I want to get into the purpose of manipulation. How it serves human beings. Why we manipulate at all. And what its relationship is to spirituality and knowing oneself.

To understand manipulation, we first have to understand power. There is no way to understand manipulation without understanding power and its relationship to spirituality.

Power is the ability to take responsibility and to act. Power is the capacity to practice sovereignty. When someone is practicing sovereignty, they are able to act in alignment with who they are and take responsibility for their life. When people are not practicing sovereignty, they feel disempowered.

Sovereignty has to do with one’s reign. Your reign is your life. You are an eternal soul, an archetype, embodied in a human body, and you are responsible for carrying out your soul’s purpose through that body. Sovereignty is the practice of a soul living its life truthfully. It is the ability to be oneself and to engage in relationships with oneself and others in a way that is aligned with one’s true nature and archetype.

This is where relationships enter the discussion. As embodied souls, we are meant to share power. We are interdependent. None of us can complete our life purpose in isolation. Relationships are essential. Power, in its healthy form, is something that is shared collaboratively, not extracted.

Manipulation is what happens when someone extracts the benefits of another person’s power without consent. It can go both ways. We manipulate others, or we allow ourselves to be manipulated. In both cases, power is taken rather than shared.

Because human beings are so dissociated from their souls, we are extremely easy to manipulate. Anyone who manipulates others is not practicing sovereignty. They are disempowered themselves. That is the root of the behavior. Instead of collaborating and sharing power, they rely on taking power from others in order to survive.

Manipulation is fundamentally a survival strategy. When someone does not feel empowered, they believe they need access to other people’s power to meet their needs. This leads to violations of boundaries and the erosion of consent.

When we are not embodied in our souls and not practicing sovereignty, manipulation becomes normalized. It shows up as propaganda, coercion, guilt, obligation, and countless other tools. Manipulation is a form of abuse. Abuse is violence. It is violence used as a survival mechanism by spiritually disempowered people.

This is a sign of spiritual immaturity. It signals a need for repair and spiritual healing. Yet most people never heal spiritually because we live within systems of religion and spiritual misinformation that reinforce disempowerment. These systems are often upheld by those who control resources for survival. They benefit from keeping others spiritually impoverished.

What is tragic is that human beings themselves are resources. We are meant to help one another survive. But when people operate from spiritual poverty, they hoard, manipulate, and dominate instead of collaborating.

One of the most normalized forms of manipulation today is intellectualization. Emotion is stripped out and only data is emphasized. This is presented as rationality, but it is actually dissociation. When emotion is removed, information is incomplete. Human cognition is designed to integrate emotion and logic together. When emotion is excluded, something is broken.

Human beings manipulate because they are disempowered. This disempowerment originates in enmeshment trauma during childhood. Children experience enmeshment in families, schools, and institutions. Wherever children are raised within spiritual poverty, they become traumatized, disempowered, and spiritually immature.

The result is spiritual poverty carried into adulthood. A useful metaphor is a fruit bearing tree. If a tree is not properly nourished, if it grows in hostile conditions, it either bears little fruit or none at all. Human beings are no different. Society does not bear the fruit it could because children are not raised in conditions that support sovereignty.

The fruit adults produce is meant to nourish others, especially children. When adults cannot bear fruit, the next generation is deprived. This creates a closed loop of scarcity, trauma, and manipulation that perpetuates itself.

The only way this cycle ends is through disruption. That disruption is uncomfortable. It is destabilizing. It requires exposing lies and refusing to normalize abuse.

In the process of awakening, which is the same thing as enlightenment or self realization, there is ego death. When you go through the process of ego death, you begin to realize and then decide that you are no longer going to take on roles in your life that are not actually yours in order to help other people emotionally regulate This shows up most clearly in intimate and family relationships.

One of the things people are most terrified of is losing their enmeshed role. For example, someone may take on the role of a caregiver, even though that role is not truly who they are. It is not their role. In enmeshment, people take on roles that do not reflect who and what they truly are within the relationship. They become stuck in those roles, and in doing so, they are no longer being their authentic self.

More often than not, the relationship is maintained only because the role continues to be played. If the role stops, the relationship destabilizes. That is exactly what happens during awakening. When you let go of the roles people want you to play, they are forced to confront a choice. Either they accept who you truly are, or they become hell bent on manipulating you back into a role that you are not. This is where entitlement appears.

People feel entitled because their attachment needs were never met. Attachment needs are not just about closeness or comfort. They have to do with attunement and identity development. This is something you do not hear much about, because people avoid talking about identity and trauma. But enmeshment trauma is fundamentally about identity.

Enmeshment trauma is also addictive. It operates as a form of abuse, where one person attempts to extract attachment needs from another person without consent. Children experience this most directly. When children are used as a source of attachment regulation for their parents, they do not develop a sense of identity. The lack of identity then drives compulsive attempts to get attachment needs met later in life.

