How is your New Year so far?
Personally, this part of the year is always accompanied by a psychic darkness. I feel disoriented about which way is up, and I am constantly questioning each step forward, so much so that sometimes I just stop stepping. I start to feel trapped in a loop, like I’ve been here before. And the truth is, I have. Every year at this time. Rather than panicking or judging, these are the moments when it’s critical do drop down and in, rather than squinting desperately for a glimpse of the horizon.
I write this because I have had many similar conversations in the last few weeks. And I want to remind you that when it gets really dark and you can’t see your path, that’s precisely where you need to be. There is no method, no protocol, no formula that is going to resurrect you. There is nowhere to go when you can’t see.
All healing and growth is circular. Or even more precisely it is like a spiral that feels like a circle. All progress is nonlinear. But it can feel maddeningly repetitive. Every time you loop around and become dismayed because you assume you’re returning to the same place, look more carefully and listen more closely because something is always just a little bit different.
We never ‘fall back down’ to zero, and we’re never starting over. We are always building upon the old, which is why we go back to the old to investigate, inspect, deconstruct, and reinforce.
As you journey on your path, try to overcome the sense that there is a destination. You are, for better or worse, stuck in a spiral. There are no mile-markers. We exist as the cumulative result. The more we learn to sink into this spiral and stop resisting our inherent inner nature, the more fluid life will feel. When new coaching clients ask me for a timeline of deliverables for their process, I laugh, and this is why. They are going to be the most humbled or the most disappointed… with me and by life.
Anyone who tells you there’s a method to your everlasting joy and fulfillment is selling snake oil with the best of intentions. There are good tools. There are wonderful prompts. There are insightful exercises. And these pieces keep you on your labyrinthine path, always meandering around meaning, and getting into ever better relationship with it.
There are principles and universalities. But how those apply to each person is uniquely subjective.
You are not on a progress bar charting from bottom left to top right. Life has a center of gravity, which is beyond your conscious awareness. You are constantly circumnavigating your own development, always reorienting to the central position. Always seeking to shift back to a seat of awareness that does not move, yet the view is constantly changing.
Resistance is futile, some may say deadly.
