It is an unseasonable early spring here in New Mexico with trees beginning to bud in anticipation of summer. The arrival of spring makes me anxious with anticipation as it feels so hopeful and open. The feeling is excitement around planting tomatoes and the soon to be blooming sunflowers and fruit trees. The question I have about this feeling of optimism is how to allow this feeling to permeate my life.
Being alive is about learning, healing, stretching and becoming — whether we are ready or not. And often times in this process we will find themes that occur more than once, sometimes even incessantly. It is nagging to be in a situation that you thought you handled and wonder, here again. For instance, you find yourself in a relationship that feels dully familiar to the last relationship, an experience marked with distance or lack of intensity. Often times in this state of mind you throw your hands up in the air in frustration. What about all the hard work?
It seems that learning curves are a continuum not always aligning to the logic of moving from point a to b. So you may notice when you are under pressure you have a tendency to procrastinate or possibly not take care of yourself. You may create new strategies to cope with it; like developing a strong, grounded daily practice or taking more precautions to keep you out of that state. And it might be going along fine and then a certain deadline and you find yourself right at the same place as you were before, sleepless, overloading on sugar and your daily practice on a “to do” list.
I find the particular challenge with showing up on familiar ground is not actually encountering the same shortcoming but my reactions to it. It can be surrounded with self- doubt and shame, bringing in the critical voices that are working to discredit all your work. You don’t work hard enough, you haven’t healed, if only you were a better person. I have to tell you this script does not align with the optimistic, spring is coming, the trees are blooming theme. So maybe it isn’t so much that you are in the same spot that you have been working your way to get out of, but you are there and your best ally abandons ship. Your best ally meaning the part of you that is willing to have your back because growth can be easier with your gentle, kind self helping you navigate it.
In working at aligning to my higher self, I find that sometimes growth is not measured on what we become but maybe on how gracefully we can accept who we are and where we are at the time. Habitual patterns are challenging to move out of and there may be times where we find ourselves overcoming them and others where it may feel like we are back to Stage One. Of course where we are in the spectrum of growth is what we perceive. Maybe in the challenging moments, take some time and reflect on the areas where you see growth. And recognizing that you are doing the best you can and in order to grow, shift, heal and transform you need your A Team on your side. The Team that is infected by the coming of Spring like an injection of positive thinking.