Why Spirituality ‘Killed’ Your Motivation (And Why That’s Not a Bug)

[Sitting in a Vancouver café watching a guy in a suit scroll his phone with this particular intensity—the kind that screams “I’m doing something important” while his coffee gets cold. I used to be him...]

“Meditation destroyed my motivation. That’s why I stopped being spiritual.”

My buddy—let’s call him Marcus—studies joy and motivation for a living. Sharp mind. He’d gotten deep into mindfulness practice for a while, then abruptly quit.

When I asked why, he sent me a study.

Andrew Hafenbrack’s research from INSEAD, published in Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes. The findings were clear: mindfulness meditation significantly reduced motivation for both mundane and pleasant tasks. The mechanism? Decreased future focus and decreased arousal.

Marcus is very happy now. Very productive. Also very... tight.

That particular quality of someone who’s optimized their life around maintaining a state that requires constant vigilance. No gaps. No spaciousness. Just drive, purpose, forward motion.

And he thinks spirituality was the threat.

[The espresso machine behind the counter just hissed and sputtered, struggling to maintain pressure. Perfect timing...]

The Study They Quote (But Don’t Actually Understand)

Let’s look at what Hafenbrack actually found.

The study used ten-minute guided meditation sessions. Participants then faced various tasks—some boring (proofreading), some pleasant (eating chocolate). Compared to control groups, the meditators showed measurably lower motivation to engage with these tasks.

But here’s the critical detail everyone misses:

Task performance didn’t change.

Read that again. Motivation dropped. Performance stayed the same.

The researchers noted: “Motivation is borne out of discontent with the state of the world at present; it is served by focusing on the future.”

Translation: You need to be dissatisfied NOW to be motivated to change things LATER.

Meditation reduces that dissatisfaction.

Marcus read this and thought: “Meditation makes you complacent. Bad for success.”

What he didn’t see: The things he lost motivation for were things he never actually wanted to do in the first place.

The Pendulum Trap (Or: How We Get Programmed)

Here’s what happens to most of us.

We’re born. Open. Curious. Naturally aligned with what feels good, what pulls us forward.

Then the conditioning starts.

Family pendulums: “This is what success looks like in our family.” “We don’t do that here.” “Good children are [insert expectation].”

Institutional pendulums: School systems rewarding compliance. Corporate structures demanding conformity. Social hierarchies punishing deviation.

Cultural pendulums: Achievement narratives. Status games. The relentless drumbeat of “more, better, faster, bigger.”

[A term I’ve written about extensively—pendulums are the autonomous information structures that feed on human attention and emotional charge. They’re not evil. They’re just hungry. And we’re delicious.]

By the time we’re 25, most of us are running programs we didn’t choose.

We’re in careers we “should” want. Relationships that look right. Cities that make sense. Lives that would make our parents proud or our peers envious.

And here’s the brutal part: Maintaining these misaligned lives requires massive amounts of motivation.

Because you’re not naturally pulled toward them.

You have to force yourself. Every. Single. Day.

That’s what motivation is for people like Marcus—the whip you crack on yourself to keep moving in a direction your deeper self doesn’t actually want to go.

So when meditation came along and dissolved some of that forcing mechanism... he panicked.

The Existential Crisis IS the Breakthrough

This is where it gets interesting.

When meditation starts working—really working—it doesn’t make you lazy or apathetic.

It makes you intolerant of self-betrayal.

All those things you’ve been forcing yourself to care about? The ones that require constant motivation to sustain? Meditation strips away your tolerance for the lie.

You can’t unsee it once you’ve seen it.

The career that looked prestigious from the outside but feels hollow from the inside. The relationship held together by obligation rather than resonance. The city you live in because it’s “where opportunities are” but that slowly drains your life force.

Spirituality didn’t ruin your motivation. It revealed that you were using motivation to avoid the truth.

The truth being: This isn’t your life. These aren’t your dreams. This path isn’t yours.

And the ego—brilliant, adaptive survival mechanism that it is—has a very predictable response when faced with this revelation:

“Spirituality is dangerous. It’s making me lose my edge. Better go back to the tightness, the drive, the forward motion. At least I knew who I was when I was suffering.”

[Just watched the suited guy stand up, check his watch, rush out without finishing his coffee. He’ll probably do this again tomorrow. And the next day. Until something breaks...]

When You Don’t Need to Force It

Here’s what Marcus’s study didn’t measure:

What happens to motivation when you’re doing what you’re actually here to do?

Not what you “should” do. Not what looks impressive. Not what pays the most or makes the most sense.

What you’re genuinely called toward.

I can speak from direct experience: When you’re aligned with your actual path, motivation becomes irrelevant.

You don’t need to be motivated to breathe. You don’t need to be motivated to eat when you’re genuinely hungry. You don’t need to be motivated to create when creation is your nature.

You just... do it.

Reality Transurfing calls this the difference between inner intention and outer intention.

Inner intention is force. Pushing. Striving. “I will make this happen through sheer determination.”

Outer intention is flow. Alignment. “Reality moves through me because I’m on my actual lifeline.”

The latter doesn’t require motivation. It requires resonance.

When you’re resonant with your path, you’re not dragging yourself forward. You’re being pulled. By curiosity. By genuine interest. By the magnetic attraction of what wants to emerge through you.

The work is still hard sometimes. There’s still resistance, challenge, growth edges.

But you’re not motivating yourself to face them. You’re facing them because NOT facing them would be a betrayal of what you know to be true.

