Nope, we shouldn’t cut ties with family just because we had a spiritual awakening.

Beware the spiritual ego and bypassing. More than making you arrogant, that can make you vulnerable to predatory cult leaders. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Lucy the Oracle
6 min readOct 9, 2024
Photo by Mikael Kristenson on Unsplash

In fact, the very title of my article is a message you see allegorically unfold in the film Midsommar (2019). If you haven’t watched it, I highly recommend it. It’s a metaphor of relationship breakup (like the director himself said), but it also contains other messages such as the rune narrative I pointed out, and the message about vulnerability arising from a spiritual awakening: real or false, an awakening can lead you to lose yourself in a cult somewhere and lose touch with the people who should matter to you (Dani, the girlfriend, in the film).

When I say “family” I don’t mean blood relations who have always been narcissistic, psychopathic, pedophiles, violent in other ways, or you-name-it. Let’s keep in mind that abusers will abuse you whether you have a spirituality or not. DO cut ties with them, but because they’re abusers; Not because they “aren’t awakened yet” and “don’t understand you”. What a teenage thing to say! Are you still in highschool, dear? Yeah, I didn’t think so. Now, drop the angsty attitude, grow up to match your ACTUAL age, and keep reading.

Let me link you to this old article of mine where I talk about spiritual narcissists (ie, please don’t become one).

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I’m not going to sugarcoat here. Well, to be honest, I don’t usually sugarcoat anyway, but this article will be even more blunt because this is a topic we shouldn’t brush off. Your need to cut ties with the “unawakened” people in your life (save for the extreme examples where these people ARE abusers, like I mentioned already) is coming from the ego.

More specifically, your spiritual ego. A.K.A, the ego wearing a mask of “spiritualist and holier-than-thou”. Our ego is only one, but it wears many masks occasionally.

“I must avoid the low-vibe people” is no different from “I don’t associate with sinners”.

They’re exactly the same sentiment. Different belief systems, same ego disguising itself as a spiritual know-it-all.

Here’s a helpful article that can teach you how to tame your spiritual ego for your own good and for the benefit of everyone else too. Enjoy.

As for why I’m saying that cutting ties with people “just because they’re vibing lower than you” is bad, here’s a handy explanation:

Look, I know this topic can get complicated. There’s a good side to surrounding yourself with people who are on a spiritual journey similar to yours — you get to find relatability, share the load of shadow work, and celebrate together your success. Of course this good side exists! It’s the main reason why people jump to conclusions and think there ONLY is a good side, and there can NEVER be a bad side to it.

That’s the problem. Jumping to automatic black-and-white conclusions.

I understand what you guys are saying when you talk about feeling frustrated that the people who currently exist around you don’t understand your process and can’t relate to it. I’m not diminishing that. I feel the same thing myself.

However, allow me to challenge your belief that anyone [among those HEALTHY and not abusive people] is “a lost cause” and should be excluded from your circles of friendship.

Let’s use a metaphor: children in primary school.

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Do you know or have you ever interacted with children in primary school as an adult? Maybe they’re in your family or they’re the kids some of your friends have, etc. I’m sure you have at least one brief experience of talking to a child who attends school, as an adult. It’s a very common thing. We’ve all been there.

There’s a lot we know and kids still haven’t learned. I’m using a school example to make it less complicated: when you’re in 3rd grade, let’s say you know how to work with fractions. In 5th grade, however, you’re already learning square roots. A 5th grader can’t expect a 3rd grader to know everything they know, isn’t it?

Well, if you compare a school-age child to a fully grown adult, the difference in what they have formally learned is even bigger. It’s not unusual to see an adult helping a child with homework.

Another thing that isn’t unusual: to see an adult telling a child, “omg, you’re so smart! I have already forgotten this stuff, can you believe it?”, because let’s be honest, there’s a lot we all learned in school and no longer use now (be it because of career choice or whatever), so we ended up forgetting. But even if you’re one of those forgetful adults (welcome to the club! Lol), you can’t deny that if you spot a sum of fractions on a piece of paper, you know what it is and what it’s called (even if you’ve forgotten how to go about solving it). It’s not totally new and surprising to you. The basic concept and its “existence” is something you’ll carry with you for life.

Are you following my train of thought?

Good.

Back to spirituality now:

Just like a 3rd grader has NO IDEA WHATSOEVER what a square root could possibly stand for… Guess what! Your “unawakened” friends have NO IDEA WHATSOEVER what spirit communication is, or what astral projection feels like, or whether or not it’s possible to read someone’s energy. It isn’t that these people have a resistance to these topics “because they hate it all, boo-hoo, bah humbug!” — Instead, they simply haven’t gotten to where you are yet in the school of spirituality. You wouldn’t accuse a 3rd grader of negativity against the topics of Math they haven’t learned yet. So… why exactly are you judging so harshly the materialists in your life, huh?

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We’re no longer talking about a literal brick-and-mortar building with a blackboard now.

We’re talking about a metaphoric school of life where you experience things Science can’t explain.

But the logic remains the same.

It’s very unfair, not to mention unempathetic (yes! Take that! You thought you had empathy? Well…) to jump to the conclusion that just because certain people display a closed mind to certain phenomena, they will remain close-minded forever. Their process might have a different timing than yours, but it’s just a matter of “different school years”. You can’t force or accelerate anything. What you can do, instead, is respect people’s process. You don’t know what external phenomena are manifesting in these people’s lives to prevent them from having their own awakening just yet. You’d be surprised to find out that not everything equals “an unwillingness to experience”. Not everyone with a resistance to a certain subject (still using school metaphors) CHOSE to have the resistance just to be a problem child who annoys the teacher. Sometimes, there are deeper reasons we can’t see. We should exercise patience, not judgement.

I’ll say more: a lot of these “normies” you’re so annoyed by could surprise you with how much they know intuitively. Maybe it’s just a different kind of intuition, or a “school subject” YOU haven’t learned yet and don’t have imagination for — given that our school of spirituality here on planet Earth is not linear or standardised. Perhaps they don’t have the specific vocabulary to articulate it, but there are things they already know and you haven’t learned yet. So… where’s your humility? Huh?

You should NOT attempt to standardise spiritual learning. That’s what predatory cult leaders do… And as you know, it never ends well.

I hope this article gave you some food for thought. I’ll go meditate on this same lesson myself.

Amitabha. 🙏

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Lucy the Oracle

Oracle learner / spirit worker based in Ireland. Buddhist/polytheist. I don't read minds. I don't change minds. I don't sugarcoat. Take my message or leave it.