For years, we’ve asked spiritual teachers variations of the same question: How do we raise our vibration and finally manifest what we want? And for years, we’ve gotten different flavors of the same answer; think positive thoughts, stay high vibe, focus on gratitude, avoid negativity, and don’t feed the shadow.
And honestly, we believed it. We practiced it. We interviewed experts who taught it. We tried to embody it. But deep down, something wasn’t working. If “high vibes only” really was the secret, shouldn’t all of us be enlightened influencers by now? Shouldn’t manifestation feel consistent? Shouldn’t our shadow have disappeared by now with all our affirmations?
Then came our conversation with David Strickel, a man who walked onto our show and, without fanfare, flipped modern spirituality completely on its head.
“Stop trying to escape low vibration. Explore it.”
That sentence alone cracked the entire ceiling of our understanding. What if the spiritual challenge is not to eliminate low vibration, but to use it? What if the shadow isn’t a basement we should avoid, but a treasure vault we’ve never unpacked?
This isn’t a new-age rebellion. It’s a call to mature, grounded, fully embodied spirituality.
Why We’re Stuck: Escaping Low Vibration Is the Problem
David introduced his practice, TYA (Trust Your Abundance) not as another “feel good” system, but as a mindset rooted in appreciation of all things, including discomfort, polarity, and the messy parts of being human.
“A lot of spirituality guides you to bypass.”
Spiritual bypassing, the tendency to avoid emotional pain by hiding behind positive thinking, is rampant in mainstream manifestation teachings. Instead of looking at the subconscious roots of our pain, we try to smother them in gratitude journals and affirmation boards.
David was blunt: most manifestation fails because we’re trying to outrun our shadow, rather than understand its message.
“If you are down the spiral… instead of racing to get out of there… explore what’s in the basement.”
Low vibration isn’t a mistake. It’s an invitation to investigate.
Detuning the Past: Why “Letting Go” Doesn’t Work
Here’s something we’ve heard repeatedly from spiritual teachers: “You need to let go of your past.”
But David didn’t say that. In fact, he doesn’t believe in “letting go” at all. Instead, he teaches detuning, a process of removing the emotional charge from painful experiences by understanding them from a higher perspective.
“You don’t just pretend it didn’t happen.”
Pretending the past didn’t hurt isn’t healing. It’s denial. Real transformation requires looking at our experiences and asking:
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What did this teach me?
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How did this expand my consciousness?
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What does it reveal about my beliefs?
Detuning doesn’t glorify suffering. It neutralizes its power over us. David exemplified this through his own childhood, marked by instability, trauma, and emotional abuse. Instead of carrying resentment, he reframed those experiences as the training ground for his intuitive clarity.
“My mother was my greatest teacher.”
This wasn’t spiritual sugar-coating. It was deep sovereignty. Appreciation doesn’t mean agreeing that something was good. It means recognizing that it shaped your evolution.
Manifestation Doesn’t Happen in the Vibration of Need
Everyone wants to know why manifestation sometimes fails, even when we’re visualizing, meditating, and “staying positive.”
David’s answer was simple and devastating:
“You activate the vibration of need.”
When we want something so badly that we need it to happen, we send a contradictory signal: I don’t have it. And that energy is exactly what we reinforce.
Positive thinking isn’t enough if our core vibration is based on desperation.
David illustrated this through his own story: leaving a high-paying corporate job with no safety net, almost running out of money, until he let go of the fear. The moment he stopped clinging to lack, business flowed again.
“As soon as I did that… business started churning again.”
You can’t manifest from hunger. You manifest from non-attachment.
Why Low Vibration Is Necessary for Expansion
David’s worldview isn’t just about managing emotion, it’s about understanding evolution. According to him, consciousness expands through contrast.
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We don’t evolve from perfection because perfection doesn’t change.
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We don’t grow from only joy because joy contains no friction.
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We don’t expand through ease alone because ease doesn’t challenge us to think differently.
Low vibration...fear, grief, anger, anxiety...forces us to investigate beliefs we otherwise wouldn’t notice. It pushes us to explore our subconscious basement.
“Low vibration is unraveling your creation to show you what you might want to look at.”
Instead of treating negative emotion as failure, we can treat it as curriculum.
So How Do We Actually Work With Low Vibration?
Here’s what we learned from David that’s actionable right now. Shadow work doesn’t require journaling for days or reliving trauma. Instead, it follows three clear steps:
STEP 1: Recognize When You’re Down the Spiral
You know you’re down when:
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Everything feels heavy or hopeless
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You’re looping negative thoughts
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You think problems are permanent
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Solutions seem pointless
This isn’t an emergency. It’s a signal.
Don’t escape. Acknowledge.
STEP 2: Investigate the Basement
Imagine your subconscious as a basement full of stored boxes. When low vibration hits, it’s time to bring a box upstairs, open it, and examine it.
Ask:
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What belief is speaking through this emotion?
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When have I felt this before?
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What story am I still living from childhood?
David emphasized that you don’t start with your deepest trauma. You start small, build momentum, then explore increasingly complex boxes with greater clarity.
STEP 3: Detune Through Appreciation
This doesn’t mean pretending hurt is good.
It means saying:
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This experience shaped me.
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This challenge taught me resilience.
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This contrast expanded my awareness.
Appreciation dissolves resistance. Resistance feeds suffering.
Why Appreciation Beats Affirmations
Affirmations try to overwrite pain. Appreciation transforms it.
Affirmation says:
“This didn’t affect me.”
Appreciation says:
“This changed me, and I grew from it.”
One hides from the shadow. The other integrates it.
David wasn’t asking anyone to celebrate tragedy. He told a powerful story about a mother in his program whose son was murdered. She didn’t glorify the loss. She detuned the suffering so she could live again.
Detuning doesn’t erase grief, it frees identity from its grip.
The Practical Bridge Between Psychology and Spirituality
Most spiritual systems either:
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deny psychology (just think positively!)
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or deny spirituality (you’re only neurons firing!)
David’s Tya merges both. It’s a mindset anchored in:
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subconscious awareness
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emotional inspection
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appreciation-based reframing
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non-attachment to outcomes
He even collaborates with a clinical psychologist in his coaching program to ensure that detuning is grounded, not mystical bypassing.
This isn’t metaphysics without evidence. It’s consciousness paired with accountability.
Does This Mean Pain Will Disappear?
No. It means pain will no longer define you.
Spiritual mastery isn’t eliminating discomfort. It’s understanding it.
Low vibration is a teacher, not an enemy.
The shadow is not a problem to fix, it’s a message to decode.
Final Thought: What If We Stop Trying to “Be High Vibe?"
After talking with David, we realized something uncomfortable: we’ve spent years trying to escape low vibration. We thought we were advancing, when in reality we were avoiding the work that would have advanced us.
The question isn’t:
How do we avoid low vibration?
It’s this:
How do we use it?
That’s maturity. That’s sovereignty. That’s what we’d been missing.
Spiritual awakening might not be a journey upward. It may be a journey inward, into the basement we were taught to fear, the very place holding the roots of our expansion.
Maybe it’s time to stop chasing the light and start understanding the dark.
Not because suffering is noble, but because integration is real.
Where to Learn More About David Strickel
If you want to go deeper into TYA, detuning, and sovereignty:
đź“Ś Watch or Listen to the full interview on The Skeptic Metaphysicians
đź“Ś Stream the episode video at NewRealityTV.com
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