Hello Love!
In the next few blogs, I want to take some time to explore a concept that has been really fundamental in helping me move through my life.
I want to share a shift in perspective that I made many years ago that has since been the foundation for much of the positive changes I’ve been able to make in my life - and I want to share this with the intention that it will be something that inspires you to move into a state of deeper safety with yourself.
What I’m going to be sharing is something I’ve shared many times before around here - it’s a foundational concept within the self love teachings I share, and I believe that it’s one that we can’t be reminded of too often - because it’s a concept that arguably goes against a lot of what many of us have been trained to think, feel and believe about ourselves and the world.
The concept we’re going to be exploring can sound simple on the surface - but the reality is that when it’s actually APPLIED to our lives, it can be the catalyst for SO much growth, change and evolution that it can hardly be considered a small thing.
So with that, let’s dive in and see if we can take this one understanding a little deeper, open to it a little more, and come to a place of deeper self love as we explore.
Growth Is The Name Of The Game
There are many, many spiritual guides and teachers that tell us that there are only two states in life - growth and death.
Now, before I dive any deeper, I want to clarify what exactly I mean by growth - because I think for a lot of us we have an idea that ‘growth’ means that we are in a constant state of pushing, forcing, striving, becoming, changing and expanding - and to me this is only one ASPECT of growth.
To me, the more EXPANDED definition of being in a state of growth is really more about being in a state of receptivity to what is pertinent in the moment.
In other-words, I believe that just like any other part of nature, PART of the growth cycle that comes with being a living being includes things like rest, integration time, practicing what we just learned, deepening our awareness of something we have come to understand and allowing ourselves to marinate and BE in what we are IN without pushing for more on any level.
A PART of what it means to be in a state of growth is to ALLOW ourselves to be in a state of shedding, letting go, surrendering, contemplating, not knowing, taking steps backwards, not taking any steps at all so that we can actually take in whatever it is we just went through, processing the past and simply ENJOYING what is or allowing ourselves to HATE what is without trying to change ourselves or fix anything.
Growth is not all forward momentum and climbing the mountain. Growth INCLUDES rest, breaks, time to enjoy, time to integrate, time to process, time to let go, time to release, time to move backwards and time to revisit old ways.
Growth doesn’t mean we are always pushing for something - sometimes the most vital step we can take on our growth path is to simply BE where we are or again, to let things go.
Thus, my definition of being in a ‘state of growth’ is really one that rests on the idea that we are taking our time to really get to know ourselves, to be in our lives as they are, and to assess what is truly nourishing for us at any given time.
Growth is being in a state of being WITH life as it is for us right now, and allowing for the season we’re in to be the season it is - whether that be one of internal expansion, external expansion, release, surrender, cycling through patterns, integration, enjoyment and appreciation or a mixture of all of the above.
Then with that, I want to explore what I mean by death.
To me again, living in a state of ‘death’ doesn’t mean that we are judging any stagnancy, any stopping, any moving backwards, any lack of forward momentum or otherwise lack of awareness or understanding as a bad thing - because all of these elements of life can and SHOULD be included in our definition of LIFE.
Rather, to me, being in a state of ‘death’ is defined as being in a state of RESISTANCE to life, what’s coming up for us right now, what’s occurring for us, what it is we are needing and being in a state where we are trying to force life to be some way that it isn’t or where we are DENYING the reality that exists and trying to live in another reality.
We are in a state of ‘death’ when we are in a state of denial and pushing away what is, not allowing ourselves to actually process and work through reality.
To me, these are the general two states of being that humans tend to be in.
A state of going with life as it is to the best of our ability, and a state of trying to live a life that doesn’t actually exist.
When I realized that to be in a state of growth means to be in a state where I am first and foremost allowing myself to ‘accept’ reality for how it is - not necessarily saying that I always LIKE reality or that I want reality to STAY how it is - I realized that from this place was where I could find ALL of the power I had available to me to make life as good as it could possibly be.
I realized that by trying to force life to be something other than what it was, I was always going to lose the battle against reality, and in fighting that battle I was going to be actively breaking myself against reality.
