Friends, we live in a culture that’s obsessed with shortcuts. 

Faster healing. Immediate insights. Singular experiences that promise to undo years of pain. 

Spirituality, too, has been absorbed into this mindset. Practices that once emphasized patience, discipline, and relationship are now often framed as rapid transformations, big ol’ breakthroughs, rather than builds. 

But the truth stays steady and unchanged: there is no shortcut on the spiritual path. 

You see friends, there’s this myth of arrival that’s becoming increasingly common and many folks turn to spirituality and look for an arrival point. An arrival point where the mind finally settles for a moment, a place where the pain dissolves, or a state where life stops asking the difficult questions. 

BUT, the spiritual path is a relationship, not a destination. It’s a relationship with the body, a relationship with suffering, a relationship with discipline…humility…time. Trying to rush this relationship leads to imitation, the borrowing of language, symbols, and practices without allowing them to change us from the inside. 

The Dialectic: Acceptance AND Change

From a therapeutic lens (specifically, dialectical behaviour therapy), spiritual growth exists with a dialectic. 

We MUST hold two truths at once:

1. We’re already whole and worthy of compassion
2. We’re responsible for doing the work required to change

Leaning only into acceptance becomes complacency. Leaning only into change becomes self-rejection. 

There’s no bypassing this dialectic. 

The Wise Mind Is Cultivated, Not Accessed Only Once

Many folks come to spirituality searching for a singular moment of clarity, a peak experience of sorts where “the truth” is finally revealed to them. 

From a therapeutic perspective we’re reminded that the Wise Mind isn’t a permanent state that we unlock. It’s a capacity that we practice.

…”practice, practice, practice” (for the friends that have been on the journey with me for some time).

This state of mind is strengthened by 4 things:

1. Consistent mindfulness
2. Repeated emotional regulation
3. Tolerating distress without fleeing
4. Choosing values over impulses

You see, insight alone doesn’t transform behaviour. But transformation happens when the insight is repeatedly translated into action, and especially when we’re under stress. 

Distress Tolerance Is The Unavoidable Teacher

Much of spiritual growth occurs during discomfort, not during calm moments. 

Grief. 

Cravings. 

Restlessness. 

Shame. 

The urge to escape. 

Therapeutically, it’s actually called Distress Tolerance, and it’s the ability to remain present without making the pain worse. 

The spiritual path demands this same capacity. 

There’s no shortcut around suffering. There’s only the slow work of learning how to stay. 

So, any path that promises transcendence without discomfort isn’t offering you wisdom, it’s offering you relief. 

The Training Ground: The Body

Spirituality is often misunderstood as a mental pursuit. But Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT) and embodied traditions remind us that change happens through the body. 

Through your breath.

Through your posture. 

Through your actions. 

Through your routine. 

The nervous system MUST learn safety before insight can be integrated. Regulation precedes revelation. 

So, without embodiment, the spiritual language becomes performative, it’s used to explain life rather than live it. 

A Word on Psychedelics:

Psychedelics are increasingly discussed as tools for spiritual insight and psychological healing. Used carefully, ethically, and with appropriate frameworks, they may offer moments of expanded awareness or emotional access. 

However, they aren’t a substitute for practice. 

From both a clinical and spiritual perspective, the risk lies in what happens after, not in the experience itself. 

Without integration, accountability, emotional regulation skills, and values-based living, insight can remain isolated – felt, but not embodied. 

So, psychedelics may open a door, but they don’t teach you how to walk the path beyond it. Without distress tolerance, emotional regulation, and relational repair work, even the most profound experiences can become another form of avoidance, where we’re chasing states rather than building character. 

There’s no chemical shortcut to wisdom. 

Commitment > Intensity 

Whether it’s the clinical path or the spiritual one, both are asking and emphasizing the same thing – commitment to treatment rather than intensity of experience. 

You see friends, growth comes from choosing values over urges, returning after a slip-up, repairing after a rupture, and practicing even when nothing feels profound. 

The path is forged in ordinary days lived with integrity and to quote Rumi – “when you walk the path, the path appears.”

In Closing

Friends, if you find yourself searching for the next experience, the next realization, the next breakthrough…pause…Rahao (as said in Gurbani). Then ask yourself:

1. How am I practicing being here?
2. How do I respond when I’m dysregulated?
3. What values guide my behaviour when things are hard?

There’s no shortcut. There’s skills. There’s practice. There’s the slow, honest work of becoming more regulated, responsible, and compassionate…again and again. 

And that, quietly and faithfully, IS the spiritual path. 

With love, 

Gurmukh