I sometimes look back wistfully at all the ways I unconsciously tried to get out of myself. The paradox of spiritual awakening is that you don’t know you don’t know until all of a sudden: you Know. Then there is an unmistakable inner sense of “how could I not have known?”
I was a master of escape. An absolute Houdini of how to unplug. Addiction, story telling, mind-emotional identifying, pretense, defense, projection, and even schools of spirituality were ways I used to get out of the unworthiness and self aversion that comprised my emotional signature. There were temporary respites for sure. Yet the ways I tried to escape my inner discomfort were themselves both disquieting and uncomfortable. Isn’t that silly? The longer I used a particular escape route the more uncomfortable it became. Until one day I awakened to the realization that discomfort was never the enemy I thought it was. It was clear and unmistakable guidance. It was pointing to what I needed to look at, yet I kept choosing to look the other way. My pain was a messenger with a very important message. Yet I would shoot the messenger and then wonder why I never got the guidance I was so urgently seeking. I was dogged in my perception that when I became more spiritual the discomfort would go away. Once I fixed what was wrong with me I would be happy and the pain would be a distant memory. So another escape I would attempt, only to land right back in the discomfort that met me at every turn.
When I gave up my addiction to comfort and the demand that life happen in the way I wanted, something quite wondrous began to be revealed. Discomfort is a dynamic that shepherds us back toward our True Self. Discomfort is essential to the awakening process. When I began to inscape rather than escape, insights and internal aha’s were all around me. Of course they were all around me because they were being generated from within my own field of awareness. When I became friendly with the discomfort it became friendly with me. I came to know deeply and experientially that it was in service of something greater than my current story line or drama. I was feeling uncomfortable because I was temporarily out of alignment with my Souls greater purpose. It is a fool proof GPS. It is just as essential and valid as is inner peace. But when I chose to deaden the discomfort I killed the message I so needed to receive. A Spiritual being in the realm of physicality will always experience discomfort. It is a dynamic that helps us navigate through this land of duality and seeming separation. It is necessary and essential, and I have come to celebrate it. I don’t identify with it, or believe that I am in some way the message. I simply breathe into it, allow it to be what it is, and allow it to steer me back into my Souls agenda. When the message is welcomed and received, the discomfort subsides. Lesson learned. And the new containment of the pain and discomfort is a sense of inner peace even while there is pain.
Our suffering is a direct result of our resistance to pain and discomfort. The alleviation of our suffering comes as we open to the messages our discomfort is bringing, and to gratefully allow it to lead us to the awareness that we are being led to experience. There is truly nothing to escape. And by “inscaping” we come to directly know the Intelligence that is always within us and always moving us toward our Highest good. Whatever we can’t be with will never let us be. That I can promise you. I know from a lot of personal experimentation.
Say yes to all that arises and follow the messages that are constantly being energetically revealed. The dynamic of discomfort is leading you to a broader perspective and a clearer reality. Listen. Feel. Let be. Trust in the dynamic. Then you will finally know that you know that you know, and the power of non-resistance will be your greatest gift.
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