Why Spiritually Awakened People Secretly Struggle with Lust | Alan Watts - YouTube
Transcripts:
You know, there's something nobody talks about in spiritual circles. Something everyone feels but pretends they don't. You've meditated for years. You've read the books. You've had those moments. You know the ones where everything suddenly made sense, where you felt connected to something vast and infinite.
Where the ego dissolved and you touched the eternal. And then one morning you wake up and feel it. That pull, that ancient magnetism, that heat rising in your blood, lust, raw, undeniable, insistent, and you [music] think, "Wait, what happened? I thought I was done with all this. I thought awakening meant I'd be above these things.
But here's what's really happening. And this is crucial. The desire never left. It was always there. What's changed is that now you're aware of it. Fully, completely, achingly aware. [music] And that awareness, my friend, is precisely what makes it so intense. Let's talk about something simple. Why have spiritual traditions across the world been so afraid of sexual pleasure? I mean, think about it.
When people talk about living a spiritual life, what's the first thing that comes up? Usually, it's about renouncing desire, especially sexual desire. Now, this isn't just one tradition. You find it everywhere. East, west, north, south, different cultures, different times, same message. If you want to reach the heights of spiritual attainment, you've got to leave sex behind.
But why? Why single out sexual pleasure from all other pleasures? Why not be equally concerned about the pleasure of eating good food or listening to beautiful music or watching a sunset? [music] Here's the thing. Sexuality represents our deepest connection to the physical world. Through sex and through eating, we become most intimately involved with matter, with bodies, with flesh, with mortality itself.
And spiritual traditions have always been suspicious of the physical world. Not because it's evil necessarily, but because it's impermanent. It falls apart. Bodies that are young and beautiful today will age and wither. Everything material is constantly dissolving. So the fear is this. If you attach your heart to something that's crumbling, you're going to suffer.
Better to set your heart on the eternal, the unchanging, the spiritual. [music] Better to detach from the body entirely. But here's where it gets interesting. Sexuality is something you simply cannot get rid of. You can fast and reduce your relationship to food. You can give away your possessions and live simply.
But sexuality, it's woven into the fabric of your existence. You exist because of it. Every cell in your body carries that memory. So what happens when you tell people that this fundamental aspect of their being is dangerous, dirty, wrong? There's an old principle here and it's utterly reliable.
The best way to make something irresistibly interesting is to forbid it. Tell someone they can't have something and suddenly that's all they can think about. Prune a hedge and it grows back thicker. Repress a desire and it sends roots deep into the unconscious, feeding on the darkness you've given it. For century, spiritual traditions haven't eliminated sexuality.
They've made it psychologically dominant. They've turned natural desire into something shadowy, exciting, and guiltridden all at once. The taboo doesn't destroy the desire. It amplifies it. Now, here's what most people don't understand about spiritual awakening. There's this fantasy that goes something like this.
One day, after years of practice, there's a breakthrough. The clouds part, light floods in, and from that moment forward, you're serene, detached, beyond it all. Desire falls away like autumn leaves. You become essentially perfect, calm, pure, untouchable. But that's not what happens. Not even close. What actually happens is this.
You become more sensitive. Not less, more. Awakening doesn't subtract your humanity. It doesn't delete your instincts. What it does is turn up the lights. Suddenly, you can see everything, the beautiful and the uncomfortable, the transcendent and the awkward, the spiritual and the sexual. Before awakening, desire runs on autopilot.
It's in the background, unconscious, automatic. You feel attraction and you react without really noticing the process. It's mechanical. But after awakening, the whole mechanism becomes visible, crystal clear. You see the desire arise. You feel it spread through your body like heat through water. You notice every thought that follows, the fantasies, the justifications, the guilt, the excitement.
It's all there completely exposed in the light of awareness. And this is the shock that nobody prepares you for. It doesn't go away. If anything, it feels more intense because you're no longer half asleep to it. Imagine you've been living in a dimly lit house for years. You know your way around, but you can't see the details.
Then one day, someone installs brilliant lights in every room. Suddenly you cansee everything. All the dust you never noticed. All the cracks in the walls. All the clutter in the corners. [music] The dust was always there. But now you see it. That's what happens with lust after awakening.
It was always present, humming along in the background. But now you're awake to it, fully awake. And that can feel overwhelming, even frightening. People say to me all the time, "I thought awakening would make me pure. I thought I'd transcend all this physical stuff. Why do I still feel desire? Why is it even stronger now?" And I tell them, "Because you're awake.
" And the awake person feels everything more deeply. Think about it. When you wake up from literal sleep, what happens? Your senses come alive. You hear sounds more clearly. [music] You feel the temperature of the air on your skin. You taste your coffee more fully. Spiritual awakening is the same. It's not about becoming numb.
It's about becoming alive, truly radically alive. And that means feeling everything, including desire, with an intensity you never experienced when you were sleepwalking through life. This is not a failure. This is not a sign you've done something wrong or that your awakening wasn't real. This is simply what it means to be a conscious human being.
The struggle isn't because you're broken. The struggle is because you're awake. Let's sit with something difficult for a moment. Every body you've ever desired will eventually decay. That face will wrinkle. That skin will sag. [music] Those eyes will dim. The form you long to touch today will in time become dust.
If you could speed up time and watch the whole process in a few seconds, you'd see flesh melt away like snow in spring sunshine. This is the ancient fear at the heart of all spiritual teaching about desire. Don't get attached to what's impermanent. Don't build your happiness on a foundation that's already crumbling.
