Gaslighting is when someone else tells you that your reality is not really happening. They deny and alter your actual experiences, leaving you confused and up against an unseen veil of confusion.
Spiritual gaslighting has been prevalent in Western societies through religious suppression for a very long time, hence those with spiritual gifts have been really up against it to be taken seriously and to access support for developing, exploring, acknowledging and using their gifts.
To illustrate how this feels, let’s take an example in the physical world.
Imagine you love running and you are really keen to run a marathon but whenever you express this to others and ask for support, help and assistance with your training everyone you encounter replies: “human beings cannot run marathons, it isn’t possible, it’s not even a thing to run a marathon, that’s crazy talk!”
How would you feel?
Dismissed, ignored, downhearted, rejected, your innate abilities and passion side-lined…
Yet you dreamed of it, you could even see yourself running all that way and crossing the finish line. You felt sure it was a thing that humans could do! Not only that, it was the most pressing innate skill you possessed. Like an inner energy that said: “I’m here to run marathons!”
Eventually your desire to run the marathon became so strong you figured out how to do it anyway. Sadly you incurred lots of injuries along the way and the experience was far more traumatic and challenging than if you’d have had help and guidance. You experienced a lot of isolation and self-doubt through lack of support. You knew you had the ability naturally even though most people said that you were doing the impossible.
After you ran the marathon…
Some people were amazed, some perplexed. Some still denied your ability because they’d become so indoctrinated with impossibility, they couldn’t come out of it. They created online accounts to say you’d pretended to run a marathon, but you were a fake.
It was going to take more years, more people to show up, more runners for more people to start questioning things for themselves about whether human beings could actually run marathons!
That’s what many people with spiritual gifts have been up against their whole lives.
Spending a lifetime trying to feel belonging and seek validation against a backdrop of “that’s crazy, you’re talking about things that don’t exist” even to the point of gaslighting themselves and thinking “well perhaps I am crazy” certainly you start to feel pretty terrible when you’re living in the not self all the time, feeling isolated. Nor can your gifts develop and thrive like that.
Spiritual gifts have been routinely dismissed as wacky, crazy, impossible, even downright dangerous and let’s face it they can be dangerous unless developed properly!
Imagine setting off to run a marathon with no clue where to start, no inkling of the dangers and all the injuries and dehydration you’d incur on the way.
Once you’d gone through all the pain and achieved what you set out to do, you decided to now you set out to help others with their marathons because you don’t want others to go through the experience.
And this is why, as more people awaken, we need leaders with spiritual gifts to step up and lead WITH their spiritual gifts intact so that they can shine a light on the new path of leadership, get rid of the old stories and expose all the gaslighting for the nonsense that it is.
It’s time to celebrate and support those who have an abundance of spiritual gifts to develop them safely with suitable support and to share them with the world.