How To Truly Release Yourself From Struggle
Why do we relate through struggle when the general desire is to be free from it?
It’s fun to share a meme that funnily expresses our particular struggle…
The mom struggle.
The misunderstanding of the other sex struggle.
The diet struggle.
The “whatever struggle”.
On the more serious side of things it’s the struggle with anxiety, body image, a particular shared victimhood, the I can’t get my finances together struggle, the I can’t find my partner or purpose struggle, the desire to change xyz about myself, my life and/or my circumstances struggle, etc.
On one hand, we want to be done with the struggle but, on the other hand, we want to relate to others through the shared struggle.
We calibrate to the struggle through our identity with it.
And once we’ve built an identity with something, it actually becomes harder to release ourselves from it.
The prompting question/inquiry is “Who are you without the struggle?”
What remains when you release an attachment to the struggle?
A vacuum of space opens up.
What will you do with this newfound space…
Will you feed the struggle to fill the space?
Or will you embrace the space and sink into the spacious sense of inner peace it offers?
Logically, the latter makes most sense.
But, when it comes to our identification with “the familiar” there’s a momentum in us that wants to immediately fill the new space with “the familiar”.
Because the familiar feels comfortable.
And when “the familiar” exists in the content of struggle, that’s what we’ll draw back into our experience.
Unless we change our relationship to “the familiar” by observing the pattern at play.
This requires being willing to stay in the spaciousness that opens up WITHOUT trying to immediately fill it up.
This is how you calibrate to the spaciousness of the peace this space offers, instead of the struggle that previously filled this space.
It takes some effort and attention to stop (or slow down) the inclination to refill the space, but this is necessary to recalibrate to something new.
The next time you encounter an opportunity to relate through struggle, see if you can not say anything.
Withhold from saying “me too’’ by adding your relatable story of struggle to the conversation.
Let go of the desire to commiserate or find camaraderie in the shared struggle.
See if you can break the unconscious agreement to the struggle.
See if you can release your identification with it.
See if you can comfortably (or uncomfortably) sit in a space where that’s no longer how you relate to others or yourself.
This will break the unconscious pattern by bringing awareness to it.
(If you’re in the stage of healing where sharing is apart of bringing your struggle to the surface to be acknowledged, understood, processed and healed, this does not apply as this is a step further down your path once you’ve sunk into the identify of your struggle as a plateau in your inner growth. It’s important to know where you are in your journey).
In general, I don’t relate through struggle. I haven’t for years. If I hear friends, or people in general, expressing their struggle(s), there’s hardly a time where I say “me too”.
It’s not that I’m completely out of struggle; it’s that I generally don’t uphold struggle through an identity with it.
A large part of the inner journey, for me, has been gaining an understanding of how ego moves through our consciousness.
A large part of what I’ve written about over the past decade, especially in A Call To The Heart, has been about demystifying how ego works so we open up to another choice or movement/momentum within us.
There was an initial struggle between acting from the unconscious movement of ego and moving from a more conscious flow of energy.
Choosing between the two could easily be classified as a struggle…
I desired to come from one place and became frustrated when I observed I wasn’t.
Everything I wrote about was focused on understanding these two choices and relaying how I was doing in my own journey (as a way of helping others in their journey).
This vigilance is needed to create a well rounded understanding of the overall all “struggle”.
But there comes a point where an identification with the struggle no longer yields a desirable benefit and, instead, plateaus your capacity to fully transcend “the struggle”.
This is the point at which you have become identified with “the struggle to heal from the struggle”.
It’s no longer about the original struggle.
It’s about your identification with being “in the struggle” and as long as you’re identified with being “in the struggle” you won’t release yourself from that energy.
You’re stuck in this energetic momentum for no reason other than it’s become familiar and what remains without the struggle is not familiar.
This is the point at which your identification with the struggle needs to be looked at and released.
It’s the also the point at which the most peace is available to you.
Without the content of your energy being filled with struggle what, but peace, remains?
Always Shine Brightly,
Shanna
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