When going through your journey of healing you might find yourself on the spiritual path and come across people who claim to have evolved in their spiritual journey.
There is something called Toxic Spirituality and not all who claim to have evolved have truly evolved. All that they have become is someone filled with a lot of poisonous garbage in the name of spirituality.
So what is toxic spirituality?
In a broader sense, any aspect of spirituality that is used to blame/shame/guilt you into feeling bad/worse about yourself is TOXIC. PERIOD!!!
Another word for all this is Spiritual Gaslighting - a term that was inspired from the movie Gaslight in which a woman is made to belief she is hallucinating, she is going mad.
And there are some signs which are definite signs:
a) If you are being told that you are not being strong enough, you are being weak, you are escaping from what you need to face - regardless of whether it may or may not be true - if this is what you are being told, then you are being made to feel bad and worse about yourself.
This is TOXIC!
b) If you are being told that action of others are just a mirror of what is in you - in other words, it is not the fault of the other. This is like saying that a woman's rape is not the man's fault but the woman's because of the clothes she wore. This is victim blaming.
This is TOXIC!
c) If you are being told that you may not be clear about what you are feeling, that your energies may not be what you think they are, that you are not aware of what is truly going on - once again, regardless of whether it may be true or not - if you are being told this, then you are being made to feel bad/worse about yourself.
This is TOXIC!
d) If you are being told that "I have not heard the other side of the story, hence I cannot speak for what you feel" - this is clearly denying your right to feel what you feel and denying the existence of your feeling.
This is TOXIC!
e) When that person flatly refuses to take a stand and acknowledge your feelings, when they deliberately remain ambiguous and non-committal to a objective/factual question asked by you (like for example - is this an example of abuse - yes or no) - then they clearly do not want to acknowledge your situation, your feelings.
This is TOXIC!
f) When you are asked to justify your feelings and then each justification is thrown out of the window - this again is an indicator that you are being made to doubt yourself.
This is TOXIC!
g) Encounter Group Therapy session
Be very careful when you find yourself on the hot-seat where several others have grouped together and publicly keep denying your complains, your feelings, keep needling you till the point you react. And then they will use your reaction to blame and shame you for reacting.
The fact is, no human who is alive can survive the onslaught of the needling and triggering that is done in such sessions. There is no way to not react. No one is immune. But just because you were put on the hot-seat, all fault and blame becomes yours.
These encounter groups were experiments in psychology during the 1900's and were found to be extremely destructive and damaging causing long lasting psychological trauma.
So if you ever find that a group of people are ganging up against you and all of them needling you, triggering you - GET OUT!!! GET OUT FAST!!! And never get back in that group. Never ever again. Also remember, these people maight still not stop their gaslighting. They might keep letting you know how they have banished you from their group and how you do not deserve to be part of their group till you "mend your ways". DO NOT FALL IN THAT TRAP. This is nothing but a very sever form of abuse, brainwashing and mind-control designed to get total compliance and subservience from you towards their group. GET OUT! BREAK ALL CONTACT! STAY OUT!
There are many other manifestations of toxic spirituality, far too many to be covered in a single post.
The truly evolved people will never, NEVER make you feel bad/worse about yourself. The truly evolved people will always hold the space for you with care and love and be with you without casting any doubt, any aspersion on you in whatsoever way.