When I first started exploring spirituality, I was fascinated by this world—the idea that I could better understand myself, quiet my mind, stand above my problems, and maybe even find an answer for everything I struggled with. My curiosity led me to search, read books, think deeply, and eventually start this blog. But after some time, I began to notice that my quest for spirituality sometimes turned into an excuse to avoid facing the real issues in my life, things I kept putting off.
I realized I needed to find a balance between spirituality and real life. After all, we’re here for a reason—to actually live, not just drift away or get lost in fantasies about some life beyond this world. For me, spirituality should help me be a better person in everyday life, not replace it.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with treating spirituality as a refuge, as long as we do it in moderation—not running away from our problems, but instead using it to seek answers, look for solutions, and figure out what our soul wants or how to do the right thing in a tough moment.
Let me quote Thich Nhat Hanh here:
“The real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin air, but to walk on earth.”
For me, the goal isn’t to gain some superhuman power, but to live more honestly and authentically as a human being.
This article isn’t about criticizing spiritual practices—in fact, I don’t practice in the religious sense myself. I reflect, I search, and I draw from all kinds of traditions, cultures, philosophies, and science. My hope here is simply to encourage us to keep our feet on the ground while we grow spiritually and get to know ourselves better.
Spirituality Is the Gym, Not the Main Event
Imagine your goal is to be physically healthy and strong. You join a gym, you lift weights, and you watch your nutrition. But do you live at the gym? Do you sleep on the bench press and eat your meals by the treadmill? Of course not. You train at the gym so that you have the strength to live your life outside of it—to carry groceries, play with your kids, or hike a mountain without getting winded.
For me, spirituality works the same way—or rather, I want it to work that way, because I sometimes get lost in it myself. I treat meditation, mindfulness, breathwork, and reflection as my spiritual training. You can treat prayer or studying sacred texts the same way if you practice a religion.
I see it as a time when I can quiet down and get to know my inner self—whether I call it a soul or universal consciousness doesn’t matter to me. However, since you lead a real life and have real responsibilities, these practices should only be a part of your day, not the whole goal.
Science backs this up—psychologists have found that integrating spiritual practices into daily routines, instead of making them an all-consuming focus, is linked with greater emotional well-being and resilience. Research published in the Journal of Positive Psychology (2017) suggests that people who view spirituality as a tool for personal growth (rather than an escape) experience less anxiety and more satisfaction in daily life.
The goal is life itself. The aim is to bring the patience you learned in silence to a stressful meeting at work, or the compassion you felt during prayer into a heated argument with your partner. If your spirituality evaporates the moment you stand up from your meditation cushion or put down your rosary, you aren’t putting it into practice. For me, that’s not genuine spirituality.
Our material existence—this physical reality—is here for a reason. We’re here to create, to solve problems, to build relationships, and to experience what it means to be human.
My Personal Story
My personal battleground was the time when my wife left me alone with the kids. I hid in my inner world, hoping that focused thoughts and affirmations would magically change my situation. I hoped she would come back, that she would change, that she would stop chasing pleasure and realize that family was important. I got lost in daydreams, convinced that just prayer, meditation, and positive intentions would solve my problems.
But eventually, I realized that while I couldn’t control the world around me with my mind, I could change myself. Practices like mindfulness, meditation, breathwork, and honest self-reflection didn’t let me escape reality—they gave me the calm, clarity, and creativity to face it fully.
Over time, this shift brought real benefits: I became more productive, tougher in hard times, and I rebuilt close relationships by approaching people with genuine empathy. Instead of using spirituality to avoid challenges, I learned to face them head-on, supported by a renewed sense of inner peace.
Does that mean I never drift or lose myself anymore? No. But being aware that this is a risk to my real life helps me regain control quickly when I lose it. Thanks to this awareness, I can recognize faster when I’m avoiding something, procrastinating, or hoping for a stroke of luck instead of taking action.
When the Medicine Becomes the Poison: The Trap of Spiritual Bypassing
Okay, now for some more scientific-sounding stuff, but it’s important to read this because it might help you understand these negative patterns of escaping into spirituality. Psychologists have a name for using spiritual beliefs to avoid unresolved emotional or practical problems: spiritual bypassing. As John Welwood, the psychologist who coined the term, explains: “When we are spiritually bypassing, we may use ideas like ‘all is one’ to rationalize away emotional pain.” This is what happens when we use so-called “high vibes” as a shield against the rough texture of reality.