Don't set your heart on beauty that's fading even as you reach for it. And there's truth in that, isn't there? If your entire sense of well-being depends on physical appearance, yours or someone else's, you're setting yourself up for suffering because change is the only constant. But here's what I want you to consider. Does impermanence make something less valuable or does it make it more precious? Think about cherry blossoms.
In Japan, people gather by the thousands to watch them bloom. Why? because they only last a week or two. Then the petals fall and they're gone for another year. [music] If cherry blossoms bloomed year round, nobody would write poems about them. Nobody would travel to see them. The beauty lies in the brevity. The same is true of bodies.
The same is true of moments. The same is true of everything in this physical world. Things are beautiful because they don't last. because they're here now in this moment alive and breathing and real and then like everything else they transform into something else. [snorts] The awakened person sees both truths simultaneously.
They see the beauty and they see the impermanence and this creates a kind of bittersweet recognition, a tender grief mixed with profound appreciation. It's like watching a sunset. You know it's going to end. You know in 10 minutes it'll be dark. But that doesn't diminish the beauty. It intensifies it.
You watch more carefully because you know it won't last. But there's another layer here that's even deeper. The body isn't just a temporary shell. It's also an expression, a creative, playful, utterly unique expression of the intelligence that animates everything. You are not just a body. True. But you're also not separate from your body.
The body is the universe wearing a costume. It's consciousness exploring what it's like to have hands and eyes and skin and nerves. When you touch another person, you're not just touching flesh and bone. You're touching the mystery itself, dressed up in human form. So yes, the body is temporary. It changes. It ages.
It eventually dissolves. But that doesn't make it trivial. that makes it sacred. The struggle comes from holding both truths at once. The body is fleeting and the body is holy and somehow living in the space between them without collapsing into either extreme. Neither clinging desperately to the temporary nor rejecting it is worthless.
Now let's talk about something uncomfortable, something spiritual, people really don't like to admit. The way so many seekers pretend they're above all this, you see it constantly. The meditation teacher who only speaks about higher consciousness and never admits to feeling ordinary human desire. [music] The yogi who cultivates an image of perfect serenity while secretly wrestling with intense fantasies.
The spiritual leader who preaches detachment while quietly indulging in exactly what they tell their students to renounce. There's a powerful unspoken belief in spiritual communities. Being advanced means being free from desire. And so people create a split within themselves.
There's the spiritualself, the one who meditates, speaks softly, radiates peace, reads sacred texts. And then there's the animal self, the one who gets aroused, feels attraction, wants things, and the spiritual self is supposed to be in control. The animal self must be tamed, controlled, transcended, kept on a tight leash. But here's what actually happens. The more you repress something, the more power it has over you.
The more you try to rise above desire, the more desire becomes your shadow, lurking in the basement of your psyche, growing stronger in the dark. [music] You know about shadows, right? Whatever you refuse to look at doesn't disappear. It just operates outside your awareness, usually in ways that are far more destructive than if you'd simply acknowledged it honestly in the first place.
And the struggle becomes unbearable because nobody talks about it. Everyone's afraid to admit they still feel desire because admitting it would mean uh so they fear that they're not truly awakened, not truly spiritual, that they're frauds. But the real fraud is the pretense. The ego absolutely loves to disguise itself as purity.
It loves to say, "Look at me. I'm above all that messy human stuff." And this might be the subtlest trap of all because spiritual pride is still pride. It's just egoearing robes. The person who thinks they're beyond desire is often the most controlled by it because they've made desire their enemy. And whatever you fight, you strengthen.
True awakening doesn't create a war between spirit and flesh. True awakening dissolves the illusion that there ever was a war. Let me show you something from a completely different angle. What if lust isn't a problem at all? What if it's simply energy, neutral, natural, impersonal, expressing itself through you? Look at the universe.
It's fundamentally creative, [music] right? Stars explode into being. Galaxies spiral. Plants push through concrete. Birds build nests. Spiders spin webs. Life reproduces itself endlessly, taking on new forms, new patterns, new expressions. This creative force, whatever you want to call it, expresses itself through polarity, positive and negative, expansion and contraction, male and female, light and dark.
The entire dance of existence arises from the interplay of opposites. Without polarity, there's no movement, no creation, [music] no universe. In ancient traditions, this was understood deeply. The creative power of the cosmos was represented as the union of opposites, not as enemies locked in battle, but as lovers locked in embrace.
Sexuality, then isn't separate from spirituality. It's one of the primary ways the creative intelligence of existence expresses itself. It's how the infinite plays at being finite. It's how consciousness explores itself through form. When you feel desire, you're feeling the same force that makes flowers turn toward the sun.
The same force that drives salmon upstream. The same force that explodes in every supernova and whispers in every seed. The problem isn't the desire itself. The problem is identification with it. Let me explain what I mean. When you think, I am someone who desires this person, you create suffering. You've made the desire personal.
You've turned a natural energy into my desire, my lust, my problem. It becomes tangled up with your sense of identity, with your story about who you are and who you should be. This is what spiritual traditions mean by non-attachment. Not that you don't feel things, but that you don't mistake the feeling for who you are.
When you watch a fire burning, you don't say, "I am fire." You say there is fire. [music] You observe it without becoming it. In the same way when desire arises, you don't have to say I am lustful. You can simply notice ah there's desire, there's heat, there's energy moving through this system [music] and something miraculous happens in that simple shift.
The desire doesn't control you anymore. It's there. Yes, you feel it, but you're not imprisoned by it. You're not at its mercy. You become the space in which desire appears, not the desire itself. And from that spaciousness, you can respond consciously rather than reacting automatically.
