I woke up to an interesting thought this morning. It was brought on by the wisdom I am learning this week and the comments from loving friends who assume that because I am at an Eckhart Tolle retreat, I must be suffering and in pain.
I find this construct very interesting and worthy of open discussion.
Am I in pain? Taking inventory of my current situation, my conclusion is….no, not in this moment. 😎 In fact, not for many months now.
The Deeper Question: Should we assume that a person seeking spiritual growth is suffering and/or in pain?
While it is irrefutable that pain and suffering lead many to seek change, and therefor growth, let’s dig deeper into this assumptive construct to see whether this one-shoe-fits-all statement is accurate or simply, a false belief. After all, an infection can occur from collective thoughts and lead to a virus.
As a practioner, I believe that personal development, as an industry, is split into two buckets. People seeking help to get unstuck and/or to perform better.
Step one, regardless of the modality a person choses, and there are many, personal development always begins with self-awareness.
I came into this year aware that I wanted to incorporate a presence practice into my life so I could perform better in a number of areas of my life.
I specifically wanted to seek a way to access more joy through beingness as opposed to always relying on doingness. That was my primary motivation.
My secondary motivation was to learn countermeasures against a particular trigger that kept resurfacing in my life, causing pain and suffering once or twice a year.
This self-awareness led me to choose a coach and make a year-long commitment to be trained on the philosophies of presence.
Was I in pain when I made this decision?
Perhaps, but not the day, or even the month, leading up to the decision.
As soon as I began my journey into presence though, I did encounter my worst experience yet from the aforementioned trigger.
Why was it my worst one yet? Cause historically they have only caused me acute suffering and pain for about two or three days max. But this one, had legs! It caused me to be stuck for a whooping 75 days. Wowza!
This went on until my dear friend Heather Dee Frankovich led me out of it by helping me unearth a trauma from my early childhood that my trigger powerfully latched on to.
At the time, my presence practice wasn’t far enough along to help me out of it, but looking back on it now, I am 100% confident it would have nipped it in the butt day one had I been more awake to presence.
I was stuck and allowed myself to be traumatized by the potential loss of an identity construct I formulated in my mind as a child, and clung on to for nearly fifty years.
Because I did not yet possess enough understanding of presence and the amazing skill sets that come with a practice, it took a trained world-class professional therapist like Heather to unearth the childhood trauma that I was completely unconscious of until the very moment it reared its destructive head.
I am of the mindset that all things are either dying or growing. Often, the best way to grow is to allow a part of us, a construct of our mind, to die. Personal development can help achieve this.
Conclusion: I do not think we should assume that a person seeking spiritual growth is currently suffering or in pain. However, I do believe that it is likely that when they originally choose to begin their journey, that they were likely seeking a way to awaken an area of their life they desired to be better, thus reducing suffering in that area if their life.
I prefer to cheer on any choice for growth rather than assume, or desire to know the reason for it. But, I also believe that we can learn by authentically sharing.
I am attending Eckhart Tolle as a gift to myself and to deepen my ongoing presence practice. Pain and suffering are the opposite of what I am feeling in the here and now! But, they did play a role in leading me to this special place. 😎