Research published in Mental Health, Religion & Culture (2020) suggests that relying too much on spiritual practices as the only coping mechanism can lead to avoidant behaviors and even deepen feelings of isolation.
Alright, but how do you know if you’ve crossed the line from a healthy practice to avoidance? Here are three common warning signs found in psychology. Be sure to analyze them all to see if they apply to you. I did, and I had to correct my path because I noticed I was straying from the path to “healthy” spirituality:
1. Detachment from Responsibilities
You might start seeing everyday tasks—paying taxes, cleaning the house, answering emails—as “low-vibration” or insignificant. You might tell yourself that you’re “above” these mundane things because you’re an energetic being. This is a dangerous path that often leads to financial chaos, neglected health, or professional failure. Living in a material world requires material upkeep. Ignoring it doesn’t make you enlightened; it makes you irresponsible.
This is especially important if you’re going through a crisis or a turning point in your life. Since your current situation—psychological or otherwise, as I don’t know what you’re dealing with—is already challenging, ignoring daily problems and postponing their resolution to an indefinite future can only make your issues even worse.
2. A Sense of Spiritual Superiority
Paradoxically, focusing too intensely on dissolving the ego can sometimes inflate it. You might start judging others for their “unconscious” choices—watching reality TV, eating meat, or getting angry in traffic. You might think, “I’m beyond that drama.” Instead of fostering connection and unity, your practice builds a wall between you and the rest of humanity. As Ram Dass noted, “If you think you are enlightened, go and spend a week with your family.”
This doesn’t personally affect me. But I often see such behavior in very religious people—seemingly very religious, because it’s often superficial and can be called sanctimoniousness or hypocrisy. It’s definitely not the path I want to follow.
Nevertheless, even if this doesn’t concern you, just like it doesn’t concern me, and you don’t feel enlightened or superior to others, it’s still worth keeping in mind because this risk could appear at some stage of our journey.
On a side note, referring to Ram Dass’ thought expressed in the quote above—maybe I don’t feel enlightened because I have three kids to take care of 🙂
3. Abstraction Over Action
When you face a concrete problem, do you retreat into abstract questions? If your boss criticizes your work, do you ask, “What’s the karmic lesson here?” instead of asking, “How can I improve this report?” While finding meaning is valuable, it can’t replace practical action. Spirituality should help you make decisions with clarity, not paralyze you with over-analysis.
That’s why, in my opinion, it’s important to separate life from spirituality, in the sense that spirituality should serve life and life should serve to spirituality, but they can’t replace each other.
To sum up, how to live and develop your spirituality? How do I deal with these traps, and what helps me?
DETACHMENT and ABSTRACTION: As I’ve mentioned many times before – I see spirituality as the essence and life as the form. I try to recognize the essence, my soul, or consciousness obscured by the ego, and in life, I aim to give it form.
SUPERIORITY: I remember, and I don’t forget, that spirituality is not meant to make me better than others but to help me be better for myself and for others. That’s why the preposition “for” is so important here!
Practical Tips for Finding Balance
For me, and I suspect for you as well—for most people like us, because I don’t suspect that my blog is read by real monks, priests, or other clergy, with lots of different commitments, careers, families, and mortgages—the goal is to be a “monk in the city.” We have to maintain inner peace despite daily responsibilities that are far from the spiritual realm, amidst the external noise, daily rush, and obligations. And this kind of balance, a healthy approach to spirituality, is confirmed by a 2021 study in Frontiers in Psychology, which showed that short, regular spiritual practices integrated into daily life improved stress management and relationships without causing social withdrawal.
Here’s how to effectively blend daily life with spirituality to improve your life instead of making it worse:
The 80/20 Rule
The 80/20 Rule, also known as the Pareto Principle, suggests that a small portion of our efforts often lead to the majority of our results.
In spirituality, this means for me the real impact is not just in how long I sit for meditation or how many books I read, but in how I apply these lessons in real life. Try dedicating roughly 20% of your spiritual energy to “formal practice” (like meditation, reading, or workshops), and focus the other 80% on “practice in action.”
Treat your work, home, family, and friends as spiritual temples—(80%)—take care to perform your duties in these temples conscientiously. And devote 20% to your own personal shrine.
