It seems the older I get the more questions I have around just about everything, and perhaps that’s a good thing.
When I was 25, I held the confidence of a psychopath and believed I knew everything. It’s incredible how wrong a person can be.
Trading Head Knowledge for Heart Wisdom
With that said, feel free to take everything that follows with a grain of salt. At this point in my life, it seems just as likely that both everything and nothing are simultaneously real and not real.
The last ten years have been an uncomfortable and incredibly meaningful dismantling of everything I thought I knew in my head at 25. I’ve exchanged intellectual guessing-as-knowing for a deeper, more experiential knowledge which continues to grow in my belly, heart, and soul.
With each opportunity I take to feel into the world rather than think it, a kind of resonance and intuitive guidance emerges. Perhaps it’s not always factual in its nature, but directionally and emotionally, it’s absolutely on point.
Life Lessons Learned the Hard Way About Spiritual Practice
Spiritual practices which don’t include feeling your feelings have proven, in my life, to be missing a great deal of growth potential. And any practice which doesn’t include asking for help from something greater than yourself appears to have a ceiling on it.
Most spiritual practices are convenient addictions which allow people to feel like they’re progressing without having to do any of the uncomfortable shadow work.
On People and Reality
Conservatives and Liberals and everyone else are all right and wrong and confused and hopeful. There’s an opportunity for us to recognize that even the worst of people are relationally rendered in our personal universe as a catalyst to teach us something, and the lesson is a personal one.
Everyone deserves a path to redemption. Making anyone else wrong is ignorance on your part. The person in front of you is always there to teach you something about yourself.
Reality is relational to you. It’s never something out there which needs solving. It’s something in you which wants to be expressed.
On Authenticity
It’s incredibly difficult to be authentically you, but incredibly satisfying when you discover that real person showing up in your life more often than not. The difficulty results from the feeling that others won’t like or understand the true me, but that’s a phase which passes.
Everyone has some piece of wisdom which you need. Rather than digging in on your position to make someone else wrong, there’s value in trying to find the nugget of truth they have to give you, even when they don’t know they have it to offer.
On How Reality Works
Reality is more informational than physical and your brain only has the capacity to interpret a small, finite number of data points. What you think the world is is only a fraction of what’s actually there. As you shift your feelings, thoughts, and beliefs, you’ll literally perceive a new world.
You bear some responsibility for everything which happens and which you perceive in your life. Everything. Feel into that.
All life events are attempting to get you to feel and release some trapped emotional energy within your body, spirit, and soul.
On Growth
Addictions and allergies can be addressed by dealing with trapped emotions, as can most things that seem purely physical.
If everyone agrees with you, you’re probably not being as visionary as you think you are. Opposition can be incredibly valuable in helping you fine-tune your ability to hold space for the life you desire, but you have to learn to feel the opposition rather than reacting to it.
Pets always take on the emotional energy and persona of their owner. Whatever your pet is doing that bothers you is a mirror for a latent emotion deep within you.
Final Thoughts
Music is one of the best forms of alchemy available with the least barrier to entry. Music is a transmission which speaks directly to the soul.
Most of your exhaustion comes from pretending to be someone you’re not, and resisting some future event which may or may not materialize. Releasing that resistance is liberating.
If people don’t think you’re crazy, there’s an opportunity to dream bigger.
In ten years, if you’re doing it right, your future self should see your present-day self the way a college student looking back sees their kindergarten self: blissfully ignorant but eager to learn.
I may be wrong about all of this.
These are life lessons learned through shadow work.
If you’re ready to do the uncomfortable work, explore the Shadow Work practices.