The Myth of Perfect Alignment
Updated: 3 hours ago
A personal reflection on the true nature of alignment
Somewhere along the path of my Spiritual journey, I adopted this belief that alignment is associated with states of peace, clarity, and serenity. That when life is chaotic and painful, I’m no longer in alignment.
But life has been showing me that this simply isn’t true.
Sometimes alignment looks like rest. Sometimes it looks like ease.
And sometimes it looks like grief, uncertainty, endings, recovery, and being asked to become someone we never planned to be.
I’ve been learning that hard seasons aren’t always signs that I’m off path. Sometimes they are the path.
Over the years, I’ve noticed that a lot of spiritual language around alignment makes it sound smooth and reassuring, as though struggle must mean something’s gone wrong.
But life rarely moves that way.
There are seasons of expansion and seasons of contraction. Seasons of visibility and seasons of solitude. Seasons where things flow, and seasons where everything seems to stop.
None of those, on their own, prove misalignment.
It’s been in some of my hardest years that I’ve experienced both my highest highs and my lowest lows.
In the spring of 2022, I successfully transitioned from a job that I now know was slowly killing me. Not only did I find a different job, the new job paid significantly more than I was even going to negotiate for, it was on a national team - so 100% remote with no chances of being called into an office, and it felt like a major career development opportunity as it was work I’d never done before. This was the most exciting thing that could have happened to me back then!
Then, in the summer of 2022, my mother was diagnosed with Multiple Myeloma, losing that battle months later in October. Losing my mom - my person - sent me into the deepest grief I had yet to experience in this lifetime. Shortly after my mom’s passing, in November (the day after my birthday in fact), I was preliminarily diagnosed with Endometriosis. 3 months later, I had my first major surgery - a laparoscopic endometriosis excision - after which my surgeon informed me the Endometriosis had reached stage 4, fusing my rectum, fallopian tubes, ovaries, and uterus into 1 mass that had to be carefully separated and scraped.
At the time, it would have been easy to look at this stretch and decide everything was falling apart. That I was off track, abandoned by life, or somehow failing my way through a season of misalignment.
But with time, reflection, and a deeper spiritual perspective, I began to see something else.
That season was a portal to a truer life.
When life gets hard, many of us instinctively ask: What did I do wrong?
But I’ve started asking different questions:
What if this isn’t punishment or proof that I’m off path?
What is this season showing me?
What could this season be preparing me for?
For me, these questions don’t erase pain. They don’t force gratitude. And they don’t ask me to spiritually bypass what hurts.
They simply create room for other possibilities:
That challenge can be part of alignment.
That the storm may be feeding roots I can’t yet see.
That the version of me being formed in the hard season may be exactly who is required for the next chapter of my life.
When life feels chaotic, painful, or unclear, these are some of the truths I keep returning to:
Hard does not always mean wrong.
I don’t have to deny what hurts in order to trust my path.
Some seasons are for visibility, some are for rest - not every aligned season looks productive, obvious, or externally impressive.
I don’t always need to understand the ‘why’ - reflection can reveal meaning before relief arrives.
These days, I think of alignment less as constant peace, and really, constant control, and moreso an honest relationship with the season I’m in. It’s listening, responding, and allowing life to shape me without abandoning myself in the process.
Difficult seasons aren’t always signs that we’re off path.
Sometimes they are the path.
Written with love,
Shantā | The Waking Goddess
Comments