Personal growth is challenging and humbling, and fast-tracking it can make it a harrowing experience not for the faint of heart.
If you want to change fast and you’re willing to put in the work, you will be shown clearly where you’re still acting out of outdated habits, coping mechanisms, and fear-based conditioning that is holding you back. And you will commit to making changes, and you will meditate and integrate and journal and study everything from the comfort of your spiritual sanctuary, and then you may go out into the real world and, in the first moment you get nervous, fall back into your old patterns again. And the only thing you can do is notice it, say thank you, and commit to being more mindful the next time a similar situation arises.
It’s tempting to crawl back under the covers and give up, or at least retreat into self-pity for a while. You’re doing your best, and it’s hard. Having self-compassion is never not a tedious balancing act between holding yourself accountable and cutting yourself some slack, and only you can know where your burnout point is, where the optimum volume is on your dial, how far you can take self-discipline before it turns into self-punishment. There is no right way besides the one you decide. There is no answer outside yourself. And that’s part of what makes it so difficult.
August was an exhausting month, you guys. All the currents pointed toward change and expansion, shedding the old to make room for the new, and while this process is always positive that doesn’t mean it’s always easy. I’ve been deep in the work for a solid year and even I’m having trouble seeing myself slip up, freeze, regress, self-correct, forgive, and repeat. I struggle to maintain balance between allowing my full expression and being sure that full expression doesn’t just become an excuse for comfortable dysfunctions. I feel shame when I fuck up and then I feel shame for feeling shame, and then I release and try again. Cosmically, if you’re on the same path (which I know many of you are), we’re now stepping out of our flight simulators and into actual airplanes, and flying doesn’t feel nearly as easy as we thought it would.
I’m writing this today to remind you (and myself) that this is normal, that the need to get things right is never not an ouroboros leading back to more surrender, that surrender may never feel safe if we maintain attachment to doing things right, and that that cycle is the very nature of self-acceptance. And what are you going to do? Beat yourself up over it? You acknowledge the work you have ahead of you, take a deep breath, and move forward when you’re ready. Nobody said you wouldn’t be humbled. Keep choosing your light.
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