You know, I write a lot about the challenges of spiritual awakening and the spiritual path in general, but I don’t want you to get the idea that this is a hard thing. Far from it. It actually is a lot harder to stay in the inertia and momentum of the life that doesn’t serve you because you are always internally split. Your true self wants to go one way, and your socially-trained ego-self is trying to do what it thinks it’s supposed to do. There is no personal power in this place, which is why useless social benchmarks for success get made. It’s a way to congratulate the ego-self for playing the game that does not serve it and to try and hide the fact that you are failing badly to be you. Those benchmarks are lots of money, fancy houses, fancy clothes, trophies, big weddings, and so forth. You already know all of this too. I’m just being a mirror to reflect this fact so that you will consciously choose sacred destruction.
Letting Go of All that Does Not Serve
Sacred destruction sounds really dramatic, and at times, it can certainly seem that way. When we’re still very much stuck in the ego-self, losing our jobs, spouses, close friends, eating habits, and more seems horribly upsetting. The ego-self feels like it’s being ripped apart, and in truth, it is. The more identified you are with the ego-self, the more you will feel absolutely destroyed by the spiritual path. You’ll wonder why you ever took to this road, and you’ll regularly consider and possibly try to go back. But this path is not destroying you, and for those in awakening where all this is happening seemingly with no impetus at all from you, you may have been getting inklings from time to time of just how beautiful life is when you are no longer trying to be something that you are not. Maybe they last for a few moments; maybe they last for a few days. They last until something grabs hold again, and down you go back into the trauma of the ego-self that’s been destroyed.
Finding Peace in the Destruction
Now, I’m not going to say that I was at peace with everything being blown up in my life. But I will say that I took a very active role in the demolition. I always knew that there was this spiritual thing that I was trying to get to. I spent a good deal of life with my foot on the gas pedal barrelling through all the major milestones. It was like a part of me felt like it had to get through all these other things to get to what it really needed to do. So when the wheels of the spiritual path started to turn, I was out the door, and while I won’t say I haven’t glanced over my shoulder once or twice, I will say that there’s nothing back there for me to go to. I have found so much within me and found so much peace in letting go that it becomes easier and easier to simply let go of ideas, things, and relationships because nothing is ever lost. Nothing real is ever destroyed; it is only changed into something else. So, you see, you’re going to have to learn to become at peace with the truth that all things and forms are ever-changing.
The Perpetual Question of How on the Spiritual Path
Of course, many of you are like, “How? How do I come to peace with losing my life partner? How do I pay bills when I can’t work at this awful job anymore? How? How? HOW!!!!!” Sometimes the emails I get are especially like that last exclamatory “how.” It really isn’t a question, but a tantrum. And that’s not bad, but let me offer a few words to help soothe you.
Let’s start with this: “You already have all your answers.” Go within to find your “how’s.” I cannot give them to you. I can only encourage you with the fact that all changes are transitory, and that everything is proceeding exactly as it should if you are engaging yourself with love, kindness, faith, and courage.
Let’s follow-up with this: “Life is not without discomfort and will never fit an image of perfection and luxury that’s in your head.”
Then consider this: “Just let go.” Don’t make this into more of a process than it needs to be. Spiritual awakening and the spiritual path aren’t goals. They are invitations to go within, find out who you really are, and then move in the world from that place of stillness. Everything that doesn’t align with your beautiful “I Am”–that deep space of being–must go. And that’s where you will have to go to begin to find peace with the ensuing destruction.
Quietly Rebuilding and Renovating
And yet, in the midst of watching your best friend of 14 years no longer be your best friend, you do need to do your part in co-creating space for the true you. If you don’t spend time to know who you are while things are burning, then you may find yourself truly lost. But you’re not that lost about what is important to you. You know the real things: love and service. You know in your heart what real love feels like, so begin to follow those threads towards the things that offer love to you and ways you can offer service and love to others. It won’t be perfect; it never is. You will find things that aren’t right for you, but you’ll learn from them. You’ll go through a lot of trial and error as you begin to form a new foundation in your life. This foundation has to be built on real things like love, or the structure of your life will most likely collapse again. For some of you, there truly is no choice anymore, and the faith part of all this is to know that as you build in integrity, all the tools and equipment and relationships will come to help you rebuild.
Why Sacred Destruction Is So Very Necessary?
For most of you, your foundation is full of lies. It’s like having rotting, termite-filled wood for support beams in your house. Would you really feel comfortable living in that house? Time to tear it down before it falls down on top of you. Tear down these ideas that you need to be culturally beautiful or handsome in this world. How ever your body is is perfect. But in coming to that realization, you may also realize how you haven’t treated your body in integrity. You may be tearing down old eating habits that have put too much weight and strain on your body. You may be tearing out work-out regimes which also have put too much strain on your body to achieve and maintain a body image. Can you not see how many things need to be lovingly and wisely destroyed in your life? All of these things are a cage, and you are so very trapped so long as you try to live by them. This blog is just a sledgehammer. You can pick it up and use it to help you break out of your jail cell or not, but it is here for you as are many of us awakened beings on this planet. You are not alone.
The Thoughts and Trauma Subside
But in many ways, the central thing in destruction is letting go. It’s kind of like my Sandcastle blog post. You come to realize that the waves of life will come to wash away whatever you build anyway. So you just start to let go. You let go of all the things that you can’t control, and suddenly you may have way more energy available for the things that you do influence and that badly need your attention. There is so much neglect and ignorance in this world. We are so ignorant about many, many things that go on in our world because we’ve been living in this traumatic little ego tunnel vision. It’s time to broaden our perspectives, and as you let go, you’ll find that the trauma of watching your world crumble subsides. You will see that there was never any way that you were going to be able to keep it. You start to understand that all things are change, and that’s okay. And you truly understand that through it all, you are taken care of and loved.