You can feel the pull without being pulled. You can acknowledge the energy without being swept away by it. So how does an awakened person actually live with desire? Not by destroying it. That doesn't work. Not by repressing it. that makes it worse. And not by indulging every impulse compulsively either. That just creates a different kind of prison.
The way through is awareness. Pure, simple, non-judgmental awareness. When desire arises, you feel it completely. You don't push it away. You don't pretend it's not there. You don't shame yourself for feeling it. But you also don't drown in it. You don't let it sweep you into unconscious action. You don't lose yourself in the fantasy.
You become like a still pond. Ripples appear on the surface. Wind, rain, stones thrown by passes by. [music] The ripplesdisturb the surface, but they don't disturb the depth. The pond remains fundamentally unchanged. In the same way, desires arise in your awareness. They create ripples. You feel them.
But the awareness itself, the deep pond of your being, remains untouched. This takes practice. I'm not going to lie to you and say it's easy. It's not something you master in a weekend workshop. But gradually, you begin to notice a shift. [music] Desire stops being a compulsion and becomes simply a sensation, an energy, a passing phenomenon. And here's what's beautiful.
When you stop fighting with desire, it loses its grip. When you stop treating it as forbidden, [music] it stops being so fascinating. When you stop believing, it makes you impure. It stops creating guilt. Desire becomes just another part of the weather inside you. Sometimes sunny, sometimes stormy, sometimes calm, sometimes turbulent, but just weather.
passing clouds in an open sky. And you know what happens then? You actually become free, not free from desire. That's not the point. Free in desire. Free to feel it without being controlled by it. Sometimes you'll act on desire. Sometimes you won't. But either way, you're not owned by it. You're not driven by it. You're not tormented by it.
You're simply a human being [music] experiencing the full spectrum of what it means to be alive in a body with all its energies and impulses and strange beauties. The struggle ends not when desire disappears, but when you stop fighting it, when you stop dividing your experience into spiritual and unspiritual, pure and impure, acceptable and unacceptable.
All of it is part of the dance. All of it is the universe expressing itself through you. You are the space in which the dance happens. And nothing that appears in that space can stain it, diminish it, or take away from its fundamental nature. Let me tell you something important. You can't transcend what you haven't first accepted.
You can't go beyond the body if you're still at war with it. You can't realize your true nature while pretending half your experience doesn't exist. The spiritual path isn't about becoming something other than what you are. It's about recognizing what you've always been. And what you've always been includes everything.
The light and the shadow, the transcendent and the embodied, the infinite consciousness and the finite form with all its messy, beautiful, complicated humanness. The end of division. So here's where we've arrived. The spiritually awakened person struggles with lust. Not because something has gone wrong. Not because their awakening was incomplete or fake.
Not because they're failing some cosmic test. They struggle because they're awake. Because they're sensitive. Because they haven't numbed themselves to life. They feel the pull of desire and the call to presence at the same time. They see the beauty in form and the emptiness behind form in the same glance.
They recognize themselves as infinite awareness and finite organisms simultaneously. [music] And yes, that creates tension. Of course, it does. You're trying to live as both the ocean and the wave, as both the eternal and the temporary, [music] as both the witness and the participant. But here's what I want you to understand. That tension is not a problem to be solved.
It's the creative edge where real transformation happens. The struggle only becomes unbearable when you think you shouldn't be struggling. When you believe that awakened people don't feel desire. When you imagine that spiritual realization means transcending the messy reality of having a body. But the truth is simpler and more compassionate than that.
You are not a spirit trying to escape a body. You are not a prisoner trying to break free from flesh. You never were. You are the universe expressing itself as a human being for a brief brilliant moment. And every desire you feel, every attraction, every longing, every impulse is the cosmos exploring itself through your particular form.
There is nothing to fix, nothing to overcome, nothing to be ashamed of, only everything to notice, everything to feel, everything to understand with clear compassionate awareness. The struggle ends when you stop struggling. When you stop treating parts of yourself as enemies. When you stop dividing reality into acceptable and unacceptable, holy and unholy, spiritual and physical.
The awakened life isn't about becoming perfect. It's about becoming whole. And wholeness means embracing everything. The desire and the awareness, the body and the consciousness, the human and the divine. They were never separate. That was always just a story. A useful story perhaps for a time, but just a story. When that story dissolves, what remains? Just this, just you, just life happening through you as you without division.
And in that recognition, even lust becomes something beautiful. Not because you've conquered it or risen above it, but because you've finally stopped fightingwith it, because you've seen it for what it really is. Another expression of the creative force that breathes through everything.
The sacred and the sexual, the spiritual and the physical, the eternal and the temporary. All one dance, all one play, all one mysterious magnificent display of what is. And you you're not separate from any of it. You're the whole thing waking up to itself. That's the secret nobody tells you about awakening. It doesn't make you less human. It makes you more human.
fully, completely unapologetically human with all the beauty, all the messiness, all the desire, all the awareness that comes with being this impossible miracle, a conscious animal, a mortal god, a finite expression of infinite mystery. So if you still feel desire, good, feel it. [music] Let it move through you.
Watch it arise and pass like weather. You're not doing anything wrong. You're doing everything right. You're awake. And awakeness feels everything. We live in a world that often teaches us to speak in logic and behave in restraint. Yet the soul operates in a language far older than words. attraction. Real meaningful attraction is rarely loud.
It hides in the pauses, the glances, the moment someone almost says what they feel but doesn't. And perhaps this silence isn't confusion at all. Perhaps it's the soul wrestling with timing, with fear, with the vulnerability that comes when two paths are beginning to align, even if only one person recognizes it fully. In truth, when someone is drawn to you, but tries not to show it, they're revealing more than they realize, it's a sacred tension, the heart pushing forward while the mind pulls back.
