Your wake-up call

Your life was humming along, with joys and challenges but basically OK, or it was even going really well, from the vantage point of where you were. Then something shifts and catapults you into angst, agony, upheaval. It may be a cancer scare, or a car accident injury that takes months of physiotherapy to recover from, or the death of a loved one, or a job dismissal, or just the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back. You want to deal with it, heal it, and go back to the way you were before. But it doesn’t heal quickly or completely, you don’t return to that old normal self, and its frustrating, agonizing, despairing. Its what forces you to dig deeper, change, grow, re-define who you are and what your life is about. It challenges you to open your heart, first and foremost to yourself.

I’ve seen many people whose lives change this way, and then intense difficulty becomes a new way of daily life for them, at least for a time. I’ve been one of them. Most are desperate to return to an easier time that fits with their old idea of life. But life has a way of challenging you, deepening you, forcing you to step out of cultural and familial conditioning and wake up to a new paradigm. It doesn’t happen to everyone, so many people in your life won’t understand you at all. They will continue to see you from the old paradigm, and want you to come back. But its pretty impossible to go backwards in time. And I don’t think our wake-up calls are random, or bad luck. They are food for growth, so you wake up and don’t miss out on your life, so you have the incredible joy of surrendering to something greater than your self, so you have more to offer the world, so you shift into a new world. Its just that you didn’t realize you had a spiritual side with a different agenda.

Most people come to God kicking and screaming, for years. I know I did. The ego just doesn’t want to give up control. Its like a child that doesn’t want to grow up. It wants life to be easy, self-serving. It is very attached to decisions made years ago of who you are and what life is about. When completely immersed in the physical dimension of life, we are experiencing the world through our emotions, thoughts and behaviours, quite caught up in ourselves, our narcissism. Recognizing the deeper voice of your spiritual self means hearing who you truly are, your unique path of service, your challenges to overcome, why you are here. It means letting go of old ways of being and becoming an open channel for light, love and wisdom, choosing to be bigger than any obstacles in your way. Not an easy task!

Its scary, anxiety provoking, insecure. What is needed when you experience a wake-up call is to allow it breathing room, recognize you are going through an unsettling time of change, look after yourself as well as possible, and find whatever support you need. Guidance can come in a number of ways; books that help put words to your experience, a therapist to help you work through challenging emotions and thought patterns, finding peers that have had similar experiences, healthy diet, time in nature, experiential workshops, meditation. Its important to reach out for help, both from outside as well as learning to hear and trust your own inner guidance.