The Paradox of Being Alive

The Ever Unfolding Unknown Wants You To Awaken, Not Suffer.

Inside our deepest being is a drive to evolve, heal, and change. Our greatest need as human beings is to rediscover the truth of who we are and share it with others. This drive unfolds constantly through every single experience we are exposed to. Over and over again we are asked to wake up. Over and over again we choose to stay asleep. Life will not stop asking us to transform but at some point we stop listening to the call.

We put a lot of effort into preventing our own awakening. We hide our truest self to such a degree that we forget. Who we truly are is something we bury away from the self we have decided to be. We keep ourselves shut down to feel safe. We sustain life in the comfort and discomfort that this shut down creates. We endure our own reality while desperately making sure that a part of us remains inert to the force of change. We choose to suffer to keep ourselves in the comfort of who we believe ourselves to be.

I am speaking today to the part of you that is absolutely terrified of coming alive. I am referring to the place inside you that you have buried deep because you believe it is unacceptable to let it out. You have been conditioned to hold a part of yourself back. Until you choose to bring this part of yourself forward, you will experience life as suffering.

Inside you is a paradox - a compulsion to hide coupled with a deep need to shine.  

We all have parameters by which we live. We have comfort zones of what we are able to digest and metabolize. We like to keep our life within these set boundaries. The force that exists to push us out of our box and into awakening is the future - the ever unfolding unknown. This force can be positive, if we are capable of allowing them to be so. If we cannot allow it to be positive, it has to be negative. This force can be quiet in its request, nudging us into awakening slowly. When we ignore it, it has no choice but to get loud. The choice is ultimately ours but we tend to not want to take credit for our own bad decisions. A lot of times when we experience something unwanted we create a story around it to avoid awakening.

The universe wants awakened people living vibrant lives. It is humans that fight this reality and create their own suffering.

Divine Sabotage

Photo Credit: Joseph Rothstein

Take a moment to process what you feel around the words Divine Sabotage. What gets activated inside you? I chose these words to give you a chance to feel into your relationship to authority. Do you believe that there is a force in the universe that wants you to suffer? Do you believe that you deserve it? Do you expect punishment to come from a higher power?

There is a force in the universe that wants us all to awaken into our light.

When we cannot metabolize that awakening in a positive way, it shows up as a negative experience. It shows up to prove the part of us that wants to remain hidden that it should be hidden. It shows up to prove to the part of us that wants to suffer to allow it to believe that suffering is inevitable. At the same time, it shows up to give us a chance to challenge a limiting belief, to change, to awaken, and to grow. How we interact with negative interventions that are bigger than us is ultimately in our control.

We have a choice of whether we suffer or surrender. We have a choice of whether we accept or fight. Ultimately all forces in the universe are forces that bring us to light. This word, light, means embracing trust, surrender, acceptance, and connection. Only when we become light do we arrive in our embodied positive emotions of joy, grace, happiness, and bliss.

There is a place inside us that believes that authority is out to correct, grade, and punish us. This place gets activated when we experience something greater than us or out of our control. It also gets activated when we believe suffering is inevitable.

The part of us that believes it needs to stay small and hidden reacts. It tells this part of ourselves that the world does not want us to be fully alive. Consciously challenging this belief that we are intrinsically flawed and deserve to be punished is the first step to experience Divine Sabotage as something other than negative.

Self Sabotage

Photo Credit: Joseph Rothstein

To stay in control and prevent Divine Sabotage, some of us consciously, others unconsciously, and others compulsively engage in Self Sabotage. There is a part of us that needs to control our negative experiences. This can be especially true when things start to go our way and we are feeling like we might want to come out hiding. Self Sabotage rears it’s head to once again prove that feeling too good is dangerous.

What we do to self sabotage varies. Some of us create a situation where failure is guaranteed. Some of us engage in harming activities to make sure we can consistently shame ourselves or feel guilty about our choices.

Sneaking, lying, manipulating, being secretive, and trying to get away with something are signs that we are feeling the need to self sabotage.

