Challenging Spiritualism: The Problem with 'Raising Your Vibration'

I've spent years trying to raise my vibration. I've bought the crystals, done the cleanses, chanted the mantras, and yes, I've even paid for "frequency healing" sessions that promised to lift me into higher dimensions. And for a while, it felt like it was working. I felt more peaceful, more connected, more... spiritual.

But something nagged at me. Even in my highest states, even when my chakras were supposedly aligned and my aura was allegedly glowing, there was still someone there doing the seeking. Still someone measuring, comparing, trying to get somewhere better than where I was.

And slowly, I began to wonder: What if the very act of trying to raise my vibration was actually keeping me from recognizing what was already here?

The Seductive Logic of Spiritual Improvement

The concept of raising your vibration makes perfect sense, doesn't it? Energy exists on different frequencies—that's basic physics. Love feels different from fear, peace feels different from anxiety, joy feels different from despair. So naturally, we want more of the "higher" feelings and less of the "lower" ones.

The spiritual marketplace has built an entire economy around this desire. We're told we can elevate ourselves through specific foods, sounds, practices, and products. We can literally purchase our way to enlightenment, one sacred geometry pendant at a time.

But here's what I started noticing in myself and others caught up in the vibration-raising game: we became spiritual consumers, always looking for the next upgrade to our consciousness. Our spiritual practice turned into a never-ending self-improvement project, complete with metrics and milestones.

I found myself asking questions like: "Is this experience high-vibe enough?" "Am I being too negative?" "Should I be feeling more grateful right now?" My inner life became a performance, even when no one was watching.

The Duality Trap Hidden in Plain Sight

What took me embarrassingly long to see was how the entire framework of "raising vibration" is built on separation. It assumes there's a "me" who has a vibration that needs improvement. It creates a hierarchy where some states are deemed superior to others, and some people (those with "higher vibrations") are more evolved than others.

This might be the most sophisticated form of spiritual materialism I've encountered. We're not just wanting better cars or bigger houses—we're wanting better consciousness, more evolved souls, higher dimensional experiences. But the wanting itself, no matter how spiritually framed, keeps us locked in the very duality we're trying to transcend.

I remember sitting in a meditation group where people would share their experiences, and there was this subtle competition about who'd had the most transcendent week. Who'd manifested more abundance, who'd felt more connected to source, who'd successfully maintained their "high vibe" despite challenging circumstances.

And I realized: even our spiritual experiences had become another form of having, collecting, and comparing.

The Exhaustion of Spiritual Perfectionism

Here's what nobody tells you about trying to maintain a high vibration: it's exhausting. You become hypervigilant about your inner state, constantly monitoring whether you're thinking the right thoughts, feeling the right feelings, emanating the right energy.

I started noticing how I'd suppress anger because it was "low vibe." How I'd force gratitude when what I actually felt was grief. How I'd smile and speak softly even when my authentic response was frustration or confusion. I was becoming a spiritual people-pleaser, trying to keep some cosmic referee happy.

The irony is profound: in trying to be more authentic and aligned, I was becoming less authentic and more divided against myself.

And then there are the dark nights—those periods when no amount of sage, meditation, or positive thinking can shift the heaviness. When life strips away all our spiritual tools and leaves us face-to-face with raw, unadorned experience. These become evidence of spiritual failure rather than what they actually are: invitations to stop trying to manage our inner weather and simply be with what is.

What Remains When the Seeking Stops?

I'm not suggesting that practices don't have value or that there aren't genuine differences between states of consciousness. But I am questioning whether the seeking itself—the constant reaching for something better, higher, more evolved—might be the very thing that keeps us from recognizing what we're actually looking for.

In my experience, the most profound spiritual moments haven't come during peak states or high-vibe experiences. They've come in the ordinary moments when the seeking temporarily stopped. When I was washing dishes and suddenly there was just washing, no washer. When I was walking and there was just walking, no spiritual seeker trying to make it a mindful walking practice.

These weren't special states that I achieved or summoned. They were more like... a recognition of what was already here when I wasn't trying to improve it.

The Invitation to Stop Measuring

What if instead of raising our vibration, we simply started paying attention to what's already vibrating? What if instead of seeking higher consciousness, we began investigating the consciousness that's aware of all states, high and low?

This isn't about becoming spiritual nihilists who don't care about anything. It's about questioning whether our caring has become contaminated by the need to control and improve our inner experience.

I've been experimenting with this lately: What happens if I don't try to shift my mood when I'm feeling heavy? What happens if I don't reach for a practice when anxiety arises? What happens if I stop trying to be the kind of person who "holds a high vibration"?

What I'm finding is both humbling and liberating. When I stop trying to manage my state, something else becomes apparent—a stillness that was there all along, equally present in the high states and the low ones. An awareness that isn't trying to get anywhere or become anything.

The Pathless Path of Ordinary Awakening

Maybe true spirituality isn't about ascending to higher dimensions or maintaining elevated states. Maybe it's about fully inhabiting this dimension, this state, whatever it is, without the constant commentary about whether it's good enough.

Maybe enlightenment isn't a achievement but a recognition. Not something we attain but something we stop obscuring through our attempts to attain it.

I'm still figuring this out, honestly. Some days I catch myself slipping back into spiritual improvement mode, judging my meditation, trying to manifest better experiences, comparing my inner life to others. The conditioning runs deep.

But there are also moments—often when I'm not trying to be spiritual at all—when everything feels absolutely perfect exactly as it is. Not perfect in a blissed-out way, but perfect in an ordinary, unconditional way. Perfect because it's what's actually happening, and what's actually happening is somehow always enough.

Questions for Fellow Travelers

I'm curious about your experience with this. Have you noticed the way spiritual seeking can become another form of materialism? Have you caught yourself trying to curate your consciousness the way others curate their social media feeds?

What happens when you stop trying to feel better and simply feel what's actually there? When you stop trying to raise your vibration and simply notice what's vibrating?

I don't have answers to these questions—I'm genuinely asking. Because maybe the real conversation isn't about how to get to higher states, but about what remains when we stop trying to get anywhere at all.

Maybe the vibration we've been trying to raise was never ours to begin with. Maybe it's been raising us all along, and our job isn't to improve it but to get out of its way.

Or maybe I'm just making this too complicated, and the real spiritual practice is admitting that I don't know what I'm talking about and being perfectly okay with that.

What do you think?