By now, you have discovered that changing the content of life doesn't work. Change jobs, change partners, change landscapes, change clothes... the essence of the pattern remains the same. In other words, wherever you go, there you are. And yet this is where most people are putting all of their efforts, without taking a strategic inventory and assessing whether any progress is being made at all in any of the key areas of aliveness. Play
- Vitality
- Expression
- Courage
- Compassion
- Presence
- Alignment
- Knowledge
- Wisdom
- Leadership
- Love
- Legacy
“Fanaticism consists of redoubling your efforts when you have forgotten your aim.” Santayana
Redirect AND redouble your efforts toward the root of the patterns. Use the unexpected detours in life as fuel for growth; catalysts for healing and personal evolution. Build up resilience. Enhance your aliveness and elevate your level of being. If you discover someone who can support you in this, follow them, learn from them, or hire them on the spot: it is the most significant investment you will make in your life, because it enriches every other facet of life immeasurably. And it improves the world as a whole.
Investing in Evolution
Investing in a business endeavor is relatively simple, because you can measure the return on investment, and determine if the investment is profitable.
The challenges with personal evolution come down to quantifying evolutionary leaps, or advances in conscious development. What are they worth? How are they measured? When life around transforms to become indescribably better, how much should that cost? How much would you be willing to pay for adjustments to 'being' itself?
"Would you really go?" he asked. "Think—twenty-five miles, darkness, snow, rain, wind." "What is there to think about?" I said. "You know I have walked the whole way more than once, when there were no horses or when there was no room for me in the cart, and for no reward, simply because there was nothing else to be done. Of course I would go without a word if somebody were going to give a lecture on these things at Tuapse."
"Yes," said G., "if only people really reasoned in this way. But in reality they reason in exactly the opposite way. Without any particular necessity they would face any difficulties you like. But on a matter of importance that can really bring them something they will not move a finger. Such is human nature.
Man never on any account wants to pay for anything; and above all he does not want to pay for what is most important for him. You now know that everything must be paid for and that it must be paid for in proportion to what is received. But usually a man thinks to the contrary. For trifles, for things that are perfectly useless to him, he will pay anything.
Ouspensky, P. D. (2001-05-30). In Search of the Miraculous (Kindle Locations 3943-3947). BookMasters. Kindle Edition.
David Hawkins does an interesting job of quantifying consciousness in his book Power Versus Force, using muscle testing to assign various numerical scores (1-100) to different foods, ideas, texts, etc. This can also be applied to individuals, though I think with the caveat that measuring consciousness could create a sort of hierarchy, which in the end would degrade consciousness. For instance, I'm a 600 on the scale, and you're only a 200, so we should do what I want, as I am clearly the more evolved one.
Consciousness is innately driven toward evolution and expansion. But individuals do not always advance. Life wears away at us. Traumas tears us apart. 'What doesn't kill you makes you stronger' is a myth, unless by 'stronger', you mean 'less feeling.' I translate less feeling as less aliveness.
Consciousness is eroded not by experiences, but by the reaction to experiences. Have you seen a really luminous child devolve after a series of traumas or setbacks to become a bitter, angry, depressed adult?
We become masterful at seeding our devolution: through the over-use of pharmaceuticals; by ingesting non-foods over decades; by indulging in destructive practices of all kinds; by indulging disempowering thought patterns over a lifetime. The list goes on.
What happened to the child, so full of light?
They are still there, waiting. It's up to us to reach out.
We are given a finite quantity of life force at birth. Use it wisely.
In truth,
Steven Budden
#buddenprocess #buddenenterprises #dlseed