Learning to embrace what was happening, learning to embrace who and what I was in any moment, learning to tune into what I needed, learning to accept and open to the fact that I didn’t know things and was struggling, learning to embrace where I needed help, support and rest, learning to embrace where I was stuck and didn’t see the way forward and learning to embrace the times where I needed to push and strive a little - THIS is what has enabled me to live a life that has taken me places I never expected I could ever go.
Learning to release the idea that I could make like something other than what it was through sheer will, learning that I was never going to win in a battle between myself and reality, learning that no matter how much it made sense to ME that something should or shouldn’t work a certain way - if it didn’t, it didn’t and that meant I needed to change instead of perpetually doing the same things and expecting reality to bend to my will at some point - this is what took me from what I believe was a ‘death path’ to a path of growth and life.
But making this shift wasn’t easy - and I realized that there was a LOT of conditioning I had picked up along the way in my life that was leading me to be in that state of resistance, and learning how to soothe those parts so that I could come into a state of acceptance and growth - that was where the true challenge started.
Resistance Is A Learned Behavior I Had To Unlearn
I realized that being in resistance to what was, was a habit I had LEARNED.
It’s a habit I learned because pretty much everyone around me when I was growing up, was also in this state of resistance. It’s a pattern I learned because most humans on this planet are in this state.
It’s a pattern I learned because culturally, the way we are taught to look at not knowing, the way we’re taught to look at not understanding something, the way we’re taught to see ourselves and those around us when we are in a state of not having the answers we need to solve the problems that are in front of us - is to go into a state of shame, blame, rejection and denial.
I learned, just like most of us have learned, that to not know, means to be stuck forever.
It means there’s no answer because for a lot of us we deeply believe that we literally already see and know everything - that if what we are currently doing doesn’t work - that this means that there simply isn’t an answer. So we resist life because we feel that if we were to accept what is, if we were to accept that we don’t know right now, if we were to accept that our current strategies aren’t working and aren’t going to work - we BELIEVE we are accepting that we are now stuck forever.
I learned, just like most of us have learned, that to not know means there’s something wrong with me.
It means I have failed on some level. It means I am defective, unintelligent, bad, shameful, sinful, inherently flawed and should be embarrassed of myself. I learned that to not know, to admit fault, to admit that what I thought was true wasn’t, to get to a place where I allow ANYONE to see that I don’t have it all figured out is to expose weakness - and our culture teaches us that any form of weakness or vulnerability is something to run from at all costs.
I learned, just like most of us have learned, that to admit that what I thought was true wasn’t, to see that what I thought would move me forward won’t, to admit that I have a problem I don’t know how to solve means that I now have to rework my WORLD VIEW.
It means bringing into question MANY things I thought were true. It means challenging what was previously giving me a sense of control, stability and security - the idea that I have things generally figured out and the idea that I can face challenges and hardships and setbacks with ease because I have the answers! I know what I’m doing! To see that I may be wrong about something takes that security away, leaving me in a state where I may have to challenge what I believe not only in the area of struggle but also in GENERAL - and that’s just way too much.
I learned, just like most of us have learned, that if I get to a place where I HAVE to admit I don’t know, where it is obvious that I don’t have the answers I need or where I’m not able to solve my own problems - that the only option available outside of continuing to push for what I WANT the answer to be, was to go into total ‘victim’ mode.
In the sense that if there’s any part of me that is going to actually admit that I don’t know or that I can’t fix what’s happening in my life, that this means I must look for all the reasons why whatever is occurring isn’t my fault, and is TOTALLY out of my control. This way, I can’t be blamed, shamed or otherwise made to feel like I am doing something wrong - because it’s not my fault! There’s nothing I could have done. There’s no way I could have known. It’s fully out of my grasp and thus I may admit I have no answers and I can’t make it different - but at least I am doing so in a way where no one is going to look down on me, because I can hide behind the idea that this is all happening TO ME and I must simply wait for it to change, or wait for someone or something to come rescue me from it.
All of this was being pushed on me as what reality was/is - which meant that resistance to life was simply something I naturally grew up in.
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Do you resonate with the above at all?
Do you see any of those same patterns in your life/experience?
Let’s take a pause here and come back next week to dive deeper into what this resistance looks like and how it impacts us.
<3
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