And if you're paying attention, these quiet contradictions become signs not just of interest, but of spiritual significance. Ask yourself this, what if the feelings you sense around someone are not imagined, but divinely timed signals inviting you to wake up and look deeper. There's a peculiar kind of energy that enters the room when someone who deeply feels something for you walks in.
Even if they never say a word, you can almost sense it in the air. An unspoken awareness that pulses just beneath the surface. They laugh a little too quickly at your jokes, glance your way, and then turn just as fast. It's in the way they linger, not obviously, but subtly, like someone standing at the edge of a doorway, not quite ready to step in or leave.
That kind of presence isn't accidental. It's hesitation cloaked in intent. You see, the human being is a contradictory creature. We are pulled in by desire and held back by fear. And when someone is into you but trying not to show it, that conflict becomes visible in their behavior, not through grand gestures, but in micro movements.
Watch how they act around others and compare that to how they behave around you. Their posture might stiffen. Their words might become more measured or oddly enough more scattered. That's the body trying to maintain a script while the heart has already wandered off it. What makes this fascinating is that it isn't always romantic tension born of immaturity.
No, sometimes it's reverence. Sometimes it's someone who feels something so deeply that to speak of it would be to cheapen it. There are those among us who fall in love not through possession but through silence. [snorts] They notice the curve of your thoughts, the stillness in your presence and they're moved not to action and so they keep it hidden because they believe the experience is more meaningful if preserved than pursued.
But let's not confuse silence with disinterest. One of the great errors we make is assuming that if something is not expressed, it does not exist. That's a mistake. Deep feelings often lack confidence at first and not because they are weak, but because they are sacred. You don't shout sacred things. You whisper them or you protect them with silence.
And when someone tries to hide their interest in you, it's often because they're afraid of what it would mean if it were real. There's also the question of timing. A person may feel something for you that they know they cannot act on because of circumstance, responsibility, or simply the fact that their own inner work isn't done yet. They might love the light they see in you, but be afraid of casting a shadow over it.
So they pull back, not because they want to leave, but because they hope they'll be ready when they finally return. And yet, even in all of this restraint, their feelings leave footprints in nervous laughter, in stolen glances, in the way they say your name just a little differently than everyone else does. And when you're attuned to it, you begin to see that love is not always declared.
Sometimes it's simply revealed quietly, carefully, like a secret the soul hasn't yet given the mouth permission to speak. So if you sense someone's hiding how they feel, don't rush to expose them or pull them out of their cave, just pay attention. Because in that tension there might besomething real, something fragile, something sacred, waiting not to be forced into the light, but simply to be noticed. Not all truths are shouted.
Some are simply waiting to be understood. There's something undeniably human about trying to appear unaffected in the presence of someone who makes our heartbeat a little faster. And one of the most curious signs, often overlooked but profoundly telling, is emotional inconsistency. One moment they're warm, engaged, present, the next distant, aloof, or seemingly disinterested.
It's not because they are confused about how they feel. It's because they are trying to manage the intensity of what they feel without letting it slip through the cracks. You've seen it before. The person who lights up when you walk into the room only to turn their attention away a moment later as if you don't matter.
They're not cold. They're covering. They are shielding something delicate inside them. It's like watching someone try to hide sunlight behind a curtain. No matter how hard they try, little rays escape. And if you're paying attention, you'll catch those brief flashes of truth. Why does this happen? Because vulnerability terrifies us.
especially when it's attached to something or someone we genuinely care about. When a person feels deeply drawn to you, but isn't ready or willing to admit it, their emotions come out sideways. They might tease you one day, ignore you the next. They might open up about something personal and then abruptly shut down afterward as if they revealed too much.
This isn't a lack of interest. It's an overflow of it wrapped in caution. And here's where it gets interesting. Emotional inconsistency is not always a sign of deception. It's often a sign of conflict. Not conflict with you, but within them. They're fighting a war between expression and protection. They want to show up to be present, to engage fully with you, but they're also afraid.
afraid of being seen, of being misunderstood, of being hurt. So what you see is a dance between leaning in and pulling back. Sometimes they'll even create distance to test the waters. Will you follow? Will you notice? Will you care? It's a subtle form of reaching out while pretending to retreat. And unless you understand the language of inconsistency, you might assume they're playing games.
But in truth, they're trying to figure out how safe it is to feel what they feel. They're looking for signals, small moments of reassurance that say it's okay to care. It's okay to be seen. This can be frustrating if you're on the receiving end because it feels like you're being pushed and pulled without explanation.
But if you look closer, what you're witnessing is a person wrestling with their own depth. They haven't decided to be distant. They're just trying to manage closeness. Now, it's not your job to fix that or to force clarity. People come to their own awakenings in their own time. But it is your opportunity to stay grounded, to notice the patterns, to respond with presence rather than pressure.
Because emotional inconsistency, while confusing, is rarely accidental. It usually points to something real beneath the surface, something still forming, still finding its voice. And so when you notice someone blowing hot and cold, don't be too quick to label it as indifference. Sometimes it's just a heart learning how to stay open without falling apart.
Even the most guarded souls leave traces of truth in their contradictions. There's a curious kind of silence that speaks louder than words. It's the kind that falls between two people, not because there's nothing to say, but because there's something unspoken that neither knows quite how to voice. And what's interesting is this.
When someone is into you, but trying not to show it, they often get a little too quiet when you're around. not in a dismissive way, but in a deeply alert, almost reverent stillness, as if they're tuning into a frequency they don't fully understand yet. It's a silence filled with meaning. You might notice their body gets a little tense when you speak.