- Instead of: Meditating for an hour in the morning and then snapping at your children, bo nie przygotowały się do wyjścia do szkoły.
- Try: Meditating for 15 minutes, and then practicing active mindfulness and patience while making breakfast and helping prepare them.
Applying the Pareto Principle to your spiritual life helps you focus on the handful of practices that really make a difference, encouraging you to weave them into your daily routines for the greatest, most practical benefit.
Of course, the 80 to 20 ratio is arbitrary for me, but the idea is that most of the time should be spent practicing spirituality in daily life rather than thinking about practicing it.
Grounding Techniques
If you feel yourself “floating away” or becoming too detached, you need to come back to your body.
- Physical sensation: Feel your feet firmly on the floor as you walk. Focus closely on the taste and temperature of your coffee.
These are universal tips. For example, I have my own way of grounding myself through my body—I look at my hands and remind myself that I am here, my soul is something immaterial, but I also have a physical body. But when it comes to coffee, I also like that method 🙂 - Manual labor: Do something physical. Scrub the bathtub, weed the garden, or fix a leaky faucet. Physical work is one of the best antidotes to spiritual abstraction.
- Spend time with family or friends: Play soccer with your child, or go to a coffee shop or pub with friends.
- Breathe: No explanation needed here. Just focus on your breath—on the inhale, the exhale, the pause in between, the air flowing into your lungs and through your body, and the air flowing out.
As you can see, these are very simple methods and are identical to ways to de-stress. In reality, there are plenty of such methods, but they can’t always be applied in every circumstance. That’s why, for me, the most universal one is focusing on my breath.
Spirituality as Support, Not Escape
When a crisis hits, use your spiritual toolkit to shift your perspective, not to blind yourself to the problem.
- The Scenario: You are dealing with a difficult, angry client who is causing you a great deal of stress.
- The Escape: You tell yourself, “This is all an illusion, it doesn’t matter,” and you mentally check out. (Result: You lose the client and damage your reputation)
- The Support: You take a few deep, conscious breaths to regulate your nervous system. You remind yourself that this person is likely suffering. And you want to apply spirituality in practice, you want to help them. With that calm, you engage in a professional, solution-oriented conversation. (Result: You handle the situation with grace and integrity)
Exercise: The Reality Check
Once a week, conduct a brief audit of your life balance. Rate yourself honestly in these four areas:
- Body: Am I sleeping enough, eating well, and moving my body?
- Finances/Work: Are my affairs in order? Am I meeting my obligations?
- Relationships: Am I present for my loved ones? Do I listen to them?
- Spirit: Does my practice give me strength, or is it isolating me?
If your spiritual life is blooming but your relationships are withering and your finances are a mess, take it as a red alert. It is time to redirect energy from the crown chakra down to the root.
Conclusion: The Harmony of Two Worlds
I believe that we are not just bodies, but we are not just spirits either. We are spiritual beings having a human experience. The key word there is experiencing. Not avoiding, not denying, but fully living through the highs and lows.
“Spirituality does not mean escaping life but engaging with it more deeply,” writes Dr. Lisa Miller, psychologist and author of The Spiritual Child. Your meditation practice truly matters when it makes you a more patient parent, a more reliable partner, a more conscientious employee, or simply a kinder stranger in the grocery store line. Spirituality is meant to be the fuel for your creativity and resilience in the real world.
Let spirituality be a tool for your personal growth, not a goal in itself. The real test of your spirituality doesn’t happen in the quiet of a retreat center. It happens out here, where it’s loud, imperfect, and chaotic—right in the heart of your everyday life.
A Challenge for You Today:
Pause for a moment and look honestly at your last week. Did you use a phrase like “everything happens for a reason” or “it is what it is” to avoid a difficult action or confrontation?
Choose one mundane, practical task that you have been putting off—maybe it’s making that dentist appointment, organizing the garage, or having a transparent conversation with a friend. Treat this task as your highest spiritual practice for the day. Do it with full attention, presence, and quality. That is what balance looks like.
If my writing has inspired or helped you, I would be grateful for your support.
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AI Disclosure
I see my thoughts as the essence, much like the soul, and AI helps me give them form. It supports me with research, translation, and organizing ideas, but every perspective is my own. Curious how I use AI? Read more here.
