The Questions We’re Afraid to Ask

This series is an invitation to bring difficult questions into the light — gently, thoughtfully, and without judgment.

These are not questions meant to provoke outrage or demand agreement. They are questions that arise when lived experience collides with belief, when easy answers no longer hold, and when honesty feels more necessary than comfort.

Each piece in this series explores a question many of us sense quietly but hesitate to name out loud — not to dismantle faith or spirituality, but to return them to something more grounded, humane, and real.

This is not about having the “right” answers.
It is about being willing to ask.

Why Are We So Afraid to Name Harm?
The Spiritual Cost of Explaining Violence Away

There is something I’ve been witnessing more and more often — not only in public discourse, but in spiritual spaces that claim to be rooted in love, awareness, and healing.

When people are murdered.
When children are raped.
When families are shattered by violence, abuse, or state power.

There are voices that respond not with grief, accountability, or moral clarity — but with spiritual explanations that attempt to make what happened feel purposeful, chosen, or divinely arranged.

I have been told — sometimes directly, sometimes implied — that victims chose their suffering as part of a soul contract. That their deaths or violations were lessons. That perpetrators are merely “playing a role” in a cosmic unfolding that exists beyond judgment, beyond good and evil, beyond responsibility.

This is often framed as spiritual maturity.

I do not believe it is.

I believe it is spiritual bypassing — and at its worst, a quiet theology of dehumanization.

Free Will Is Not Moral Neutrality-
Human beings have conscious thought.
We have choice.
We have free will.

Free will means a person can commit harm — not that harm becomes spiritually justified when they do.

To acknowledge that human beings make choices is one thing.
To say those choices are morally neutral, pre-agreed upon, or divinely orchestrated is another entirely.

When violence is reframed as destiny, accountability disappears.
When suffering is reframed as a lesson, victims are silenced.
When perpetrators are reframed as teachers, cruelty is sanctified.

This is not enlightenment.
It is the removal of responsibility dressed up as wisdom.

Souls Do Not Violate Consent — Humans Do-
I believe there is a profound difference between the human mind and the soul.

The human mind is capable of domination, entitlement, justification, and harm.
The soul — however one understands it — is not.

Rape is not a soul act.
Murder is not a spiritual expression.
Exerting one’s will over another person’s body, safety, or life is not divine.

That is human behavior — and it must remain humanly accountable.

When someone says a child “agreed” to be violated, or that a person “chose” to be murdered in order to advance collective consciousness, what they are really saying is that no one is responsible.

That belief does not heal the world.
It protects power.

How So Many People Fell Into This-
People did not arrive at these beliefs because they are heartless or irredeemable.

Many arrived here through a belief system that has been carefully threaded over generations — a patriarchal doctrine that has long used spirituality to excuse harm, protect hierarchy, and avoid accountability.

This pattern is not new.

Human beings have always struggled with the weight of their own choices. And when those choices cause harm — individually or collectively — we have a long history of reaching for explanations that soften guilt and dissolve responsibility.

Spiritual bypassing offers a seductive escape.

It tells us there is no real good or evil.
That nothing is truly wrong.
That suffering is neutral.
That accountability is judgment.

For people overwhelmed by pain, fear, or helplessness, this can feel like relief.
For people shaped by rigid hierarchies, it can feel like freedom.
For people trying to make sense of a violent world, it can feel like meaning.

But relief is not the same as truth.

Collective consciousness is not collective amnesia.

A Line I Will Not Cross-

I will not engage with spiritual bypassing — not because it challenges me, but because it violates something essential in me.

I do not believe we are here to be harmed so that others may learn lessons. I do not believe suffering is pre-assigned, that violence is destiny, or that cruelty is spiritually neutral. I do not believe Earth is a perpetual classroom where pain is required for enlightenment.

I believe we are here to create — to co-create — with conscious thought, free will, and responsibility. I believe the soul is not a distant taskmaster assigning trials, but a living companion within us, guiding us toward love, care, and ethical choice. To me, spirituality is not about detachment from harm; it is about how we choose to live with one another.

