Spiritual Awakening Without Hierarchy

By Allison Batty-Capps | Blossoming Heart Wellness

What if awakening wasn’t about becoming better than others — but about becoming more compassionate, honest, and inclusive?

Today, I want to explore spiritual awakening without hierarchy: how we honor many paths while walking the ethical edge of change.

There is something important I want to name with honesty, humility, and care.

In some of my earlier teachings, I may have implied — directly or indirectly — that transcendence-focused spiritual paths were somehow less valid than embodied, trauma-informed, integrative ones. While my intention was always to protect those who have been harmed by spiritual bypassing, I now see how this framing may itself have unintentionally created hierarchy.

And hierarchy, in any form, is not awakening.

At the same time, I want to speak openly about a tension I still hold, because it is real — and it is an ethical edge I walk daily in my work.

Even when I try to honor everyone exactly where they are, I sometimes use language such as healed and unhealed, integrated and unintegrated, regulated and dysregulated. I do this not to create superiority, but to name patterns of suffering and harm — both personal and collective — and to advocate for change.

This is a delicate line.

How do we honor free will, dignity, and difference, while also naming what causes harm and offering pathways toward less suffering — without shaming someone who is in a different place?

There is no perfect answer. There is only conscious intention, humility, continual self-reflection, and the willingness to repair when harm occurs.

The Ethical Edge of Healing Work

When I speak about healing, I try to hold this truth:

It is okay to be exactly where you are. And if you are ready, there may be a gentler, safer, more integrated way of being.

Both can be true at once.

Honoring someone’s present state does not require pretending that all states create equal safety, connection, or wellbeing. At the same time, advocating for growth does not require shaming, ranking, or pathologizing.

This is the ethical edge of healing work:

How do we name patterns that cause suffering without creating shame, which we know harms the psyche?

How do we invite growth without imposing hierarchy, which trauma-informed perspectives recognize as a threat to autonomy and safety?

I do not always get this perfectly right. And I am willing to keep learning.

Where Harm Enters Spirituality

Harm enters spirituality when spiritual frameworks become hierarchical or shame-based — when awakening is framed as higher versus lower, evolved versus unevolved, conscious versus unconscious, ascended versus wounded.

These subtle hierarchies imply that some humans are more worthy, valuable, or evolved than others.

They pathologize wounds instead of understanding them.

They turn trauma into failure rather than recognizing trauma as adaptation, survival, and resilience.

The wounds are not the problem.

The problem arises when we are forced to live, relate, and react from unhealed wounds — without support, awareness, or compassion.

Our wounds make us who we are. They shape our nervous systems, our attachment patterns, our perceptions, and our survival strategies. And they are not something to transcend away from — they are something to meet with care.

Awakening, as I understand it, is not about rising above our humanity.

It is about including our humanity with compassion.

When Spirituality Becomes a Survival Strategy

Sometimes spirituality becomes a subtle survival strategy.

It can become a way to feel safe, superior, certain, or protected from pain. It can offer identity, belonging, and certainty — especially in a chaotic world.

And none of that makes spirituality wrong.

But when spiritual frameworks begin to shame emotional processing, pathologize trauma responses, invalidate embodiment, judge where someone is on their path, or rank spiritual practices as superior — we may unknowingly recreate the same systems of dominance, exclusion, and hierarchy that spirituality is meant to heal.

This is what I call spiritualized survival strategy — not awakening.

Transcendence and Integration Are Not Opposites

I want to say something clearly and lovingly:

Transcendence is not wrong.

Although transcendence can lead to spiritual bypassing, it does not always. For many people, transcendence provides deep regulation, peace, liberation, grounding, and profound spiritual connection.

Transcendence can offer:

• Spacious awareness
• Detachment from rigid identity
• Access to peace
• Deep connection to presence and spirit

These experiences are valid. They are sacred.

At the same time, for others — especially those with trauma histories, attachment wounds, or nervous system sensitivity — transcendence without integration can feel unsafe, dissociative, destabilizing, or shaming.

This does not make transcendence wrong.

It simply means it may not be the right entry point for everyone.

Awakening is not one-size-fits-all.

In my work, I often speak about nervous system regulation, trauma integration, emotional processing, and embodied practices as healing — not because someone is broken, but because these processes reduce harm, increase safety, and expand capacity for connection.

I do not believe anyone is defective.

I do believe trauma shapes perception.

I do believe dysregulation influences behavior.

I do believe healing expands choice.

Naming this is not hierarchy — it is compassionate realism.

Walking the Inner Ethical Edge

One of my ongoing spiritual practices is asking myself:

Am I naming patterns to reduce suffering — or to feel right?

The first comes from observer consciousness and heart-centered awareness.

The second comes from unhealed wounds and ego.

And it is human to want to feel right.

But awareness invites us to pause and choose care over certainty.

This is the ethical edge of spiritual leadership — and it is one I walk imperfectly, humbly, and consciously.

Integration and Transcendence as Partners

Rather than opposites, I now understand integration and transcendence as complementary.

Transcendence offers:

• Spaciousness
• Awareness
• Peace
• Freedom from rigid identity

Integration offers:

• Nervous system regulation
• Emotional healing
• Relational repair
• Embodied safety

Together, they create wholeness.

Some arrive through transcendence.

Some arrive through embodiment.

Some weave between the two.

All are valid.

A More Inclusive Vision of Awakening

What I now aspire to teach is this:

Awakening is not about becoming someone new.
It is about becoming more fully who you already are — safely, compassionately, and consciously.

Your path might include:

• Meditation and non-dual awareness
• Trauma therapy and parts work
• Prayer and devotion
• Somatic and embodied healing
• Nervous system regulation
• Energy work
• Relational repair
• Meaning-making
• Mystical exploration

None of these makes you more or less awake.

What matters is:

• Does this path increase compassion?
• Does it expand safety?
• Does it reduce shame?
• Does it reduce harm?
• Does it support wholeness and integration?

If yes — it is a sacred path.

True Spiritual Maturity

True spiritual maturity is not about being awake versus asleep.

It is about learning how to cause less harm — to ourselves and others.

And even that unfolds imperfectly, gently, and uniquely for each person.

So I invite you to ask yourself:

Where does my nervous system feel safest learning and healing?

What practices support my ability to stay present, grounded, and compassionate?

And can I honor my own path without judging others who walk differently?

To me, this is the heart of awakening.

Walking Forward Together

If this resonates, I invite you to explore more of my teachings through my book,
The Divine Within: Healing Ourselves to Heal the World,
or visit my website at blossomingheartwellness.com, where you can sign up for my newsletter and learn about upcoming offerings, courses, and reflections.

I am sending you deep love for wherever you are on your path.

Awakening is not about being better.

It is about becoming more loving, more honest, and more human.

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