No matter how much inner work you do, the shit keeps coming back.

You read the books. Do the meditation. Change your habits.

And for a period of time, you feel better.

But the hell keeps coming back.

Over and over.

And in the middle of the chaos — the endless ups and downs — you pause and ask:

You thought the spiritual journey would be a never-ending state of bliss and freedom. That everything was gonna get better.

It didn't.

And it feels like you never get a chance to actually enjoy the "highs." Because suddenly, you're back at "the lows."

I used to ask these questions too, until I found the key.

There's a morning where you wake up and the first thought is:

I can't keep living like this.

It's the same repeated cycle day in and out. Until one day, you just wake up realizing that enough is enough.

You pick up The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle. Something shifts. Every night before sleep, you open the book, reading a few pages, expecting it to reveal the next solution to your problems in life — a morning routine, a breathing exercise, a mantra that finally sticks.

And for some time, it all goes well.

You wake up before the alarm. Your chest feels open, like you can finally breathe. Conversations flow. Strangers smile at you. Synchronicities start showing up everywhere — the right song, the right person, the right opportunity, all at the right time. You start thinking: this is it. I've cracked the code. I'm never going back.

You discover another book, Autobiography of a Yogi. Now you feel unstoppable.

Until one day, everything falls apart.

It's Tuesday night. You're lying in bed. The book is on the nightstand but you don't want to open it. Because what's the point? You've done the affirmations. You've meditated. You've journaled until your hand cramped. And you're still here, back in your own hell. Same anxiety. Same loops. Same you. Staring at the ceiling, wondering if this is just who you are.

You've touched it. That feeling when everything flows — when your heart is open, when the right things just show up. That's the space. That's what you actually are.

So if this is what you actually are — why does it disappear? Why can't you hold it?

There's a reason. And it's not what the books told you.

We all have that voice in our head. The voice that seems to control us. To keep us stuck. To lure us into doing things that make us suffer.

Some call it the ego. The false self.

It's your thinking mind, made up of endless chains of thoughts. And when you get stuck in it, you limit yourself into a box inside this infinite space without borders.

You wake up. Before your feet hit the floor, the voice is already running:

You're behind. You should've started earlier. Why did you say that yesterday? They probably think you're weird. Check your phone. Compare yourself. Feel worse. Repeat.

By 9am, you've lived an entire war — and nothing has actually happened yet.

And even though you sometimes leave the box and breathe for a moment, feel good, live in peace — you just get trapped in another one.

Same voice. Different story.

You work on yourself more. Read another book. Get a new realization.

It feels like progress. It feels like you're finally getting somewhere.

But you're not leaving the box.

You're just redecorating it.

Every time you level up, your old shit rises to meet you.

You read a book that changes how you see everything — and the next week you're in a fight with your partner over nothing.

You have your deepest meditation ever — and two days later you're spiraling at 1:11am about something from five years ago.

Anger. Irritation. Hopelessness. Fear.

The challenges never seem to stop. You solve one and suddenly, another shows up.

That's not a coincidence. That's how it works.

But there is a way to neutralize these challenges.

During my years of inner work, I noticed a pattern the ancient Hermetics called the Principle of Rhythm — everything swings. Every high carries an equal low. The deeper you go into bliss, the harder the pendulum swings you back into darkness. But they also taught something most people miss: you can neutralize the swing — not by stopping it, but by changing your relationship to it.

Most people try to fight the low. They meditate harder. Read another book. Stack another tool on top of the pain. But that's like trying to stop the ocean from pulling back after a wave. You can't outwork a universal law.

What you can do is stop riding the pendulum. Stop clinging to the highs and running from the lows. Because the moment you grab onto either side — you're trapped again.

The problem was never the boxes.

The problem is your desperation to escape them.

The practice was never about escaping the box. It was about learning to feel what's inside it without running.

When anger shows up — you don't push it away. You don't journal it into submission. You don't slap an affirmation on top of it like a bandage over a wound that hasn't been cleaned.

You feel it. Fully. Without the story attached to it.

Not "I'm angry because he disrespected me and I always let people walk over me and this is why I'll never—"

Just… anger. The heat in your chest. The tightness in your jaw. The raw energy of it.

That's it.

And something strange happens when you do this. The box dissolves. Not because you fought your way out.

But because you stopped treating it like a prison.

You're lying in bed on a Tuesday night. The anxiety is there. The old thoughts try to start their loop. But instead of reaching for the book, instead of forcing a meditation, instead of telling yourself you should be further along by now — you just… stay.

You breathe. You feel the weight of it. And you let it be there without making it mean something about you.

No resistance. No story. No box.

The shit will come back. It always does.

But you won't.

All Love, Tomas

If this hit home, reply and tell me — what's the cycle you keep getting caught in? I read every one.