Any belief system that asks me to explain away murder, excuse abuse, or frame violations of the body as sacred lessons is not something I can participate in. It does not deepen love. It does not protect life. And it does not reflect the God I believe in — a Creator who gave us the gift of creation itself, not permission to sanctify harm.

This is my line in the sand.

A Return to the Most Basic Moral Center-
I am not a theologian. But I know this much:

The core moral teaching attributed to Jesus Christ is simple.

Love God.
Love your neighbor as yourself.

There is no exception clause.
There is no spiritual loophole for violence.
There is no doctrine that absolves cruelty by calling it divine.

Creation itself was an act of love — not control.

If we believe we are creators or co-creators in this world, then our responsibility is not to explain suffering away, but to choose how we live with one another.

To protect life.
To refuse to sanctify harm.
To show compassion without abandoning conscience.

What I Am Choosing Now-
I am choosing a spirituality that stays human.
That stays grounded in bodies, consent, and accountability.
That allows grief, anger, and moral clarity to coexist with compassion.

I am choosing not to mistake detachment for enlightenment.
I am choosing not to call cruelty sacred.

And I am choosing — again and again — to stand with the living, the wounded, and the silenced, rather than with any belief system that asks me to look away.

Using spirituality to explain harm away is a cost that no one will ever be able to pay back.

About the Author
Jennifer Belanger is an intuitive practitioner, writer, and spiritual guide whose work centers on discernment, ethical responsibility, and the lived experience of being human.
Her practice is grounded in the belief that spirituality should deepen compassion without abandoning accountability, and that truth-telling is an essential part of healing.
​She writes The Questions We’re Afraid to Ask as an invitation to bring difficult conversations into the light with care and honesty.

If this essay spoke to you, you’re welcome to explore more in The Questions We’re Afraid to Ask series or reflect on what it means in your own lived experience.

www.energytouchintuition.com

​With Valentine’s Day approaching, the world begins to shimmer in pink and red.

Soulmates.
Twin flames.
Divine timing.

Love written in the stars before we were even born.

It is beautiful. It is hopeful. It is comforting.

And yet, every year around this time, I feel a quiet stirring in my chest.
Not resistance. Not judgment. Just a remembering.

Because I have spent my life listening.
Listening to young women who believed their first love would last forever.
Listening to men who promised at the altar and meant every word.
Listening to the trembling in a widow’s voice when she says, “We had fifty years.”
Listening to the anger in a kitchen where two people who once adored each other now cannot stand the sound of the other’s breathing.

I have listened at my tarot table while the cards spread out like a map of consciousness — not dictating fate, but revealing patterns. I have sat with the dying who speak not of destiny fulfilled, but of the small human moments that mattered: the hand held, the apology made, the love given when it would have been easier not to.

I have asked questions. I have second-guessed myself. I have dissected stories and stitched them back together. I have watched the maiden fall in love and the crone sit quietly with what remains after love changes form.

And after all of that listening, all of that watching, all of that questioning…
I have come to recognize something very simple about love.

It is astonishingly human.

And when I strip away the mythology and the marketing and the mysticism, what remains is this quiet beginning --
two humans meet.

It is not dramatic.
It does not announce itself as destiny.
It happens on an ordinary day — the kind of day that does not know it will be remembered.

One looks up.
The other lingers half a second longer than necessary.
There is no choir of angels.

Just a shift.

A softening in the chest.
A curiosity that feels almost like recognition.
Not recognition of a soul once known --
but recognition of a presence that feels safe enough to explore.

They speak.
They misread each other.
They laugh at the wrong moment.
They try again.

The maiden in her feels the spark of possibility.
The boy in him feels the unfamiliar urge to stay instead of retreat.
It is awkward. It is tender. It is human.

And then it continues.

They choose a second conversation.
A third.
A slow unfolding.

They learn each other’s histories — the childhood wound that still flares, the parent whose silence shaped everything, the past love that left a bruise no one else could see.
They begin to discover the ordinary miracles: the comfort of shared coffee, the quiet rhythm of sitting beside someone without needing to fill the space, the way one reaches for the other’s hand without thinking.

It does not feel cosmic.
It feels earned.

