Your Humanity Is the Doorway: Integration over Transcendence

For a long time, I thought the spiritual path was about getting back to those peak states.

The psilocybin journey. The spontaneous awakening experience. That sense of oneness I've touched in meditation.

I'd have these glimpses of something beyond the ego self, and I'd think: "That's it. That's what I'm aiming for. If I could just get back there and stay there."

But one of my main lessons from the past year is that the most true path is full integration, not transcendence.

It's not some other experience. It's THIS, this moment, this human experience, being fully present with the context of not identifying as the ego and its desires, but seeing that we're part of it all and oneness is flowing through us.

Because when you exhaust yourself trying to transcend the messiness of being human, you're operating with only partial access to yourself.

That fragmentation drains your energy and blocks the very things you want: clearer decisions, deeper relationships, better leadership, more aliveness.

Here's what made this shift from concept to more of a lived reality for me.

Rejecting Humanity Is Just Ego in Disguise

A client and friend recently shared something with me from Siddhartha that maps this perfectly.

Early on the spiritual path, the world appears split:

Spiritual vs. Human
Renunciation vs. Desire
Holiness vs. Pleasure
Oneness vs. Individuality

Young Siddhartha believes: "If I abandon desire, I will find Truth."

This is the first illusion of spiritual growth: that humanity and divinity are opposites.

So he becomes an ascetic. He masters fasting, pain, self-denial, ego suppression.

And it fails.

Why?

Because rejecting humanity is just ego in disguise.

The self can disappear for a moment, but it always returns. Spiritual bypassing doesn't dissolve ego. It refines it.

This is why holiness can become pride. Why purity can become violence. Why transcendence can become disconnection.

Here's the key insight from Siddhartha: You cannot transcend what you have not fully lived.

Trying to skip humanity creates fracture. Fully living out your humanity creates integration.

Welcome All Your Feelings

So what does it actually look like to fully live out your humanity rather than trying to escape it?

Welcome all your feelings.

There's a metaphor I love: joy is the matriarch of all the feelings, and if you're not letting her children in, she won't come. All emotions flow through the same pipe. If you try to block sadness or anger or fear, you're kinking the pipe, and joy can't flow through either.

For a long time, I was "welcoming" feelings transactionally. I'd welcome sadness so it would take its turn and leave, making room for my "real friends" (joy and excitement).

But that wasn't true welcoming. That was still resistance in disguise.

I've struggled with depression for most of my life (relatively mild, but periodic). Every four to six weeks I'd get gray. And I was terrified that if I truly let sadness in, it would consume me. That it would never end.

But here's what I learned: the feeling itself isn't what's painful. It's the resistance to the feeling that creates suffering.

When you actually welcome emotions without trying to make them leave, they move through naturally. And when emotions move through instead of getting stuck, that energy becomes available for everything else.

This is the same pattern Siddhartha discovered: I was trying to transcend my sadness rather than fully be with it.

Welcoming the Human Form

But what if you welcome all the feelings and you still can't 'overcome' your human nature?

In Siddhartha's story, he had to actually live his humanity, not just accept it existed. He chose desire. He pursued love, wealth, pleasure, power. He experienced failure.

Without fully living it, oneness remains just an idea.

He had to accept his human form and give into his biological drives.

For years, I tried to keep them separate. Like, "Well, it's just spirituality. If you connect with who you really are and awaken, it transcends everything."

But I talked to a mentor recently, and he said: "From my experience, once it becomes a biochemical thing, it really needs a biochemical treatment."

That landed. Because biology precedes and greatly influences psychology.

I've tried to bifurcate biology and spirituality for so long, but they work together.

When mental health becomes biochemical, it needs biochemical support alongside the spiritual work.

It's a "yes and," not an "either/or."

Whether it's Siddhartha's desire or biological needs, the pattern is the same: trying to transcend rather than integrate.

When Both Sides Exhaust Themselves

Years later, after Siddhartha has lived both renunciation and desire to their ends, he sits by a river. And there, something finally becomes clear.

He no longer identifies as "holy" or "worldly." He no longer prefers one state over another. He stops trying to be anything.

And he finally understands the river.

The river does not reject calm or turbulence. Drought or flood. Purity or pollution.

It includes all of it, and remains the river.

This is the insight: Oneness does not require the elimination of form. Oneness expresses itself as form.

Your desire is not outside Oneness. It is Oneness playing as individuality.

After enlightenment, Siddhartha still eats, still works, still feels pain, still loves. But something fundamental shifts.

He no longer believes: "This desire makes me less spiritual."

He lives out his humanity without being possessed by it.

This is the key distinction: the difference between having desire and being owned by desire.

When you welcome your humanity, your emotions, your biology, awareness liberates that energy. Suppression traps it.

You're not managing your nature. You're listening to it. You're not controlling the river. You're allowing it to flow.

Humanity Held in Love

So what does this look like when it all comes together?

Here's what Siddhartha reveals:

At first, humanity and oneness feel opposed.

You think: I need to get beyond my desires, my body, my emotions to reach the spiritual.

Later, humanity becomes the doorway into oneness.

You realize: The way is through, not around. Into the feelings, the body, the human 'struggle.'

Finally, there is no conflict, only depth of inclusion.

You don't become one by escaping your humanity. You become one by allowing your humanity to be held inside love without judgment.

And I've found that this integration, being fully here with all of my humanity, is what creates true presence. And presence is the rising tide that raises all boats. It allows you to show up better in every role you may hold (leader, partner, parent, friend, etc).

This is what integration actually means.

Not reaching for peak states while rejecting the valleys. Not attempting to transcend the body while denying biological needs. Not spiritual bypassing the feelings that want to move through you.

But being fully here. Fully human. Fully alive.

And discovering that this, exactly this, is where the divine has been all along.

With love,

- Dave Kashen

P.S. Want to ask me a question that will be answered in a future newsletter and/or youtube video? You can submit a question here: https://eulvx5p8j26.typeform.com/to/XgWoYLi7