You are right on track

In the midst of growth, transformation and discovering more about yourself, times can be turbulent. A lot of fear, anxiety and other emotions can pop up and take over when we take a look under the hood. Old pain, worries, regrets of the past and concerns for the future can surface. The voice of the ego is loud, demanding your attention to keep you hooked on a story that seems to result in nothing but pain, suffering and destruction. In these times, it often feels as though we’ve taken a step backward. As though we’ve failed or haven’t really learned the lessons we thought we had. Or hadn’t really grown and overcome things. We think we’re right back at square one, a failure, probably with no real ability to ever be free of this suffering.

 In fact, growth and evolution are not a straight and narrow path. Understanding the Self is not a linear journey. When we have moments of thinking we’ve gone backwards in our own personal growth, this is untrue. We are fluctuating all the time. Expanding and contracting. And as we become more and more aware, this creates more contrast. There is starker difference between feeling expanded and in flow, and feeling contracted, fearful and anxious (or any other negative emotion). In these times, we must remember that this is not the case, that we simply can see more clearly the emotions, thoughts and feelings that are moving through us. They were there before, ruling us from the dark, but now we’ve begun to turn the lights on in the house, and we can start to see them more.

So, in times when you feel like you’re a failure because you’re going through a difficult period, just know you are on track. You are growing, and you cannot go backwards. Our only job is to let ourselves be with where we are at, and let go, as often as we can remember, of the stories our minds tell us about our current situation. We get present in the body, noticing without judgement the way we are feeling. Then we turn our attention to the world around us and use our senses to ground us back into the only truth that ever exists – the present moment. And each time we lose our place and find ourselves back on thinking, ruminating and worrying, we come back to the now.