Stable relationship, stable income, stable job, stable home. Why do people crave stability? People need to feel safe. When you are driven by insecurity, you seek safety in stability, whether it is in relationships or jobs or income. When fear is in the driver seat, safety is the only interesting destination. And this is what trauma creates. Almost everyone is traumatized in childhood, this is the thing most people don’t know. And this is why insecurity is a human condition. Alan Watts wrote a lovely book: The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety. The title itself lends beautifully to the point I am making.
The Fear of Fear
We live in an era of anxiety and depression. And the most popular “solutions” are management and coping strategies that border on obsessive compulsive addictive behavior — they have to be performed continuously with no final resolution. Healing is nowhere on the horizon in the mainstream. Because healing would require empowerment. And we live in a disempowered world. The way people practice yoga, meditation, and a variety of other things, only helps them to cope with and manage their overwhelming feelings, without ever teaching them to heal it.
I dealt with overwhelm for most of my life, which is why I used drugs to numb my self for nearly a decade. But guess what, I healed. And if I can, most people can. I was “fortunate” to find a way to heal early in my life. But age is irrelevant. Even if you heal a second before you physically die, just experiencing that second of bliss is absolutely worth all the effort of healing. Even a second without the burdens is the gift of a lifetime. That is greatness.
When you are connected to your power and you feel safe within, you trust that you are capable of dealing with life, you trust in your resourcefulness. You become a creator. And why would a creator ever have any fear? If there is scarcity, you can create more. That’s what a creator does — create. But most people are not connected to their power. They are addicted to the fantasies of their comfort zone — living in the known and familiar. True creativity and power is only found in the unknown.
People are too afraid to feel fear and negativity. This fear of fear is the most disempowering of all. If you are too afraid to feel your deeper fears, you will live in avoidance your entire life. Avoiding any risk and paying any price for certainty. The biggest price people pay for certainty is their dreams and their potential. Saying no to certainty is the scariest experience when you have never done it before. But practice it a few times, go through the unknown a few times, and you realize you are much stronger than you believed.
And then you start trusting in your power and creativity. And from there the game begins a lot more fun and interesting. You are no longer avoiding uncertainty, you are actively pursuing it. You start feeling the dread and despair in certainty, and you realize that certainty is the only real death in life.
Celebrating the end of certainty
In the last 2 months I let go of two stable sources of income. First, I stopped working at the retreat center where I had been apprenticing for 8 years. It was supporting me with a very comfortable regular income, and it was a job I absolutely loved. Yet, I left, because it was time to do my own thing.
Two days back I also ended a group I had been running for 2.5 years, another great stable source of income, something I created and owned fully, and loved doing — I put an end to this too because it was time to let it go. That group had been created with the energy I had 2.5 years ago. It was time to shake things up and create something with the new energy that has been emerging in the last two months as I transition into the next phase of my life.
Most people fear losing their stable income because they will be asked to leave. Very few even dare to think of letting go the stability themselves. And those who do lose their source of stability tend to enter into the fear of survival, the fear of being consumed by the unknown.
What did I do as I let go all my sources of stable income? I went to the best spa-resort in the region (which graciously happens to be 5 minutes from home), and I treated myself to celebrate these ends. I celebrated everything I have accomplished in the last 8 years of my training, in the last 2.5 years of building my business and my group, and I celebrated everything I learned and appreciated in these experiences. I feel grateful for every connection and experience, the deep pleasure of working intimately with wonderful people on their transformation, healing, and growth. And feeling all this, I let it go.
A World Beyond Stability
I don’t need stability any longer because I have developed deep trust in my capabilities to create and navigate the unknown. Even if I “die”, I know that I can rise from the ashes, because I have done it over and over and over.
In 2015 I quit a 200k job at Amazon, which would have easily been paying me well over 500k/year today. I was great at that job, and loved it too. Quitting it was the easiest decision I made in my life. I just happened to be fortunate to quit what I love doing because I keep finding something I love even more. And I happen to be creative, resourceful, and lucky enough to keep creating more than sufficient income to satisfy my needs and desires plentifully.
This doesn’t mean I have not dipped to scary financial levels. I gambled, invested, made mistakes, and spent most of my money pursuing my dreams. And there were several times I was about to hit zero. But I always knew I would be ok. I knew I could always create my way out. And slowly, as I kept developing my abilities and my consciousness, I also became capable of greater risks and started creating at greater scales. This is when life started becoming exponential.
From Linear to Exponential
If I was stuck in stability mode, I would be growing linearly as is destined for the good people of the world. But over the last year, and going forward, I am in exponential mode — not just financially, but also impactfully. The foundation I have developed in my consciousness enables me to create an exponential impact in the world that causes ripples and shifts at fundamental levels.
