On your path of personal growth, have you ever felt like you were being boiled alive? I mean, COME ON. They don’t call it the road less traveled for nothing. Walking the path of personal growth is not easy. That’s why most people don’t even start. And those of us who do can still sometimes find ourselves having fallen off in the ditch. It takes work and effort to really transform your life. Sure, there are so many awesome moments where the magic happens and you are present and the sun is shining and all is right and well with the Universe. But, because the nature of life is ever changing, a few seconds later we can find ourselves in rainstorm of self-doubt and we have to pull ourselves out of the ditch again.I was at yoga class this week with one of my favorite kundalini teachers. He is an incredible human being who has been teaching yoga for several decades. He has the long white beard and the turban and everything. Every word that flows from his mouth is like a pearl of wisdom that all of students try to soak up as carefully as we can.As class was packing up, I overhead two of my fellow students talking about the teacher and how the only word to describe him was “light.” The other student agreed and said that the teacher had “boiled” away everything else. Boiled. Now, I’ve heard the phrase “peel away the layers of the onion” but BOILED?Of course, he’s right. Walking the path of personal growth can be painful. Because we are choosing to consciously heal ourselves. You can’t heal a wound with addressing it. And that can hurt. It can trigger all manner of negative emotions inside of us. It gets all up in our shadow side: guilt, shame, fear, doubt.It can make us start to think that maybe the ditch isn’t such a bad place to be after all. I mean, at least we are out of harm’s way, right? Ha – it’s just like in the Matrix! Sometimes we wish we’d taken the blue pill! But we didn’t. Because we are meant for more. We are meant to be awake and alive and experience all of life. Even the parts we might think of as painful. And because once we’ve made the conscious choice to take the red pill, there’s really no going back.So, just trying to think of your own boiling water as a hot tub. Try to relax and trust the process. You are always exactly where you are supposed to be. Just emember that this, too – whether good or bad – shall pass.Journal Prompts:
- When have you experienced pain from personal growth?
- When do you feel like you are “in the ditch?”
- What would it feel like to relax and trust the process?