You cannot stay where you are, and change

I didn't care what she was saying, and that was an unexpected sign of my personal growth.

I was chatting with a woman about transformation, change, new choices. She was telling me why she was in emotional pain - not able to make her dreams happen - and she was starting  her sentences in the ways I had started sentences so many times in my own past:

​"I want to try that new career path, but I don't think I'm good enough."
"I'd like to stop caring what others think, but I can't..."

"I really want to be courageous, but I don't know how!"

All of those "buts" suddenly sounded like hiding places, ways to wait just one. more. day/week/year/decade/lifetime before taking a desired step.

What struck me hardest was that I suddenly didn't care about her excuses! After a lifetime I had spent commiserating with myself and with my friends about how ill equipped we were to be as badass as we wanted to be - how unable we were to take our courage in our two hands and just go for it - I was suddenly, unexpectedly cold. I felt no sympathetic response to her weakness. I felt, instead, a desire to pull her the hell OUT of that weakness instead of support her in her self-pity!

In her voice I heard only a tone of defeat.. In her energy all I felt was the deadness of the energy. And I knew for the first time that that was my cue not to commiserate but to somehow let her excuses fall to the ground, unattended, and to help her step forward - NOW - into the opposite action!

From "can't", to "I'm doing it". Ohmygod, the transformations I've seen from that approach; the transformations I would never have seen if I were still commiserating and saying only, "poor you for being so bound up!"

Because the fact is, none of us can afford the commiserating kind of compassion when it comes to our limiting ourselves unnecessarily. When we need time to grow in different ways, or heal from something before moving, or prepare for that new action, fine. But when we start setting up tents in our misery, watch out.

We don't need what the Buddhists call "idiot compassion" then. What we need is ACTIVE COMPASSION. The compassion to say, "I do not buy into your identity as a weak person AT YOUR CORE. I do not believe that you are incapable." 

And then we need a way to move into ACTION, into a SHIFT in consciousness, a shift in choice, a sense of urgency or a sense of "fuggit!" regarding that long-awaited action. And then we have to DO it, TRY it, and see what happens!

Truth is, we don't actually die from the attempt, even if we fail spectacularly. 

I have started to appreciate the Hindu goddess Kali, who is the destroyer. Kali is one scary goddess! You only take on Kali as your spiritual Mother if you are sick and tired of your own excuses and you're ready to be that person you have been suspecting that you are, knowing you are, and yet not BEING!

Kali is a major challenger of your bullshit, because Kali is about the destruction of the parts of you that want to destroy you. Not a bad deal, when you really consider it, but it does mean that you're going to have to see, and challenge, your own bullshit, and you're going to have to become comfortable with - and even galvanized, eventually - by that process!

Kali's kind of destruction is not about the antithesis to Life. It is the moving aside of the brush so that your true self can rise up and DANCE! it's about destroying the stair step that the frightened animal of us crouches upon, afraid to move up or down; with the destruction of that step, animal has to not just move, but JUMP!  WE have to JUMP!

Jump to something important. Something different. Something TRANSFORMATIONAL. Something absolutely LIGHT-FILLED, and the true expression of our selves!

Settling for mediocrity or simple security can not be tolerated here.  Here, you have to find - and then live - a reason to be so in passionate love with who you could be...that you say an enormous YES to your unknowns. One at a time. And discover what it is to feel truly free.

You cannot stay who or where you are, and change.

​Time to make a choice.

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