Sometimes we might even try to do something positive for ourselves in a way that is guaranteed to fail. In Self Sabotage it is easy to get lost in the self and forget to trust the outside world. Other people are dangerous to us and we need to prove that by engaging in a shame and guilt cycle. This is the way we know we are unacceptable and therefore need to stay small. This cycle reinforces the pattern without getting bothered by trying something new.

Self sabotage has an energy to it that can be stubborn, evasive, compulsive, obsessive, manipulative and insistent. The importance of staying shut down and turned off to our true self is happening whenever our personal preferences toward sabotage are verified. In cases where we try for something new and fail, the words that come to us in the failure show us that we were expecting sabotage. When we stay in our familiar patterns, the thoughts of self sabotage are soothing and habitual. The negative mind makes itself clear in self sabotage when the sabotage occurs. This is where we hear the thoughts we expect.

Always BEAWARE of black and white thinking.

Self sabotage is not necessarily obvious. It can be as sneaky as it can be stubborn. One way it shows up is in extreme thinking. Extreme thinking guarantees disappointment and failure. Whether we want something to be perfect or we expect ourselves to be held to an ideal, we are ultimately seeking a reason to go back into hiding. We come up with needs that cannot be fulfilled to prove that the need itself has to remain unmet. We allow a suppressed emotion to arise within us in a way that makes us have to shut it back down. We go fast when we need to slow down.

All of this proves that we ultimately cannot be who we want to be.

Losing Control As A Path To Awakening

To break a cycle first requires acknowledging the cycle exists. In reference to forming a positive relationship to the ever unfolding unknown, this is a two fold process. First, you need to get familiar with your own inability to trust the force of the ever unfolding unknown. Admitting that life is inevitably going to unfold without our control and learning how to let go into it starts by figure out how you resist being out of control.

Knowing where you get scared to live big or connect deeper is a good place to look. You can also look and see what patterns you have around failure and how you interact with that failure. Where inside yourself do you feel like you deserve to be punished? What about yourself expects rejection? What actions make you feel shame or guilt? The answers are the beginning. With answers come the question of why there is a need inside you to resist the way the world works. Why can’t you surrender? What is preventing you from trust?

The second aspect of losing control relates to understanding what we are capable of. Exploring who we think we have to be and admitting how we sabotage ourselves to avoid anything new from happening allows us to be present with our own shadow of resistance.

We can’t address external loss of control without surrendering to an internal need to lose control. Internal control reins in uncomfortable emotions, unthinkable thoughts, and rejected ways of acting.

Inside all of us is a latent toddler wanting to have the biggest temper tantrum ever seen. The toddler needs to be unleashed for us to learn how to trust our own inner impulses. Otherwise the toddler will continue to sabotage our awakening.

Inside our comfort zone is a place we feel we NEED to be. The desire to leave the comfort zone  with control brings us back to the comfort zone. The only way out of the cycle is to lean into being out of control. What is your reaction to being out of control? How do you maintain control? And how do you find release in sabotage?

There is more space for the hidden parts of ourselves to come alive in out of control spaces.

When we allow the out of control feelings to be expressed without humiliation or punishment, we are beginning to acknowledge that we can let go. We show ourselves that we belong when we notice that we are not being rejected in our self expression. We challenge our images about who we are when we notice that we can be accepted. Accepting shame and guilt as allies and friends is a step towards moving out of self sabotage cycles.

You can always view negative emotions as a sign that you are being called to express your true self. The same is true with the negative situations you find yourself in. Life is always teaching you to awaken, not to die. Somehow there is a universal lesson plan designed just for you - if you can remember to look for it.

When you can avoid tensing up against negative experiences and let them wave through you, you are creating a potential to deepen into yourself. Inside every experience is the possibility of a positive experience. Inside every negative emotion is a softer positive emotion. It takes work to get there. When you embrace a sense of being out of control with surrender, the negativity loses power. You need to be pushed out of yourself to find yourself. Sabotage is the door way in. Acceptance and surrender are the doorway out of the box of your own familiarity.

Surrendering to the true self is our biggest challenge and our greatest gift. The world needs us to be true to our selves. Together we weave our true selves into a warp that heals, shines, and loves. By surrendering to the awakening force in life, we can embrace moments of out of control with a new question:

How Can I Feel More Alive In This Moment?