Big difference.

The Discernment Question (How to Tell the Difference)

Okay, so how do you know if you’re:

A) Spiritually bypassing (running away from hard things you need to face)

or

B) Genuinely misaligned (receiving accurate feedback that this path isn’t yours)

Here’s the litmus test I use:

Drop all importance around the outcome. Completely. Then ask: Does this still matter to me?

Not “should it matter.” Not “would other people think it should matter.” Not “did it used to matter.”

Right now. With no story. No future payoff. No identity attached.

Does it matter?

If yes—if there’s still genuine pull, genuine care, genuine resonance—then the loss of motivation is probably resistance you need to work through. Shadow material. Fear masquerading as disinterest.

But if no—if without the importance, the whole thing just feels... empty—then congratulations. Your meditation practice just saved you years of living someone else’s life.

[The waiter just brought my second espresso. I didn’t order it. “You looked like you needed it,” he said with a knowing smile. Sometimes reality just... provides...]

What My Buddy Can’t See (And Why the Ego Protects Itself)

Marcus is happy now. I believe him.

But here’s what I notice:

He talks about his achievements constantly. His optimization protocols. His productivity systems. The way he’s engineered his life for maximum output.

There’s a particular flavor to it. Not joy. Not peace. Not presence.

Defended.

Like someone who’s built an incredibly sophisticated fortress and now has to justify why the fortress is necessary.

“See? I’m crushing it. The meditation thing was clearly holding me back.”

But what if—and I say this with genuine compassion—what if he’s not crushing it?

What if he’s just really, really good at forcing himself to do things that require being forced?

And what if the meditation was starting to show him that there might be another way—a way that doesn’t require constant pressure to maintain?

That’s terrifying.

Because if you’ve built your entire identity around being the disciplined, driven, optimized achiever... and then you discover you don’t actually need to be that to be fulfilled...

Who are you?

The ego’s survival mechanism kicks in: “Dangerous territory. Abort. Go back to what we know. Even if what we know is suffering, at least it’s familiar suffering.”

So he quit being spiritual.

And honestly? That might be exactly what he needed to do. For now.

Sometimes you have to fully exhaust the path of forcing before you’re ready to explore the path of allowing.

Spirituality Didn’t Ruin Your Life—It Showed You the Life You Were Living Wasn’t Yours

If you’re reading this and resonating...

If you’ve had that experience of meditation or plant medicine or deep practice making you unable to tolerate the life you’ve built...

If you’ve lost motivation for things you “should” care about...

If people are telling you you’ve “lost your edge” or “become too woo-woo” or “aren’t ambitious anymore”...

You’re not broken. You’re waking up.

The motivation you lost? It was the whip you were using on yourself to stay in the wrong life.

And yes—letting go of that whip is fucking terrifying.

Because admitting that you may have spent the last 5, 10, 15 years building something that doesn’t actually reflect who you are.

It means potentially disappointing people. Losing status. Looking like you “gave up” to people still trapped in their own forcing mechanisms.

It means the grief of recognizing how much time you spent living someone else’s dream.

But here’s what’s on the other side:

Alignment.

The experience of your life energy flowing in the direction it was always meant to flow.

Work that doesn’t require motivation because it’s genuinely what you’re here to do.

Relationships that don’t require effort to maintain because the resonance is real.

A life that doesn’t need to be forced because it’s actually... yours.

Not perfect. Not always easy. Not some blissed-out spiritual bypass where you float above your problems.

But real.

And you can’t fake your way back to sleep once you’ve tasted that realness.

The Invitation (If There’s Someone Left to Accept It)

So.

If you’re Marcus—if you’ve quit being spiritual because it “killed your motivation”—I get it. Genuinely.

Stay where you are if you need to. The path will be there when you’re ready.

But maybe—just maybe—check in with yourself when you’re alone. When the performance stops. When the optimization protocols quiet down.

Is that tightness serving you? Or protecting you from something you’re not ready to face yet?

And if you’re on the other side—if you’ve already let meditation dissolve your motivation for the wrong life—welcome to the wilderness.

It’s disorienting here. The maps don’t work the same way. Success metrics become meaningless. Achievement stops scratching the itch it used to scratch.

But you can breathe here.

And that matters more than you remember.

[The suited guy just walked back past the café. Slower this time. Looking at his phone less. Maybe he forgot something. Or maybe...]

Your Turn

Have you lost motivation for something you “should” care about?

Are you forcing yourself to maintain a life that requires constant motivation to sustain?

Or have you already made the leap—let go of the wrong path and stepped into the wilderness of not knowing what’s next?

Drop your experience in the comments. Sometimes the most honest thing we can say is “I don’t know if I’m waking up or giving up, but I can’t go back.”

Keep bending light and hacking minds,

• Cian

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P.S. If you’re curious about the pendulum framework I mentioned, check out the Pendulum Series starting with “Memes Have Teeth.” It maps the exact mechanism by which we get conditioned into lives that aren’t ours.

P.P.S. The Hafenbrack study is real, peer-reviewed, and widely cited by people who stopped reading after the abstract. Full paper here if you want to see what they actually found vs. what gets quoted.

P.P.P.S. To Marcus, if you ever read this: I still think you’re brilliant. And I’m genuinely glad you’re happy. But man... I hope one day you let yourself feel what’s under all that optimization. There’s gold there. Or maybe just space. Either way, it’s worth meeting.