If there’s a word that people both worry a lot about and hope for, it’s progress.
It’s such a conundrum on the spiritual path as there is and is not progress.
Can you progress closer to the here and now?
No.
You’ll always be here now, and you always have been.
In that regard, it’s a relief to know you can’t fail being here now.
Conversely, the concept of always growing is a misunderstanding that is often intertwined with “progress.” Continual growth is both an unhealthy fixation of Western Society and a self-improvement idea that has melded itself with modern spirituality.
We don’t always want to be growing. That’s what a cancer is. It grows without being checked.
We want harmony and balance.
Whenever you go to your doctor’s appointment and get blood work, you’ll notice that your health is outlined in countless balances. Too high is bad. Too low is bad. There’s a balance that you want to operate within.
There’s a balance in the life around us and in the temperatures in which we can survive in.
All of life is in a balance. We want to surrender to that balance.
As for self-improvement growth, sure, you can get better at your people skills your whole life. That’s another game–sometimes it overlaps with the spiritual path, but they’re not the same.
But being free of attachments, that does have an end, and it requires commitment to realize it.
The Longing for Your Self
The interest in realizing who you truly are must be strong. It must be strong if you are going to overcome your resistance, ego blindness, and attachments.
It is so easy to fall back into who we think we are.
It is so easy to come to the same “logical” conclusions that we always have.
Lost in Logic: Breaking Out of Old Mental Constructs
Except that they aren’t logical. They are just familiar.
This is a really humbling thing. For many of us, we find out that we are wrong about ourselves, other people, political views, lifestyle choices, and life in general.
Ouch!
Most people can’t take the humbling.
They crawl back to re-justifying whatever it is that they want to believe.
To use terminology from the icon “The Matrix” movie, most people take the blue pill. They take it all the time.
The Matrix and the Initial Awakening
What’s worse is that taking the metaphorical red pill–longing for the truth–is a process that will have to be repeated. It’s not a one-time deal.
Doing so requires commitment.
Committing to Spirituality in the Right Way
Our modern culture struggles with concepts of right and wrong. They get confused with personally being good or bad.
Let’s try correct and incorrect instead.
I understand that this is a culture that has done a lot of shaming of people for being wrong, and now that is a trigger word. Which has led many on the spiritual path to try to hide out in beliefs that there is no right or wrong. That’s both right and wrong.
You’re not bad for making mistakes.
You’re human.
However, if we can’t admit that we’re wrong/incorrect/misunderstanding or whatever, then we can’t grow–that other buzzword that I mentioned earlier.
Honestly, people are so twisted up and confused, it’s a wonder that anyone stumbles out of their own internal matrix. These spiritual awakenings are a little bit of a miracle.
We need to commit correctly, and the correct way to committing is about knowing ourselves.
It’s about watching our thoughts and asking ourselves:
“Where did this thought come from?”
It’s about watching our emotions and asking:
“Where did this feeling coming from?”
A lot of people miss that second part, but feelings and the subconscious ego are by far the bigger piece of the puzzle. Since we feel more enmeshed with our emotions, we like to believe them more, but most of our emotions are chosen by the subconscious ego and/or a sign of biological balance or imbalance.
When we commit to knowing ourselves, we figure out the differences.
Your Commitment Brings True Growth/Loss
This is a path of losing.
We lose attachments.
The loss of attachments opens our ability to truly grow–to grow in ways that we might not have imagined were even possible before.
It’s an experience you have to have to know what it means.
The great thing about it is that it doesn’t require belief.
A lot of people try to fool themselves into thinking they’re growing, but they repeat the same patterns endlessly. We have to be honest with ourselves about what we’re doing, or we will repeat our ego patterns.
Self-honesty and Unmasking Delusion
Without honesty, we’re lost.
With honesty and honest commitment, we see who we think we are and how we’re stuck in patterns. We find the way out by watching from awareness and getting external support when we need it.
The internal walls and barriers come down, and now we are free to explore!
Feeling Renewed in Your Creative Process
Building Your Commitment Capacity
I know that some of you struggle with commitment.
Only you can build it, however.
And you can.
You can choose to commit to the spiritual work that helps you to see your daily practice of being your ego self.
Yes.
The ego is a daily practice. We constantly practice thinking, feeling, and sensing in the same ways every day.
That is why committing to watching ourselves is so powerful.
The watcher doesn’t practice the ego.
Being in awareness draws your attention out of being an ego, and it lets it rest in watching. Without this continued interest, your ego will get fussy. It’ll get angry and grindy, but then it breaks down. More of your attachments and beliefs are seen. You have to choose to let them go, and you can.
Each time you let go, you see more of the freedom that is here. You find more commitment because to realize that you are free is extraordinary.
To realize that you are free opens your eyes to possibility.
In possibility, you can explore what it means to truly live!
Free to Truly Live Your Best Life
7 Signs of Spiritual Progress (and 6 Signs that Are Not Progress)