As an example of an exponential shift, In the last month I made 1.25x of what I made in all of last year. In just one month. Stability doesn’t allow for radical and exponential shifts. When you are seeking stability, all choices are oriented towards safety and security. You keep growing linearly, and that is good if you can be satisfied with goodness.
When working with people 1+1 or in small groups of people, I was making a deep impact, but it was still linear. Over the last few months I started working with powerful leaders and coaches, people who are making an impact in the world. And having a deep impact on them creates an exponential impact. The ripples of this impact radiate throughout the world. Working at these levels of impact requires a profound foundation, extensive and deep experience, and an immense effort to train and become capable of effecting such transformation. This is what takes someone from goodness to greatness (read more about this in the post linked below about The Gates of Greatness).
Are you living death or are you living life?
In a life of goodness and stability, anything radical is far too risky. And of course, going beyond stability is a huge risk. But that’s the point. Life is a game. Do you dare to play? If not, you stay the course offered by society, where your insurance and your pension and your social security keep you safe from unseen dangers such as death and suffering. Who would expect death and suffering on planet earth? Why wouldn’t life conform to all your expectations and all of society’s promises of a beautiful life free of misery? And if misery strikes, at least you can wait in line for your insurance payout. This is the reality of certainty — a living death.
The day you get tired of that drama, the day you are tired of living death, you are ready to start living life — you step into the unknown. Once you learn to play in the unknown, illusions such as safety and stability vaporize instantly. And it’s fine. If you are playing in the unknown, it means you have developed enough power and compassion, and that’s all you need to deal with anything that happens. You don’t crave certainty, safety, and stability. You may even find them to be too restraining.
Compassionate Power is available to all, but most perceive it either as an evil threat or a weakness, because that’s what the programs tell you: You don’t need power, someone else with power will take care of you. A politician, an army, a doctor, a guru, the police. You don’t need power, you just need to follow the rules so they can keep you safe from all the terrible dangers out there. And the followers will keep complaining to the authorities about the unfairness of the rules while still craving the safety offered by them.
There are those who follow the rules
And there are those who make the rules
Compassion on the other hand is a weakness in the eyes of powerful people. They see it as softness. Compassion is deep understanding. It is not pity and sympathy. Compassion is having deep clarity about whatever is really happening. From that clarity arises understanding, and from that you learn to detach from suffering. And you learn to allow suffering to be a teacher for those who still need it.
Becoming Death
I have been embodying the energy of a “hurricane” over the last 2 months since this shift started taking place. Disruptive and destructive. Eroding the programs that are keeping my self and others comfortable. Even to the point of destroying what I created. Knowing when something has come to an end, you can try to cling on to it and preserve it, or wait for “Death” to kill it slowly and painfully, or you can become death and put an end to it. That’s what I did.
Becoming death, I created space for something new to emerge. Something full of life with fresh new energy is emerging from the ashes of what was put to death. Except this emergence feels more like a volatile volcanic eruption. On the surface it is seemingly just a pure destructive energy. But have you seen the beauty that arises on volcanic islands once the dust settles?
As I shared my vision and energy for the next phase, over half the group decided to stop while a few decided to continue. For the ones who chose to stop and go a different way, I celebrated each of them for their decision. It was amazing to see that they felt empowered to say no and go their own way. They did not feel any obligation to continue just because we had been working together at deep intimate levels for such a long time. It was a final testament to everything I had been teaching, and it showed up practically. Follow what feels aligned for you. Trust only in your power, you don’t need me, you only work with me if you want what I am offering today. This doesn’t mean we lose the deep bonds that were formed while working together. It simply means the relationship changes and evolves into a new form.
As a teacher I will keep changing, and my teaching will keep changing, and so my students will keep changing. Either the same people will change and continue, or space is created for new people who are ready for the new and different energy. In any case, the students will change as the teaching changes. It’s not about right and wrong, better or worse. It’s different. Each is on their own path, and I will guide as long as we are aligned. And some paths realign in later phases.
A participant from this recently closed group shared this passage that related to the experience from our closing session:
Burying and Planting
The culmination of one love, one dream, one self, is the anonymous seed of the next. There is very little difference between burying and planting. For often, we need to put dead things to rest, so that new life can grow. And further, the thing put to rest—whether it be a loved one, a dream, or a false way of seeing—becomes the fertilizer for the life about to form. As the well-used thing joins with the earth, the old love fertilizes the new; the broken dream fertilizes the dream yet conceived; the painful way of being that strapped us to the world fertilizes the freer inner stance about to unfold.
