The 3 Stages of the Spiritual Journey

Years ago, filmmaker Jonas Elrod experienced a spiritual transformation that made him see everything in a different light. In the new series In Deep Shift with Jonas Elrod, he follows real people on their own journeys and has found that there are three basic stages on every spiritual path: breakdown, breakthrough and integration.

"A breakdown is when the floor falls out from underneath you, when things go sideways, things just don't go the way you want them to go," he says. "There can be a myriad of different ways that these present themselves, but for a lot of us, breakdowns are generally around loss."

The breakthrough, Jonas explains, is when you have that aha! moment. "Breakdowns, not so fun," he says. "Breakthroughs—that's the juice."

The final step, integration, is the internal work. "[For] some people, it can be meditation, some it can be therapy, yoga, whatever it may be," Jonas says. "You can have this over-the-top, divine breakthrough moment, but you got to do internal work to kind of bring that into the everyday."

In the video above, find out what Jonas says is the biggest mistake you can make on your spiritual journey.

Tune in to In Deep Shift with Jonas Elrod Sundays at noon ET/PT.