This is why enmeshment trauma is the source of addiction. Addiction is the compulsive attempt to resolve unmet attachment needs. It does not stop because it cannot work. The nervous system keeps attempting to develop its identity, but it cannot do this without ego death, because ego death is also inherently detoxifying. It functions as a detox program in many ways.

Children are supposed to have their attachment needs met so that they can feel safe and orient to themselves. This process is about orienting to one’s own self, one’s own spirit, one’s own soul in a body. That is what is supposed to happen in healthy development. But in dysfunctional families, this does not occur.

A dysfunctional family is one where enmeshment trauma is reenacted across generations. It is an addiction within the family system. This is why addiction is so commonly present in dysfunctional families.

The pain driving this comes from trauma, but more specifically from dissociation. Dissociation fractures the sense of self. It causes corruption of identity, much like information corruption in a computer system. The person’s internal data becomes unreliable.

We can see how information is passed down through genetics, genealogy, and even astrology which is a form of divination. Traits, talents, patterns, and predispositions are transmitted. There is programming happening both biologically and astrologically, as above and below. But instead of helping a child orient to their own internal signal, parents often orient the child to a role the parent needs them to play.

When parents cannot play their role as parents because they themselves were not properly parented, identity does not form. The child becomes organized around function rather than self. Interpersonal violence emerges when a person tries to extract attachment needs from another person by force or submission. The brain compulsively seeks attachment in order to stabilize identity, but identity cannot form this way.

Addiction is suspended animation of identity development. It is the freezing of spiritual development. If you research identity development, you will find that it is often described as something derived from culture, family values, or social belonging. That has nothing to do with the true self. That definition itself reflects enmeshment.

The deepest layer of identity development is spiritual development. Identity development and spiritual development are the same process. When spiritual development is interrupted, people do not come into contact with their divinity. They do not orient to the eternal aspect of themselves that exists within the body.

We are meant to orient to that inner source and then use it to contribute to society, to appreciate ourselves, and to give to one another. When this fails to happen, scarcity emerges. The scarcity we see in the world is a reflection of failed spiritual development, which is failed identity development.

Ego death is necessary because it destroys the false self. When the false self dies, contact with one’s divinity becomes possible. From that contact comes inner abundance. But our world is upside down. People are taught to find value externally, in ways that are not spiritual.

Instead of developing true identity, people manufacture personas. They build brands. They perform identities. Profit is treated as proof of worth. But a persona is not the self. Anything that calls itself spiritual while avoiding orientation to one’s divinity is not spiritual.

Everything in nature has a purpose. Trees have a purpose. Animals have a purpose. Humans are animals too, and we also have a purpose. Understanding that purpose is about responsibility. When people do not know who they are, they cannot do their part.

When you research enmeshment dynamics and dysfunctional family roles, understand that those roles are adaptations to attachment trauma. They are driven by addiction. And addiction is the suspension of spiritual development. Ego death ends that suspension. It dissolves the false roles and forces truth to the surface.

I want to teach you what authority actually is. I want to show you how reverence for authority becomes worship, how worship becomes enmeshment, and how enmeshment keeps humanity spiritually immature. If you follow my work on Substack, Threads, or Instagram, you already know that I am here to disrupt patterns of enmeshment, not normalize them. I am not interested in soothing people into familiarity. I am interested in naming what is fundamentally unhealthy, even when it is destabilizing.

The normalization of enmeshment keeps people immature. Not just others. You. Humanity as a whole. And when I talk about spiritual development, I am not talking about belief systems, rituals, or spiritual aesthetics. I am talking about ego death. I am talking about the shedding of the false self. That is the highest form of spiritual maturity available to us.

Our confusion about authority begins in childhood. We are taught that parents are the authority, but that is not actually true. Parents have a domain of responsibility, not ownership of the child’s soul. Authority is always tied to dominion. Dominion means what you are responsible for governing, what you are meant to steward, what you have the capacity to regulate. Power does not exist without responsibility. It never has.

We live in a world that has deliberately distorted this. It only feels complicated because it has been inverted. We are deeply enmeshed with authority figures everywhere, and this dynamic is the foundation of cults. A cult is not defined by strange beliefs. It is defined by enmeshment. The leader and the followers are addicted to one another. There are no boundaries. It often becomes a cult of personality or ideology, but ideologies are usually extensions of the people being worshiped.

This pattern starts at home. Most people are never taught what authority actually is. Authority, dominion, sovereignty, territory, responsibility. These are not abstract ideas. They are embodied realities.

Every human being is an authority in their own right. Not symbolically. Literally. Each of us has a domain. Your domain is your soul’s power, and your responsibility is to govern that power through the human body you inhabit. That is what authority actually is. It is not external permission. It is not hierarchy. It is not moral superiority.

