If one engages in Waking Up without Cleaning Up, spiritual practice can become bypassing, as we may use the transcendent and blissful experiences of Waking Up to avoid feeling and integrating our unresolved emotional material.

If one engages in Cleaning Up without Waking Up, the result can be psychological integration without transcendence. One may become very “well adjusted,” emotionally mature, and self-aware, but they still may remain identified with the separate self (albeit a kinder, gentler separate self). Therapeutic wholeness, but spiritual unfulfillment.

Without the spaciousness and perspective that Waking Up brings, some may fall into an infinite loop of self-analysis. ****Healing can become a project that never ends; there’s always another wound to examine or another pattern to fix.

Some people become so good at Cleaning Up that they may never ask the deeper question:

who is the one experiencing these emotions?

Jung would say that the shadow may be integrated, but the Self (capital S) hasn’t been realized. In Wilber’s words, focusing only on Cleaning Up is like endlessly polishing a mirror, without realizing the mirror’s nature is already clear.