True Expansion
moving beyond critical care
I’ve been contemplating somethings that I read recently. They are not new ideas to me but ones I seem to need reminding of again and again (as many of us do) even as I share the same wisdom with my clients. I was reading about a particular treatment in Chinese Medicine. It doesn’t mater what it treats or the type of treatment so much as the advice the doctor gave - which was to continue treatment for at least three weeks after the last symptom.
Additionally I was reading about Neptune in Steven Forrest’s book on the subject and he was speaking about what most would consider “challenging aspects”.
“‘Hard’ and ‘bad’ only mean the same thing to lazy people. We have all done hard things that were good for us. We have all even done hard thing that we enjoyed doing. Why would anyone explore the arctic? Why would anyone read James Joyce’s Ulysses? Why would anyone learn how to play the piano? The pivotal concept here is not some pop psychological shibboleth about avoiding ‘judgemental words’ like good and bad. It is that when two planets are in aspect, the reality is always simply that they are trying to work together. They are trying to integrate their energies. If it’s a so-called ‘bad aspect’ that joins them - typically a square or an opposition - that integration is more difficult. If it’s a trine or a sextile - ‘easy’ aspects - it is indeed easier, but there is a danger of a certain laziness in them. Easy aspects don’t hurt us - and hurt can get us going. Easy aspects can therefore be unmotivated.”
It got me thinking more about the ways in which we try to avoid suffering and the ways in which we are motivated by our suffering.
We typically lean more into our practices when we are experiencing discomfort. I’ve seen this clearly in myself this year as I have faced challenging health transits + lessons from Saturn. I’ve doubled down in a big way on taking care of my body, mind + emotional body out of necessity. Most likely, as many of us do, as my discomfort lessens, my commitment to some of the tools and practices would also diminish. This may partly be due to life shifting and there being less time to do so but also because the dis-ease is much quieter and more manageable.
We can extrapolate this to address many topics whether this is exercising more when we are feeling anxious, doing more meditation when our depression is at a high, using EFT to shift our mindset when we are stuck in scarcity, the list goes on and on. When we are contracted in any area of our life where it is creating stagnancy, lack, or suffering we are going to be more motivated to utilize the tools available to us, and as soon as we feel even a little bit of relief we often stop doing what was helping. We are no longer as motivated. And in pulling back from the practices that were pulling us out of the muck, we lose out on reaching new levels. We get ourselves back to a manageable baseline which in most cases still includes some level of dis-ease, disharmony or dissatisfaction but it’s not as loud. We made a little bit of space, though not enough that the pendulum won’t swing again to extremes when a life event or change fills that space back up and we are again in overwhelm in some capacity. Many operate at a tipping point, so full up with mental noise, toxins, disregulation in our nervous system, stressors, emotional default settings, unprocessed trauma… on the regular, that the smallest things can seem upending but really it’s just the thing that tipped the scales again.
It’s not about beating up on ourselves when we fall off the proverbial self care/awareness wagon or when we eat something ‘bad’, do something that doesn't serve our highest good, skip a workout or meditation, get stuck in a low thought loop or wallow for a time, etc… It is also not about pushing ourselves too hard, forcing ourselves forward past our limits and into more pain and stress. But it is about the cumulative and consistent actions that we take. The real work is committing to our expansion every single day. To not just doing the work when we are so uncomfortable that we have to, but making space again and again so we have more capacity for life. To find our motivation from inside, from reaching for new levels + greater aliveness, rather than simply triaging. To choose continually regenerating expansion over contraction over and over. To go beyond the symptoms + suffering with our LOVING commitment. This is how we truly make space. This is how we level up in big ways. This is how we avoid the pendulum swings and intolerable tipped scales. This is how we make quantum leaps.
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