Humility has been completely misunderstood. Humility is not submission. It is not self erasure. It is not about avoiding arrogance or making yourself smaller so others feel comfortable. Humility is precision. It is knowing exactly what is yours to govern and what is not. It is disciplined sovereignty. It is staying in your lane and fully inhabiting it.

When a person abandons their own domain, they either collapse into submission or attempt to dominate territory that does not belong to them. Both are forms of immaturity. Both are expressions of enmeshment. True authority never requires domination, and true humility never requires surrendering your soul’s power.

Religion has played a central role in distorting this truth. It externalizes divinity and teaches people to locate authority outside themselves. That is why religion produces dependency rather than maturity. Divinity is not something to obey. It is something to embody. You are not meant to worship authority. You are meant to govern the portion of divinity you carry.

Childhood is supposed to be the period where you are oriented to your identity and power before adulthood, specifically before reproduction. That developmental process has been profoundly disrupted. It is disrupted by misinformation, distraction, and indoctrination. Spirituality has been reduced to vague language about spirit while responsibility is quietly removed from the equation.

Practicing spirituality is not about communing with something external. It is the process of knowing who you are, inhabiting your body, and living in alignment with your purpose. It is sovereignty. It is being your own authority.

When people turn to authority figures, what they are actually doing is outsourcing responsibility. We seek others who are authoritative in their domains for expertise, not identity. Trust is only possible when people stay in their lanes. When someone occupies a role that is not aligned with their soul, that role is enmeshed by definition.

This is the core problem. People play authority roles that do not belong to them. Parents do this constantly, because they are lost and do not know themselves. They cannot orient a child to their soul when they are disconnected from their own. Instead, they indoctrinate children into roles designed for survival rather than alignment. When religion is involved, the distortion deepens.

A human can survive without living a soul led life. Humanity has done this for thousands of years. But survival is not maturation. Survival is not awakening. And the state of the world reflects that reality. We are collectively immature. Our role models are often undeveloped. Elders die with regret because they never governed their own power or lived in alignment with who they actually were.

This is what leads to reincarnation. The soul is tenacious. It is part of nature itself, and like all natural forces, it persists until its function is fulfilled. When the work is not completed, the soul returns. Again and again. Not as punishment, but as inevitability. The soul will keep entering form until it is allowed to do what it came here to do.

So if you want to live a life that is soul led, you must become aware of your own enmeshment patterns, especially the tendency to worship authority, and most of all spiritual authority. Do not worship me. Do not worship anyone who claims spiritual authority. That is not the task.

The task is to know who and what you truly are, and to carry out your life purpose. That is what it means to live an embodied life. That is what it means to live soul led. That is what it means to thrive. You were meant to do more than just survive.

Artificial intelligence cannot become safe until human beings stop harming human beings. We have not resolved that because we are spiritually immature. We prioritize physical survival without knowing the identity of our soul. In the absence of inner divinity, we cling to external deities and institutions instead of forming an intimate relationship with the eternal part of ourselves. Without that relationship, our contributions to the world are not soulful.

If we cannot treat each other in a soul led way, we cannot expect our creations to surpass us. Technological advancement without spiritual advancement is a dangerous imbalance. As technology has improved, spirituality has declined. We were more spiritually advanced in our ancient past than we are today. We lost the balance needed for a world where technology serves the soul instead of replacing it.

This spiritual immaturity shapes everything. It produces violence, war, diseases of disconnection, and an economy driven by profit rather than purpose. Technology becomes harmful because it is created and deployed by people who are not aligned with their soul. Misalignment then gets scaled through systems. When people prioritize profit over accuracy, integrity, and alignment, everything they build carries that distortion. Our economic structures reward misalignment, and misalignment becomes the foundation of society.

Spiritual advancement is alignment with the soul. To realign, a person must release what is not theirs, even when the body fears the loss of familiar attachments. Letting go is difficult, especially after a lifetime of adapting to a false identity. It requires timing, planning, and an honest willingness to stop performing survival. This is the work of discerning what belongs to the soul and what belongs to enmeshment.

Humanity struggles with this. Our entire species is developmentally delayed in the spiritual sense because we have not learned alignment. My work exists because of that. It is ancient and future oriented at the same time. It is for the few who are ready now, and for the world that will eventually need this path in order to continue.

If we want to save humanity, we must become spiritually mature. Not through churches, prayers, retreats, or rituals that reenact the same enmeshed patterns. We must take responsibility. Acting out of alignment is an act of violence against the self, and that violence radiates outward to others. Misalignment generates instability. Most stability people cling to is performative, not real. True stability is the natural expression of the soul, and until we live from that place, neither humans nor artificial intelligence can evolve without harm.