And the First Step Toward Real Transformation Is…
Have you considered that expansion and growth feel scary?
So many times I get asked how to “get rid” of fear or how to not feel a negative feeling. And I give the same old answer. If we aren’t afraid most of the time, we aren’t growing.
There’s this idea that a lot of folks believe; I’m not sure where it came from, but I’m pretty mystified by it. The idea is that somehow being on a “spiritual” path will banish all fear and negative emotions from a person’s life. Guess what, it’s BS.
If you are living a “spiritual” life, you are probably going to come up against more fears than someone who is just coasting. If you are living a life on The Path - you are going to become MORE sensitive to the emotions you feel, not less. Somewhere out there it’s as if there’s this promise being made that if you go on The Path, you are doing it right if you are only feeling happy ALL the time, never feel scared and can turn off negative emotions like a light bulb.
This is not what having a human experience is all about. On the contrary! If we are on The Path, we are inviting fear to come - because we are stepping outside our comfort zone! We are inviting our emotions to rise, because we are clearing away all the things that prevent us from feeling them. This is the path of the spiritual warrior - to be courageous enough to FEEL fear and keep going! To not cut themselves off from feeling however they feel - and know that there is nothing wrong with them for feeling a down emotion! This is what it means to be a human being!
It’s a RIDE, man! If all you were was some annoying positive robot - life would suck. Like my mom said last week, “when you numb your pain you numb you joy” - being human, being open, being ALIVE means being ready to experience it all.
And as we do, instead of trying to always “be positive” and beat ourselves up when we don’t achieve that impossible goal, we accept that life is a series of ups and downs - and while it’s true that we can’t always control life, we CAN give what happens an EMPOWERING meaning. And by doing that, we start to take our power back.
And we also begin to see that it is by FACING our fears that we grow. Growth, by definition, means we are constantly expanding beyond our comfort zone. And when we expand beyond our comfort zone - the natural experience is FEAR! This doesn’t make you wrong or un-spiritual, it makes you HUMAN and it’s totally normal!
Can you allow yourself to feel the way you feel without judging it as wrong or un-spiritual? Self-acceptance is the first major step in transformation. Without self-acceptance, no amount of reading TDL or doing therapy or life coaching, or yoga or any other modality will really work. Without self-acceptance, all of those things - including TDL - are just spiritual entertainment.
