Growing Pains

I have been thinking some more about what is often referred to as personal development.  It strikes me that the key to this elusive activity is one's powerlessness over what may be unlocked.  The more work I do on myself, the less well I believe I know me.  I believe that our potential is infinite and that nothing can prepare you for what is possible.

In order for us to evolve, grow and develop, it is necessary to constantly review what we are carrying, in order to assess whether we need or want to continue to take this with us into the next lines and chapters of our autobiographies and, if not, to shed the excess baggage. 

Experience has shown me that we have little, if any, control over the scheduling of growth spurts or the timescales involved; all I know is that it happens at the right time.  Sometimes, we'll be caught by surprised, as the past has a funny habit of catching up with us.  Oftentimes it'll be at the most inopportune and inconvenient of times, when we want nothing less than to have to look inwards - this is, I've found, precisely what we need to do, and do it we must for what we resist, persists.  

Each of us will be familiar with our own self defeating tendencies, and each volume of the endless story will reveal some more about how we ourselves become our own obstacles and stumbling blocks by pushing away that which we experience as unpleasant or aversive, by attempting to escape by whatever means, or by avoiding, denying or suppressing that where we are is perhaps rather uncomfortable.   

Whilst it may well be progress rather than perfection, this journey once embarked upon is a one-way affair.  There's no turning back - a little like a travelator, we are bound to go with the flow.  We can run, walk or crawl; at times we may feel as though the best we can do is to stand still: we'll still get there in the end.  Sometimes, life requires us to board an escalator - the principle's the same, but the incline steeper involving more effort, and requiring us to put the footwork in.  Slow and steady is usually better than jumping two steps at a time, the summit isn't visible so who's to say how long we may be climbing.  

Going on being is probably the biggest challenge, as much of this adventure is uncharted territory.  There is no map.  There are no guidebooks.  We all of us need to find ways to work through, and discover the courage so that when the going gets tough, we keep going. 

Painstaking work this may be, with an abundance of growing pains to accompany the shocking realisation that we are unlikely to ever 'arrive', but the importance of honouring oneself for the brave undertaking should not be forgotten - it is each of us alone that is capable of facilitating the emergence of our own true selves. 



Just as the lotus flower that rises beautiful and serene out of muddy waters
may we develop and grow from the sufferings in our life and bloom to show our true inner beauty