What’s Your Initiation into the Unknown?
One of the many questions to explore as you venture into the unknown is who holds our power. When we keep fighting for everything, we acknowledge someone else holds the key to our life. When we argue in a never-ending need to win and be right, we miss the opportunity to engage in a healthy dialogue that connects us to new possibilities—especially within ourselves.
Why have we been conditioned to trust others before fully trusting ourselves? Why do so many simply want to be seen, validated, and recognized as winners and superheroes? In the end, who wins what?
More division is simply a neat separation into labels and categories, which usually infuses a need to fight for our lives for our very survival. When we keep taking sides as warriors in a battle or conflict, we’re not creating—we are simply stuck fighting within the walls of an existing paradigm or system where we know exactly what happens to the winners and the losers, and where the oppressed most likely become the oppressors.
Mystic philosopher, Sri Aurobindo, has said, “Watch the too indignantly righteous. Before long you will find them committing or condoning the very offense which they have so fiercely censured.” This is not only our current reality but the television shows and films we invite into our lives as entertainment. We replay these stories over and over, seeking the justice and freedom we hold inside ourselves, waiting for permission to be free by some invisible authority figure who holds power over us.
The Future is Calling Us: Are We Ready to Listen?
It has been honorable to fight and be right until this point in our own history. But instead of correcting the injustices of our past, our future is calling us to create healthy foundations that don’t always require us to battle throughout our time here. We need to apply our abundant human intelligence to discern between what is working and what is dying within us.
In her life-changing book, Little Fires Everywhere, Celeste Ng shares, “Sometimes you need to scorch everything to the ground and start over. After the burning, the soil is richer, and new things can grow. People are like that, too. They start over. They find a way.”
When we’re stuck in a maze, we’re in a structure looking for the way out. We may be facing two options, two sides, two choices within the maze—but what if there were additional options that we can’t even imagine or see? How could we when everything around us has already been set in stone?
Paulo Coelho reminds us that, “I can choose either to be a victim of the world or an adventurer in search of treasure. It’s all a question of how I view my life.”
There’s a great deal of unlearning for each of us to discover for ourselves. No one can do this work for us. It’s about accepting responsibility and facing ourselves. We can’t continue the cycles of blame. Whatever got us here doesn’t need to be a force of self-destruction or stagnation in life.
While terrible things may have happened to us, we can transform them into an opportunity to break cycles. But when we take no responsibility and blame the government, our parents, our partner, or even our ancestors for everything, we have given up on the future.
There’s Another Way
There are many heart-centered people who can help us, but the first step is to have a desire to be the architect of our own precious life. It’s up to you and the choices you make in this moment. Many of us are realizing that things are not always as they seem, and those who are fearful of trekking into the unknown try to shame and silence us for doing so.
Can you imagine living in a world with powerful, conscious architects and creators who, instead of dissecting the past (with endless breaking news and expert commentary), are transforming problems into our greatest opportunities to live in balance with nature, ourselves, and each other?
What is purpose if not our ability to imagine and create with deep meaning? Imagine living in a world where our structures and systems support us, rather than divide us. What can you envision? There is hope when we choose to let go.
“‘How does one become a butterfly?’ she asked pensively.
“‘You must want to fly so much that you are willing to give up being a caterpillar.’
“‘You mean to die?’ asked Yellow, remembering the three who fell out of the sky.
“‘Yes and no,’ he answered.
“‘What looks like you will die, but what’s really you will still live.’”
― Trina Paulus, Hope for the Flowers