This is very helpful when considering the many forms of self we inhabit over a lifetime. One self carries us to the extent of its usefulness and dies. We are then forced to put that once beloved skin to rest, to join it with the ground of spirit from which it came, so it may fertilize the next skin of self that will carry us into tomorrow. There is always grief for what is lost and always surprise at what is to be born. But much of our pain in living comes from wearing a dead and useless skin, refusing to put it to rest, or from burying such things with the intent of hiding them rather than relinquishing them.
For every new way of being, there is a failed attempt mulching beneath the tongue. For every sprig that breaks surface, there is an old stick stirring underground. For every moment of joy sprouting, there is a new moment of struggle taking root. We live, embrace, and put to rest our dearest things, including how we see ourselves, so we can resurrect our lives anew.”
― Mark Nepo: “The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have”
Deep Trust and Deep Faith
I already spoke a lot about trust that arises from connecting with your power, creativity, and resourcefulness. Faith is something that has now become stigmatized by religion. Religion has appropriated this term and deeply corrupted it, made it a toxic term that is based on belief in something outside you.
Deep Faith arises from complete clarity and understanding about the world and reality. The only way to truly let go stability and play in the unknown is having faith in knowing the universal constants: The balance of change and eternity, perfection and imperfection, life and death. These forces not only balance each other, the higher forces dance with each other which keeps the unknown eternally alive.
The mystery is eternally alive
Once you fully witness the endless dance of these forces, you can understand that the key to deep faith is deep trust in your power, courage, and ability to surf the waves emanating from these forces to create the unknown. This is the ultimate key to letting go stability, and letting go just about everything that we cling to for security. At this level we enter the abundant flow of life because we can start seeing every force and circumstance as a resource.
A Powerful Question
As the dust from the hurricane and volcano settles, what emerges is the energy of creation. While doing a closing review with my participants, a very powerful question arose. As I was talking to some people, I realized there are many people who are afraid of death, and they invest all their energy in “not-dying”. This is the survival energy. But constantly living in survival mode is quite a miserable existence — I say this from experience. Most of humanity is living in survival mode, in which all your effort and energy goes towards defending, protecting, and not-dying.
The reason most people stay stuck in that state is because they have nothing to live for. There is no active force to live. There is just a resistance to the impending force of death. The question is:
Why do you invest all that energy in surviving? Why not just give in and die? What are you really living for? Do you even know? Or do you just survive because the idea of death is so horrifying and scary? Most people don’t want to live — they are just too afraid to die. They don’t know what they are living for, but they still keep going every day. And the only reason is that death is too scary. Most people live their lives to avoid death — and that’s what I mean by “living in death”.
The people who kill themselves are far more courageous than those who keep living with no real passion for life. At least they end their misery. At least they are not living slaves to death. I am not endorsing suicide. I have been suicidal. And I chose not to go down that route. But I also made a firm decision not to live in death. I decided to find the force to live.
And that brings me to asking you…
Are you ready to come out of fear, and live with fear? Are you ready to live despite fear? I will ask it again: Why do you want to live? Some people will start listing the things they enjoy doing: camping, serving others, saving the world, building their business, selling their souls, eating their favorite foods. Those are not reasons to live. That is just what you do to bide your time while you unconsciously distract yourself from the certainty of death. And in the avoidance of death, you keep living death instead of living life.
Living is about taking risks to go into the unknown — for your grandest dreams that arise from your deepest passions. It is where you take full ownership and responsibility for your life, and let go the habit of blaming others for your decisions, mistakes, and failures. Where you quit your addiction to suffering. Where you stop living in shame, guilt, regret, and remorse.
Owning your life means transforming your failures and mistakes into fuel for your passion. It means choosing to keep moving each time life presents you with obstacles. It means seeing resistance and circumstances as your most powerful allies.
All of that becomes automatic when you find your answer to the most powerful question: Why do you want to live? Answering this question, and following through on the answer, is going to be the primary focus of the new group that I am creating. Asking yourself the question is a powerful exercise. Answering that question is scary, and even more powerful. Being coached on that question and trained to follow through is the gateway to unimaginable levels. When you are ready to answer the call, give me a ring or send me a message.
The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety is an excellent read.
You can also read or listen to “The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have” quoted above.
Continue reading the related blog posts:
– The Gates of Greatness is about going from good to great, and letting go everything holding you back
– Service is Slavery is about my choice where I went from working for others to the immensely more enjoyable option of working with others
And you can also watch one of the recent podcast episodes: Trust + Power = Faith: A Super-Tool For Living In The Unknown