Embracing Obstacles

“That which is “wrong” in your life is actually an unrecognized guide who  is seeking to bring you to a reality that is more magnificent than you can currently imagine.” This statement is something I hold dear and have used as lens to pay attention to possibilities that might otherwise have slipped me by. I will tell you a few stories that illustrate this.

I have paid for probably 500 hours of counseling and energy medicine. At first, when things would reach a point where the sessions became flat with a given practitioner I would buy into some of their comments that there was something wrong with me and struggle to continue to get more from their sessions. After noticing that each time I changed practitioners someone more suitable came along, I stopped beating myself up for this “problem” and instead embraced the reality that I was learning so fast it served me to change practitioners regularly, gathering pieces of gold from them all. Now I would not trade that approach for anything and for some time now my sessions have been extremely productive and I stop working with people before things get flat.

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I have had a pattern of short and intense relationships recently that I did not fully understand. At a certain point I just wanted space and to move on. This was painful to my partners and confusing to me so I saw my withdrawal as a problem. As my distance pattern of push/pull would emerge I tried to control it. Until a healer helped me see that my relationships were often about growth and healing and only lasted as long as it took for my partner and I to do the piece of work we were there to do. My distance pattern was a cue that I was ready to move on. Now I embrace this awareness consciously, communicate with my partners up front, and celebrate the diversity and amazing joy of an intense, healing burst of passion, followed by an equally blissful alone time to write and do my thing. And in doing so, my partners are happier as well. So often we just think we want a long term relationship because it fits our fantasy, only to discover that the ending was as blessed as the beginning.

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As a child I was frequently plagued by migraines, and later as an adult with chronic fatigue as I pushed myself to super-achieve in my landscape company. When as a child I dropped out of school, responding to my desire for a more reflective time to think, my migraines disappeared. As I took time off and cut way back on my landscape work, so has virtually all of my chronic fatigue. Now I use my body as a teacher to tell me what it wants and I live a life that is way more fun than I could have imagined or would have consciously designed without these "problems" as my guides. At the time I was working by the hour and I did not want to make less money. Rather than fight my body, I stopped working by the hour and started bidding things, which allowed me to double the money I made even as I worked less hours.

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I used to be really upset when people did not understand me and felt unsafe around my intense energy. I tried so hard to shrink myself small enough that they would like me and let me be OK. When I finally stopped seeing my qualities as the problem, and instead let go of the people around me to focus on celebrating myself, more and more people could finally see me. The ones that love me as I am could do so with ease.

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I went through a period of feeling shame and dread around my pleasure in pornography. It seemed so unspiritual for people to be engaging in such a sacred act with such “crude” energy. As I allowed myself to learn from my attraction and make friends with it, I found it was me who had shut out big portions of my raw, masculine and earthy energy and denied much of my own and partner's sexuality in the process. By being with what at first seemed like the problem, it was able to lead me on a journey that saw me embracing much more of who I am.

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These are just a few examples of how this truth has unfolded in my own life. I invite you to start looking at your own problems for clues to something more. So often the life of our dreams is on the other side of our current life falling apart.

Action: As your life falls apart, be present to the possibilities that want to come through. Until we can recognize the gift, it may be valuable to fight the positive futures we may yet be too overwhelmed to receive and maintain the order of our current lives.

Contents

Cresting the Waves:

A guide to sailing through life on

Relation-Ships

Dane E. Rose