And then, inevitably, something sharp appears.
A misunderstanding that does not dissolve easily.
A sentence spoken too quickly.
An old fear triggered by a tone of voice.

This is where mythology would tell them the intensity means destiny.

But this is where humanity asks something harder.

Will you stay conscious here?

They argue.
They retreat.
They sit in separate rooms replaying the moment in their minds.
And then — if they are willing — they return.

They say, “That hurt.”
They say, “I was afraid.”
They say, “I don’t want to lose this.”
They misstep.
They repair.

Love matures in repair, not in mythology.

Days become weeks.  Weeks become Months.  Months become years.
They learn the quiet choreography of one another’s moods. They begin to anticipate the way exhaustion looks on the other’s face. They discover that commitment is not a grand gesture but a thousand small decisions made in kitchens and parking lots and waiting rooms.

They are not perfect.

They are present.

And presence — in our human consciousness and awareness, not in cosmic mythology or romantic prophecy — is what builds something that can withstand weather,
or calmly and purposefully recognize when the season has changed.

Some of these stories endure for decades.
Some dissolve.
Some burn brightly and end quickly.
And yet, in every one of them — in the weddings, in the divorces, in the quiet reconciliations, in the final goodbyes — the pattern is the same.

​Love is astonishingly human.

And that is where the question begins. 
Not in the clouds, but in the places our hands can actually reach. 

What if love is human?

What if everything we’ve been told — especially in seasons like this one, wrapped in roses and promises — has gently lifted love out of our hands and placed it somewhere unreachable?

What if love is not the reward for finding the right destiny…
but the result of showing up consciously inside the one we are living?

What if “everything happens for a reason” is not a slogan to soothe us, but an invitation?

An invitation to look at what our fear created.
At what our silence allowed.
At what our tenderness repaired.

What if everything happens for a reason only when we are willing to see the reason?

And what if “this too shall pass” — a phrase we say so easily, and yet one that asks more of us than we often realize — is not about waiting for time to fix what hurts…
but about anchoring long enough for awareness to change us?

What if storms do not pass simply because destiny moves us forward?
What if they pass because human consciousness alters the course?

What if the storms inside even the most devoted unions are not proof that this was written in the stars…
but proof that two imperfect humans are learning?

What if they are not punishments or prophecies…
but signals?

A yellow light.
A red one.
An invitation to anchor.

What if those moments — those lampposts, those God winks, those sharp awakenings — are not signs that the story is doomed or destined…
but signs that we are alive inside it?

What if we learn to softly consult our soul while still living from our human self?

What if guidance is real…
but governance is ours?

Fate may bring us together.
But destiny is what we build.
​
And sometimes what we build lasts a lifetime.

Two elders holding hands in the quiet hum of a hospital room, grateful for the small, holy moments of having stayed.

And sometimes what we build is a bridge that carries us only part of the way.
We part.
We ache.
We grieve.

It is not failure.

Because we loved consciously.
Because we showed up.
Because we allowed love to love us back, even when it asked us to grow.

The maiden becomes the woman.
The young lover becomes the elder.
The crone sits at the edge of memory and understands that no love was wasted.

Not the one that lasted fifty years.
Not the one that ended after five.
Not the one that broke us open and taught us how to stay.
Not the one that broke us open and taught us it was time to leave. 
​
Perhaps the point was never simply to find the one written in the stars.
Perhaps the point has always been to recognize the human who reminds us there is magic in them.

Love may be written in the stars, but it is shaped on earth --
with our human imperfections, line by line, by how we show up.

During this Valentine’s season, I wish you joy.

I wish you a love lived consciously --
recognized, tended, and made whole by how you show up within it.

If this reflection resonated with you, I would love to hear your thoughts.
Please feel free to leave a comment below — I read every one.
​
And if you ever feel called to seek guidance — whether through the language of tarot or the quiet messages that come from beyond the veil — you are always welcome at my table.
This is the kind of space we enter together at my tarot table — not to predict a perfect love, but to understand how you are showing up inside the one you’re living.

With care, 
​Jennifer


Jennifer Belanger is an intuitive tarot reader based in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, offering in-person and online tarot readings throughout Western MA and beyond.

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