Their eyes linger just a moment longer than necessary. They seem unusually thoughtful, even in moments that don't call for reflection. This isn't the silence of boredom or disinterest. It's the silence of awe, of a mind that's suddenly overly aware of its own heartbeat. And the funny thing about awareness is that it makes us clumsy.
You see, when people feel deeply drawn to someone, they often lose their usual rhythm. The ease with which they speak to others disappears. They second-guess their tone, their words, their posture. They become hyper aware. And that self-consciousness often manifests not as charisma, but as quiet. Because saying something wrong might reveal something they're not yet ready to admit, even to themselves.
Think about it. In a room full of people, they're animated, expressive, even charming. But when you enter, the light shifts. They don't withdraw, butthey don't quite engage either. It's as if your presence shifts the atmosphere inside them and they're suddenly navigating a very different kind of space.
One where emotion bubbles too close to the surface, where silence feels safer than saying too much. And yet within that silence, there's this pulse, this almost invisible thread of attention that keeps returning to you. They may not say much, but they're always tuned in. They notice your mood, your expressions, the rhythm of your voice. They're quiet, but not absent.
In fact, they're more present than they appear, listening not just to your words, but to the space you occupy. Some people speak through action. Others speak through stillness. And when it comes to hidden affection, stillness can be louder than any proclamation. It's a kind of reverence, a sacred pause in the midst of everything else.
Because what they're really doing is holding space for something they don't quite know how to hold yet. Now, the mistake we often make is assuming that if someone doesn't speak, they don't care. But the truth is often the opposite. Silence in the presence of emotion is not emptiness. It's overflow. It's restraint.
It's the heart pulling the brakes on a mind that wants to rush ahead. And sometimes in that space, something deeper is born. A connection that doesn't rely on constant noise to be real. So if you find yourself around someone who suddenly gets quiet, not out of distance, but out of presence, pay attention. You might just be witnessing the sound of a heart learning how to speak.
And in a world that often mistakes loudness for truth, there is something profoundly honest about the quiet moments, we can't quite explain. It's a strange thing, isn't it? How people behave when they're trying to hold something in. When someone is genuinely into you but doesn't want to admit it, they often overcompensate in the most unexpected ways.
One of the clearest signs is when they start giving you mixed signals, not because they're playing games, but because they're at war with themselves. There's a part of them that wants to move closer and another part that's pulling back, afraid of what that closeness might mean. You'll notice it in the way they're hot one moment, cold the next.
Maybe they're unusually kind, almost warm to the point of being vulnerable, and then suddenly they shift, distant, guarded, as if something shortcircuited inside them. It's confusing, no doubt. But behind that inconsistency is a mind grappling with the reality of its own feelings. They didn't expect to feel what they're feeling, and they're not sure what to do with it now that it's here.
The confusion you sense in them, that's real. And it often comes from this deeply human tendency to hide what we care about most. When we truly value something or someone, we become terrified of losing it. So, we create distance not because we want it, but because it feels safer than intimacy. The closer you get to what matters, the more vulnerable you feel.
And for some, vulnerability is unbearable. It threatens their sense of control, their identity, their carefully constructed sense of independence. So what do they do? They play it cool. They act indifferent. They may even withdraw entirely. But it's not a lack of interest. It's the overflow of it. It's the result of trying to keep something hidden that refuses to stay quiet.
You'll find them saying things that contradict their actions or acting in ways that contradict their words. They may praise your presence while simultaneously keeping you at arms length. It's not malice. It's fear. And fear is a master of disguise. It can wear the mask of detachment, sarcasm, distraction. It pretends to be logical when it's actually trembling inside.
But if you look closer, really look, you'll see the cracks in that mask. You'll catch the moment their eyes soften. You'll notice how often they show up, even when they pretend not to care. there's a pole, a gravity that keeps drawing them back. Now, this is where discernment matters. Not all mixed signals are equal, but when they come from someone who genuinely respects you, someone who listens carefully, who notices small details, who lingers longer than necessary, those contradictions aren't signs of deception. They're signs of internal
conflict. And that conflict, if met with patience, can unfold into something beautifully honest. But don't mistake confusion for clarity. If someone's unsure about their feelings, give them space, not pressure. Let the truth rise in its own time. What's meant for you won't need to be forced.
It will find its way through the silence, through the tension, through the hesitation. And sometimes, just sometimes, the people who are most afraid to show they care are the ones who care the most. Because love, when hidden, doesn't vanish. It just waits for the moment it feels safe enough to be seen. There's a peculiar sort of tension that arises when someone isdrawn to you.
Yet, they work very hard to conceal it. And one of the strangest ways it shows up is through irritation or unexpected frustration. You'll wonder, why are they so agitated around me? Why do they get defensive at the smallest things I say? Why do they seem annoyed when I talk to someone else or when I'm simply being myself? It doesn't always make sense on the surface.
You might interpret it as dislike or even disapproval. But often this irritation is not a reflection of you. It's a reflection of what they're feeling inside. You've stirred something in them. they didn't expect and in their attempt to suppress it, it comes out sideways. See, the human psyche doesn't always express itself in clean, polished ways.
When you trigger deep emotions in someone, especially those that threaten their sense of control or autonomy, it can create friction. They're feeling drawn to you, but they haven't given themselves permission to want that. So the desire gets twisted into discomfort, even resentment, not because they're angry at you, but because they're angry at themselves for feeling something they think they shouldn't.
And what's fascinating is that this irritation often intensifies when you mirror back a kind of presence they're not used to. Maybe you're calm, open, receptive. Maybe you don't chase or demand, and that unsettles them. They're used to hiding, to managing how close people can get. But you aren't trying to force anything.
