You’re Not a Lost Soul—You’re an Unfinished One
The spiritual lie that says you're already whole—and the path of becoming no one told you about
A few years ago, I sat in a workshop where a well-known spiritual teacher looked a room full of broken-hearted people in the eyes and said:
"You don’t need to heal. You’re already whole. You just forgot."
And the room nodded. People wept. They clung to the words like they were a lifeline.
But I sat there thinking… “This is how people stay stuck.”
I’ve coached thousands of people through pain, identity collapse, betrayal, addiction, and existential unraveling. And I can tell you with absolute certainty:
You are not already whole. You are not already perfect. And you’re not here to remember some divine self that’s hiding under the rubble.
You are here to become.
The Big Idea
One of the most seductive—and damaging—myths in the self-help and spiritual world is the idea that you are already perfect and simply need to "wake up" or "remember who you really are."
It sounds beautiful. It feels empowering.
But it’s bullshit.
This belief doesn’t free you. It binds you.
It keeps you chasing some imaginary version of yourself, stuck in a loop of self-soothing and spiritual bypassing—while avoiding the messy, painful, and essential work of becoming.
You're not a soul who forgot. You're a consciousness that’s still under construction.
And pain? It’s not proof that you’re broken. It’s the pressure that forges something new.
You don’t discover your higher self. You build it.
That’s what Essentia is—the process of becoming the self you were born to create, not born already knowing.
The Breakdown
The Seduction of “Remembering”
It’s a compelling idea: that underneath your wounds and your baggage lies a pristine, divine self just waiting to be remembered.
It gives people hope. And more dangerously—it gives people permission.
Permission to bypass. Permission to avoid the discomfort of growth. Permission to turn spiritual language into armor that shields them from the very pain that could liberate them.
Remembering feels passive. Like all you have to do is meditate long enough, or read the right book, or attend the right retreat and voilà—you awaken.
But true awakening doesn’t come from memory. It comes from movement.
Spiritual Bypassing & Identity Paralysis
“I’m already whole” is the new opiate of the self-help masses.
You can’t grow if you believe there’s nothing to grow into. You can’t evolve if you’re convinced you’ve already arrived.
That’s not enlightenment. That’s ego dressed in spiritual robes.
When people repeat “I am enough,” but live a life that contradicts that mantra, the cognitive dissonance deepens. They feel like failures—not because they’re broken, but because they’ve been fed a story that skips the hard part.
You don’t need another affirmation. You need integration.
Pain as Curriculum, Not Punishment
This is where we flip the narrative.
Pain is not the enemy. It’s the portal.
Your suffering is not a deviation from the path—it is the path.
It’s the curriculum of becoming.
That betrayal? That heartbreak? That deep, gnawing emptiness? They’re not punishments. They’re initiation rites.
They wake you up to what’s misaligned. They show you where the MUD (Misguided Unconscious Decisions) still clings. They point you, ruthlessly and lovingly, toward what must change.
Essentia: The Process of Becoming
You’re not here to recover a lost identity. You’re here to forge a new one—one that never existed before.
At Next Level Human, we call this becoming Essentia.
Essentia is not just your essential nature. It’s your essential nature combined with your purpose potential.
When your essence collides with the conditions of human experience—pain, love, challenge, failure—it doesn’t stay static. It evolves.
Essentia is the evolutionary arc of your spirit. It’s not who you were. It’s who you could become if you brought your whole self to the table.
It’s the result of transmuting pain into passion… then into meaning… then into purpose… and ultimately into mission.
That’s the order:
Passion: What lights you up and breaks you open
Meaning: What your life experiences have taught you
Purpose: Where your story meets the needs of the world
Mission: The active, lived embodiment of that purpose
Essentia is the alignment of all four.
You don’t remember Essentia. You earn it. You don’t awaken into it. You forge it through every conscious decision.
Real Freedom Requires Integration
You want to be free? Then integrate your story. Reclaim your choices. Own your pain. Channel it forward.
You don’t get to skip the fire. You don’t get to bypass the body. You don’t get to chant your way around accountability.
You have to become someone new—on purpose.
And when you do, life doesn’t get easier. It gets truer.
Closing Thought
You’re not a lost soul wandering through the fog of forgetting.
You’re an unfinished one—being carved in real time by everything you’ve lived through.
Stop trying to remember who you were. Start choosing who you’re here to become.
Because that’s where your freedom lives. That’s where your Essentia begins.
PS- If you are ready to begin the journey of becoming join the Next Level Human coaching program. We specialize in integrating the past to build the your Next Level Self… http://www.nextlevelhuman.com/human-coaching
I like the idea I’m already perfect ha! But I get much more gratification in consciously observing an experience and looking and asking myself why I did that or felt that and really tuning into where I was acting from - a need for connection, an attempt to be right, an honest effort to help that went wrong. Then looking at myself and observing underlying needs I’m trying to meet and growing from the observation. I really like the idea of creating and growing as we go along. Learning from pain and seeing it as a signal to look deeper into our own experience. Would love to see more about Essentia, going to look now at the Next level human video listings.