. It's like, so what? So what? I'm not shaking it. And I go to bed and I'm like, well, see what happens tomorrow, you know?
00:21:15
Speaker
I don't know, it could be tomorrow too, or it could start off great. You have those great days, you know? You walk in, you're like, yes! When did my bag today? And then something happened. And that shouldn't have been. And oh my God, I was in this great mood. And oh, I mean, it's the best when somebody else
00:21:33
Speaker
puts you in a bad mood. I was in a great mood till you said that, my partner. So much fun. It's like, oh, I have a person to blame or a situation. I was so happy, but then traffic was a mess. And it's like, really? Like, really? You know, so if you can stop caring
00:21:54
Speaker
about the world working according to your own divine idea of what it should be every day, right? Like, this was the big one. I don't know, there's seven, eight billion people on the planet. And it's like, okay, for the next hour, every single one of them has a fantasy of the next hour, every single solitary one. So I'm in Chicago,
00:22:21
Speaker
How many people have a fantasy about their next hour that I'm going to interact with? Why would it be my version?
00:22:29
Speaker
Why? That's insane to think, right? Every single one of us thinks, oh, the next hour, if it could just go my way the next week, the next year, it's like, who the fuck am I to think that my version, which by the way, anything in the future is just my imagination. It's just my imagination. It's just me projecting some weird ass fantasy into the world.
00:22:56
Speaker
and believing for some reason it should be true and you're doing it and all of us are doing it. And then we're actually mad. We're like, ah, I believe it. There's traffic. I didn't think there would be three o'clock. There's not usually it's like, okay. I mean, but there is. And so I don't think I predict traffic patterns nor should it go according to my life plan.
00:23:22
Speaker
Yeah, I totally agree. And it's just so funny how, yeah, we demand that the world or something outside of us makes us happy. I realize this in my own experience. If you just take the materialism, right, because it's the pursuit of happiness and you get those things and we've talked about this before, you get the things and it doesn't make you happy.
00:23:50
Speaker
And then most people start that next journey, which is, okay, well, it wasn't physical things that made me happy. So maybe it's non-physical things. So it's spiritual things that will make me happy. And we're pursuing the same things. It's just spiritual materialism, physical materialism. You know what I mean? But the aim is always the same, which is my happiness
00:24:19
Speaker
exists somewhere in the future. Yeah. And that future may be, well, when I'm one with God. The only reason why anybody pursues spirituality is why? Because they want to be happy. That's right. Happiness above everything. That's right. And then you realize all of your, through the process of growth, and this is the unlearning process through learning, it's like,
00:24:47
Speaker
you begin to see that just as money can't make you happy, neither do spiritual pursuits, ultimately, because they lead you back to the realization that, well, you're already it. You're already okay. You're already worth loving, because you are love, by the way. Like... Right, right. And that's right, Kevin. And I, you know,
00:25:17
Speaker
All roads do come back to the same place and every day I get a little derailed and every day I have to come back to it, right? And it's like the expression of energy that wants to rise up and through me and live in the present moment wishes to do such. The mind gets in the way, cultural cuts, drugs get in the way, beliefs about how things should be get in the way.
00:25:40
Speaker
That energy is already fine. Happy, call it happy, right? Happiness, the word triggers me because we always mean it to align with pleasure. But happiness in terms of contentment, total satisfaction, peace, calm, that everything in life is okay is always available because the energy of self is already there.
00:26:06
Speaker
now, when I'm in my mind, and I'm having an annoyed day, and I'm feeling all sorts of stress, because my thoughts are just going everywhere. Sometimes, that's not as available to me as other times, right? But to know that you can keep coming back to it and not to take it so seriously, and it's okay, that I'm over identified with my mind for an hour. That's what has gotten me out of the hamster wheel, where, you know, I might have lost
00:26:33
Speaker
days to it or weeks to it or years and years ago, months to it, right? Or God, I think I was just living that way all the time. Yeah. And maybe we should start calling it well-being, like total absolute well-being instead of happiness, because I agree with you. Yeah.
True Acceptance vs. Spiritual Bypassing
00:26:50
Speaker
Yeah. And there was one other thing I wanted to bring up in this whole conversation, because somebody has asked me about it before, like, this sounds really great. But what you're talking about is spiritual bypassing.
00:27:03
Speaker
You know, just like kind of this Pollyanna, everything's going to be okay. And I would say that actually there's no such thing because, you know, you're on this road. So let's just use the road analogy. You're on this road. You're on this journey. There is no bypass that takes you around the city, right? Because you're always going to come back.
00:27:25
Speaker
you're on this path and even if you decide you don't want to face whatever it is that you're going to face, that's fine. You are going to be brought back to it though. There's no getting out of your lessons. There's no moving from second grade to third grade.
00:27:42
Speaker
uh, without getting through the curriculum. So like spiritual bypass it, like I kind of get it. I get the idea of, I don't want to take responsibility for myself, but you always have to, you always end up taking responsibility for yourself either like, uh, joyfully from your own inner sense of I'm doing this or life is going to make you take responsibility. Yeah. Or you'll repeat it in the next life.
00:28:07
Speaker
or you repeat it. Right. And it's fine. It doesn't matter because there's no time. I mean, yeah, I mean, you know, spiritual bypassing can be a thing too, but there's a difference, right? And the reason that these conversations excite me is because it's so nuanced and it's so confusing until you sort of have to experience it for yourself and you have to embody it for yourself. You have to go through that process, right? Like no matter
00:28:34
Speaker
how many books I've read or whatever I've done until I had my own felt experience. I was like, I think I hear it, but I'm not sure I hear it. But bypassing is to not experience. What we're talking about is actually feeling into all of it fully as it is without resistance or grasping.
00:28:54
Speaker
And there is no bypassing in there. And if you bypass though, there's nothing wrong with that either, right? Just to get out of this framework of believing that there's some kind of right way to get through life. It's so conditioned into the brain to view things from a right and wrong place. It's fine that the brain sees it this way. The rest of us, the embodied self, the soul self,
00:29:25
Speaker
lives in the energy of what is presented in the moments and doesn't have to bog down with the rightness and wrongness. But, you know, the brain is what we are equipped with in this life. And so it's the reality is of being human is that we will slip into those spaces
00:29:48
Speaker
And then come back, right? It's part of the experience. And it's just embracing the simplicity of what is. Yeah. Because life is the way that it is, but only all the time. Always. Only all the time. Yeah. Well, this was the best conversation I've had all day. And I just love dropping into these
00:30:12
Speaker
And I hope everybody who's listening has been really helpful to you. We have so much more coming to you next week, so be sure to check out all of the things, LittleSoul.school, and we will be back with more next week.
Conclusion and Community Invitation
00:30:29
Speaker
Much love to everybody. Thanks, Laura.
00:30:33
Speaker
Thanks for listening to this week's episode, and I really hope that you consider checking out the Little Soul School, LittleSoul.school, where there's a community of people dedicated to soul growth, soul learning, and the Akashic energy.
00:30:50
Speaker
a space that holds all of our soul's histories, everything we've ever done in all of our lifetimes. Because they're looking for a deeper connection to themselves, a place to experiment and play with spirituality in a non-judgmental, vulnerable, open community of people. No woo-woo, no fluff, just fun and connection. Come check it out, littlesoul.school.