And yet your presence is still disarming. That alone can feel threatening to someone who's guarded. So instead of softening into it, they bristle. But underneath that sharpness, there's something else. There's care. There's interest. There's a desire to connect that hasn't found a healthy outlet.
And it leaks through in the most paradoxical ways. Jealousy masked as sarcasm. Concern veiled as criticism, affection hidden beneath defensiveness. It's like watching a tide swell beneath the surface. You may not see the full wave, but you can feel the pressure building. You notice it in their reactions, their body language, the things they blurt out in moments of stress.
They're more aware of you than they admit. And because they're not ready to be seen in that vulnerability, they react instead of respond. Now, this isn't an invitation to romanticize emotional volatility. It's not a reason to tolerate disrespect or instability, but it is a reminder that some people carry deep wells of feeling that don't know how to come to the surface gently.
Their resistance isn't always rejection. It might be a fear of being revealed. So, if you sense that irritation, don't immediately turn it into a judgment. Look beyond the noise. Ask yourself, what would cause someone to act this way only around me? What are they fighting within themselves? And more importantly, are they willing to face it? Because at the end of the day, the way someone handles their discomfort says more than the discomfort itself.
Some will rise above it, learn to express what they truly feel. Others will remain locked in the pattern. But either way, your role is to remain grounded in clarity. Not everyone knows how to love openly. But when they do, it stops feeling like friction and starts feeling like flow. Something undeniably revealing about silence.
Not the awkward kind that begs to be filled, but the kind that lingers and deepens, where neither person feels compelled to speak just to break the air. That kind of silence holds more meaning than most conversations ever will. And when someone is into you, truly drawn to you, but trying not to show it, you'll feel it there. You see, people often imagine that attraction must always be loud, passionate declarations, flirty banter, stolen glances.
But what we don't talk about enough is the softness that arises when someone simply wants to be near you. No performance, no pressure, just presence. You might be reading a book, they might be scrolling aimlessly, but there's an invisible thread that keeps them anchored close, a kind of magnetic stillness. And in that stillness, something unspoken is blooming.
They may not say the words. They may not even realize it themselves, but their body has already made the decision. Notice how they stay just a few seconds longer than necessary. How they linger by the doorway. How they don't seem in a rush to leave your space. It's as if time bends when they're around you. They're not seeking entertainment or stimulation.
They're just there, present, attuned. And that's no accident. This type of stillness is intimacy without strategy. It doesn't scream. It doesn't even whisper. It just is. And in a world addicted to constant motion, that kind of presence speaks volumes. You become the moment they feel most like themselves. And because of that, they stay quietly, humbly, without fanfare, but this is where it gets subtle.
They might be doing everything in their power to play it cool, to convince themselves they'reunaffected. They won't lean in too far, won't confess anything, won't cross that imaginary line between friendship and more. Yet, their energy keeps returning to you like water flowing toward the same bend in the river, no matter how many times it tries to resist the current.
What you're seeing here is not a lack of emotion, but the attempt to contain it. And sometimes people contain what matters most to them, not because they don't care, but because they care so much it frightens them. Vulnerability has a strange relationship with time. For some, it arrives easily. For others, it unfolds slowly, hesitantly, like petals braving the morning sun.
So when someone sits with you in silence without distraction, without effort, without masks, that's not indifference. That's their soul recognizing yours. That's their inner world resting in your presence. And that in itself is a confession. But here's the real question. Can you receive that kind of presence without needing it to declare itself? Can you feel the depth without grasping for clarity? Because often what we're being asked to do is feel beyond what we're told.
To read the energy, not just the words. Sometimes the loudest I care about you is never said aloud. It's just lived moment by moment in the quiet steady way they stay close without ever asking why. And when you can meet that with equal stillness, you stop chasing signs and start recognizing truth. So don't overlook the quiet ones. [snorts] Sometimes love speaks not through volume but through presence and presence never lies.
Mhm. There comes a point in every person's life when they must confront the quiet truth they've been avoiding. The knowing that doesn't arrive with thunder but with stillness. We often ask for signs, plead for clarity, and search for meaning in the midst of our confusion. But what if the answer has already been given? What if the restlessness in your spirit, the subtle erosion of your peace has been the message all along? Life does not always shout its lessons.
It whispers them again and again through discomfort, through intuition, through repeated patterns you can no longer ignore. And perhaps this very tension, the struggle, the uncertainty is not a mistake, but a divine invitation not to endure more pain, but to grow into the kind of person who can finally honor what they already know.
So the real question becomes, are you truly confused or are you simply afraid to live in alignment with the truth that has already been revealed to you? You know, it's funny how we talk ourselves out of the very things that are trying to guide us. That first nudge you felt about this person. It wasn't random.
Maybe it was a strange stillness when they spoke, or a quick, almost imperceptible tension in your body. Perhaps it was something they did, not even intentionally, that made your spirit whisper, "Pay attention." But because it didn't come with flashing lights or a divine voice from the sky, you tucked it away.
You thought, "Well, maybe I'm just being paranoid. Or maybe I'm overthinking." But I'm here to tell you, you weren't. You see, guidance doesn't always come dressed in drama. Sometimes it slips in gently, like a breeze through an open window, barely noticeable unless you're still enough to feel it. And most of us aren't still. Most of us are busy convincing ourselves that the story we want to be true is true.
We want to believe the best in someone. And there's nothing wrong with that. But there's a difference between believing in someone and ignoring your own intuition about them. The truth is you didn't miss the message. You heard it. You felt it. You just didn't trust it. And maybe you weren't ready to. That's okay, too. There's no shame in needing a little more time, but don't confuse the need for time with the absence of truth.
