Growth is layered like an onion, like an onion it can also bring you tears when you’re in the midst of peeling back the layers. Getting through the various layers of growth is not an easy process and each layer can have it’s own unique set of characteristics and teachings that may be unfamiliar to us. As I go through the various layers of my Soul Journey I am starting to appreciate the complex set of features and teachings that it presents to me. It’s clear to me that the journey doesn’t have a destination of sort, rather pit stops where you can momentarily pause and re-assess. If you confuse this as the ‘destination’ then you will be disappointed, as inevitably life will present to you more challenges and teachings, some of which you thought you had mastered already.
Sometimes it can feel like a cruel spell of amnesia, finding yourself back at square one, a place where you worked so hard to get yourself out of. I personally find this frustrating because I take this repetition as a sign of failure and regression. When I pay attention to these thoughts, I can see that my frustration is the inner critic that has been taught to me. The expectation that I have to perfectly complete things, perfectly learn them and perfectly move on. But there is no such thing as perfect!
Whilst it’s great that I’ve now become aware of this, it’s really difficult stopping my sub-conscious mind from repeating the same patterns. When I don’t meet my own unrealistic standards in various settings, my natural learned reaction is to pick at myself for all the ways that I didn’t do things right. I tend to beat myself up and take things personally. I also take full responsibility irrespective of the context, this is a harmful and unhelpful way of viewing myself and others. When you take full responsibility of an interaction, a relationship, an outcome or a decision you’re failing to recognise that you’re stripping others of their power and you’re also viewing opportunities for gaining wisdom as a measure of failure. What’s more, you view the world as something that you can control and that you are solely responsible for.
There is a difference between consciously recognising that you can do things differently vs repeatedly putting yourself down for the way that you are in the world. There needs to be a healthy boundary and separation between ones behaviours vs who they are. We all make mistakes and get things wrong, but these mistakes aren’t who we are. I need to go back into the layer where I try to befriend myself and treat myself with empathy, patience, understanding, love and compassion. Baby steps are sufficient, with curiousity and observation acting as my compass on this path.
Love Always,
M
Souloom™ 