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by Aletheia Luna
September 07, 2024
from
LonerWolf Website
In my attempt to try and make peace with the
seismic shift that joyfully destroys all semblance of the old that
is new parenthood, I was recently reading the book
'When
Things Fall Apart' by
Pema Chodron.
This verse struck me - and I managed to capture it in a photo
complete with a magical-looking sunbeam and everything:
"Only to the extent that we expose ourselves
over and over to annihilation can that which is indestructible
be found in us."
Take a moment to re-read that quote again, more
slowly this time.
"Only to the extent that we expose
ourselves over and over to annihilation can that which is
indestructible be found in us."
When I read this sentence, I immediately paused.
It felt like striking gold.
This is at the heart
of the awakening journey, I realized, yet it's so often
glossed over, bypassed, or not even known.
The truth is that awakening is destructive...
Growth is destructive.
Expansion is destructive.
For a muscle to get stronger, its fibers must be damaged and
injured first.
For a chick to hatch from an egg, it must peck free from the
shell that was its original home.
For new stars and planets to form, old galaxies must collide.
For potato chips to be edible, they have to cook at absurdly
high heat.
There's very little discussion in the spiritual
or psychological spheres of the topic of creative destruction.
I think that's because we're scared of the
thought, and it's certainly not marketable or appealing to
capitalism.
But the fact is that on
the awakening path,
we will all face creative destruction
in the form of an existential crisis, a spiritual emergency, a
dark night of the soul, or some
other challenge that shakes the foundations of
our reality sooner or later.
Life falling apart feels like:
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Not knowing the answers anymore
-
Feeling disconnected from yourself and
others
-
Difficulty knowing "who you are" or "what
you want" anymore (aka, 'identity crisis'...)
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Having the sense that you're falling or
the ground has crumbled beneath your feet
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Losing interest in what once excited or
motivated you
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Finding that the things that once
comforted you no longer have that impact
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Feeling lost, aimless, and adrift in life
If you're experiencing any of these feelings or
sensations, I want you to know that,
they're a normal part of the
awakening process...
Pathologizing this experience, in many cases,
only tends to make things worse.
Ruminating on this experience, trying to resist it, or
desperately trying to change it, also tends to add salt to the
wound.
This is a friendly message today to say that awakening is not
only destructive but it is inherently and
fundamentally destructive,
as the old must die before the
new can emerge...!
So relax a little.
Don't take the process so seriously.
Be a curious observer of this experience
knowing that it too will pass.
The only constant, after all, is change...
However, if you simply have that unnerving
feeling that things are falling apart - that your old
strategies of self-protection, your finely tuned self-image, or your
previously straightforward approach to life are no longer working -
know that it's going to be okay...
While it's unpleasant to stand within the fire of transformation, to
watch as the floor collapses beneath you, it is an essential
part of the spiritual wanderer's journey.
There are so many people out there who will
dramatize this experience and use it to fuel a sense of
ego-centered victim mentality
It attracts a lot of likes and followers, you
see...
But in the end, that approach gets us nowhere.
This obsession with dramatizing creative destruction was
incidentally one of the reasons why I was extremely protective of my
mind and what entered it during pregnancy - a notoriously sensitive
time where life often tends to fall apart in one way or another -
and managed to stay relatively calm and healthy throughout as a
result.
So embrace the in-between state of creative destruction.
Poet John Keats called it Negative
Capability, which in a letter from 1818 he defined as:
...when man is capable of being in
uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching
after fact and reason...
Here are a couple of questions you might like to
contemplate right now if you're going through a period of
creative destruction, or things falling apart...:
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