The truth often arrives early. We're the ones who show up late to meet it. So, remember that moment when something just felt off. It might have been the way they spoke to someone else when they didn't know you were watching. Or maybe it was the way they handled stress or how your energy changed around them.
You couldn't quite name it, but it lingered. That was the whisper. That was the early signal. And the reason it didn't go away is because it wasn't meant to. What we tend to forget is that clarity doesn't always show up with celebration. Sometimes clarity is quiet. Sometimes it's subtle. And the only reason you're hearing this message now and recognizing it as truth is because a part of you already knew it. All you needed was confirmation.
And let's be honest, you probably tried to unfeill that first instinct, didn't you? You told yourself, "Everyone has flaws." Or, "I just need to be more patient." You overrode your inner signal with logic and kindness and hope because you didn't want to be wrong. Or maybe you didn't want to let go.
But there's a difference between grace and self-abandonment. Grace allows for flaws. Self-abandonment tolerates harm.Now, here you are hearing this message and something in you is nodding. That's not coincidence. That's recognition. What you're feeling right now isn't revelation. It's remembrance. You're not being told something new.
You're being reminded of what you already knew but couldn't quite accept. So let this moment be sacred. Let it be the moment you finally trust what your spirit told you long ago without needing further proof, without needing permission. Because the first nudge wasn't random. And it certainly wasn't wrong.
It was truth in its softest form, waiting for you to listen. We tend to expect that if something is truly a sign, it'll be dramatic, loud, undeniable. We think confirmation has to feel like lightning splitting the sky, like some divine interruption that makes everything suddenly and unquestionably clear. But that's not usually how it works.
Most of the time, signs don't come loud. They come consistent. Think about it. There have probably been moments, small and subtle, that didn't sit right with you. Maybe it was the way this person made a joke at your expense and brush it off like nothing. Or the way you felt just a little more drained after every conversation. It wasn't some grand betrayal.
It wasn't something you could point to and say, "There it is. That's the reason." But it kept happening. That's the part that matters. It wasn't loud. It was repetitive. We're often waiting for the situation to get so bad that we finally have to make a decision. But why wait until your heart is exhausted, your peace is gone, your energy depleted.
The truth has already been showing itself to you, not all at once, but in pieces. In those quiet moments when you walked away from an interaction and felt uneasy. In the way your sleep became restless. In how your joy started to feel like work. The message didn't arrive with a shout. It arrived in patterns. It's funny how we'll say it's not that bad over and over as though not being terrible is the same thing as being right.
We convince ourselves that because there hasn't been some explosive event, we're just imagining things. But the soul doesn't need things to explode in order to feel what's true. It just needs you to stop ignoring the repetition. There's something deeply sacred about consistency. It's how the universe works. Seasons repeat, waves come and go, the sun rises again and again.
And in the same way, when a lesson or a truth keeps returning to you, it's not trying to bother you. It's trying to free you. It's confirmation through repetition. Through repetition, that's how God speaks sometimes, not through fireworks, but through patterns you can't unsee. Once you start looking honest, this person you've been thinking about, if you take a step back and really look, you'll see the signs have already been there.
Not dramatic, maybe not even painful at first, just oof, inconsistent with your peace, misaligned with your values, and each time you brushed it aside, something in you kept remembering. That's why you're here now, seeking clarity, because the message kept showing up. It's time to stop waiting for a louder sign and start honoring the quiet ones that came again and again.
The ones that didn't need to scream because they trusted you'd be wise enough to feel them. The ones that offered you the same message in new ways, hoping you'd finally see that this isn't about judgment. It's about alignment. When something is right for you, it adds to you. It brings steadiness and when it's not even in small doses, it drains you in slow almost invisible ways.
That's why you don't always notice at first, but over time the pattern reveals the truth. And once you've seen the pattern, pretending not to know becomes a choice. So if you're hearing this and something in you is saying, "Yes, I've seen this before." then that is your confirmation. Not because I said it, not because it's new, but because deep down you've already seen enough.
We like to imagine that when life wants to guide us, it'll feel good. That clarity will come through a breakthrough that divine messages will arrive wrapped in peace or love or even joy. But the reality is that's not always how it works. Sometimes what feels like discomfort is actually guidance. Sometimes the quiet ache that keeps showing up in your chest is the answer you've been asking for.
We are conditioned to believe that pain is a problem, something to escape or avoid. But pain has its own kind of wisdom. Discomfort is often the very tool that nudges us toward truth. It's not there to punish you. It's there to wake you up. You might not have realized it in the moment, but the tension in your spirit, the confusion you kept brushing off, the inner resistance you felt around this person, those weren't just emotional inconveniences.
That was a message. That was life's way of saying, "Pay attention. When something isn't right for you, it doesn't always fall apart in a dramatic way. Sometimes itjust slowly unravels your peace." And when it does, your body knows. Your energy shifts. You find yourself overexlaining, justifying, trying to make excuses for why it doesn't feel right because you want it to be right.
You want to believe that maybe if you love harder, wait longer, give more, the discomfort will go away. But it never really does, does it? [snorts] this person you've been asking about. If you really sit with it, if you look past what you want to feel and instead notice what you actually feel, you'll see that discomfort has been the constant.
There might have been good moments, yes, maybe even beautiful ones, but they were followed by questions, doubts, a strange sense of feeling alone even when you were together. That's not an accident. That's not something you just imagine. That's communication. Not in words, but in energy. We've been taught to ignore discomfort in favor of keeping things together.
But life doesn't operate by your need to hold on. It responds to your willingness to align. And discomfort is often the most honest response your soul can give. When peace isn't present, when you have to work overtime just to feel grounded, when you start losing bits of yourself trying to preserve a connection, that's not growth. That's misalignment.
That's the message. And what's beautiful about discomfort, if you stop fighting it, is that it always leads you somewhere deeper. It takes you to a truth you might have been avoiding. It invites you into honesty. And that's what real clarity is. It's not just knowing something mentally. It's feeling it so clearly in your body, in your breath, in your spirit that you can't unknow it anymore.
You asked for a sign. You wanted confirmation, but you've already lived it. You've felt the message in your own nervous system. You've heard it in the way your voice changed when you spoke about this person. You've seen it in your reflection wondering why you don't feel like yourself anymore. That is the message. That is the answer.
And it may not have come with a spotlight, but it came with something even more reliable. Your own awareness. Discomfort isn't something to run from. It's the soul's way of pointing you back to alignment, back to yourself, back to truth. There's something most people overlook when they're searching for a sign.
They think the answer will come from the outside through someone's advice, a random message, a perfectly timed quote. And while those things can be helpful, the most trustworthy confirmation has always been inside you. Your peace or the absence of it. That's the clearest signal you'll ever receive. It's subtle, but it's powerful. When you imagine a future without that person and feel a wave of relief, even if you can't explain it, that's not just a passing feeling.
That's your spirit breathing again. When you don't feel the need to overthink or analyze or brace yourself when they're not around, that's your body returning to stillness. It's your internal compass pointing you back to yourself. We tend to second-guess this kind of knowing because it doesn't feel dramatic. It's not loud.
But that's the point. Real peace doesn't need to raise its voice. It's not trying to convince you. It just is. And that's why it's so often overlooked because we've been trained to chase feelings that come with intensity, passion, urgency. But peace doesn't chase you. It sits. It waits. And when you're ready to notice, it simply says, "Here, now think about what it's been like with this person.
" Not just in the highlight reel of moments you revisit when you're trying to hold on, but the full picture, the quiet moments, the tension under the surface, the way your energy shifts when they walk into the room, or how often you've had to talk yourself into staying. Were you calm or were you performing calm? Did you feel safe or were you trying to feel safe? That difference matters because peace doesn't require effort.
It doesn't ask you to prove or persuade. It doesn't ask you to shrink to fit. When something is truly right for you, it brings a steady sense of ease. You feel more like yourself, not less. You breathe easier. You rest better. That's not a luxury. It's alignment. And it's not something that can be faked no matter how many good reasons you try to find for staying connected.
The truth is the body doesn't lie. It remembers things long after the mind has rationalized them away. And peace or the lack of it leaves a lasting impression. You can cover it up with logic. You can drown it out with distractions. But it always comes back in the quiet moments when no one's watching.
You'll feel the weight again or the lightness if you've already started letting go. So if you've noticed that you feel clearer, calmer, more whole when you step away from this connection, then you already have your answer. That feeling of calm isn't something to question. It's something to trust because that is the divine language of your souland it speaks in peace.
You've looked outside for confirmation. You've waited for signs, but the clearest one has always been how you feel when you're no longer holding on. That's not coincidence. That's not random. That's truth. And if peace arrives the moment they leave, then you already know they were never meant to stay.
There's a moment, maybe you felt it, where you stop looking for new signs and start realizing you've been collecting them all along. Not just from the outside world, but from your own experience, your own body, your own intuition. The truth is, you're not really waiting for a sign. You're waiting for the courage to accept the one you've already received.
This happens all the time. We get that quiet knowing, that moment of clarity, and then we bury it beneath layers of doubt. We ask for another sign, and then another, hoping that maybe this time it'll feel easier to accept. But deep down, we're not confused. We're hesitant. We know what needs to be done. We're just afraid of what doing it will mean.
You see, it's not the lack of evidence that keeps people stuck. It's the hope that maybe the evidence is wrong. That maybe if we just hold on a little longer, the situation will change or the person will change or will change enough to make it all work. But when the same feeling keeps returning, when your peace keeps vanishing, when your inner voice keeps whispering the same message, that's not confusion.
That's clarity trying to break through your resistance. It's okay to hesitate. [clears throat] It's human. Letting go of someone, especially when there's still love or hope attached, is one of the hardest things to do. But ask yourself this, are you staying because it feels right or because you're afraid of what it means to walk away? Are you still waiting because you're unclear or because you already know and you're just hoping to feel more comfortable about it? Most people don't want another sign.
They want relief from the weight of their knowing. They want someone else to validate what they already feel so they don't have to be the one to make the choice. But you don't need another voice. You need to trust your own. You already saw the signs. You already felt the shift. You already knew this connection wasn't helping you grow, wasn't supporting your peace, wasn't aligned with your deeper truth.
You've just been asking for confirmation because it's easier to call it seeking clarity than it is to admit you're afraid to act on what you know. This is the moment. This is the turning point. And not because something new is being revealed, but because the truth has been sitting quietly inside you, waiting to be honored.
You're not being asked to judge or condemn. You're just being invited to be honest with yourself, with your needs, with the reality of what you've experienced. It's not weakness to walk away. It's not failure to stop trying. Sometimes the most courageous thing you can do is finally admit that the lesson is complete, that the signs have done their job, and that peace isn't something you should have to fight for.
You've waited long enough. You've asked the same question in different ways, hoping the answer would somehow change. But it hasn't. And it won't because the truth doesn't shift to match our fears. It waits patiently for us to catch up to it. So if you've been asking whether this is your confirmation, let this be the last time you need to ask because you already know.
And when you stop waiting for permission, you start living in truth.
