In spirituality, and really in any realm where positivity is the aim or the goal, there is this weird kind of gaslighting that can happen around your fears and hesitations.
Let’s say you’re thinking of learning to ride a horse for the first time. You talk to a mentor or coach, or a spiritual guru or even someone who calls themselves a spiritual guide. You tell them “I want to ride a horse, but I know sometimes people can fall and injure themselves really badly. I am worried about getting a concussion, a head injury, a spinal injury, something worse, or ending up in a coma and dying.”
And the person you’re expressing these fears to says “don’t worry about that. You’re being dramatic. Relax! That is not going to happen to you. Don’t be overly cautious and talk yourself out of a good thing. Don’t let FEAR stop you! Do it anyway.”
I mean…the coach could be right that you are being fearful or overly cautious. But is he or she going to take responsibility if your worst fears actually come true?
Is that person going to be sitting by your bedside at the hospital, holding your hand, saying “I’m so sorry this happened to you! It’s all my fault! I never should have encouraged you to ignore your intuition!”
No…that person, if they are in any way intellectual, will be lawyering up and staying as far away from you as possible until they know for sure that you’re not going to sue them for negligence.
The good thing about having a Spiritual Instructor, Teacher, Mentor, Coach, and/or Guide who knows right from wrong is that he or she is capable of supporting you without pushing positivity instead of being realistic. Without gaslighting you.
The reality is that yes, horseback riding does come with huge risks. That’s why you have to sign a waiver, a helmet is recommended if not required, and you are supposed to start slowly. But things happen when you’re on the back of a powerful animal. Horses get spooked. New riders might give signals they didn’t realize were signals that the horse is trained to respond to. You encounter things in nature and the horse goes one way and the rider goes another. Or a horse walks under a tree while you are looking the other way, and you turn around and *whack* you collide face-first with a heavy tree branch.
Things happen. And the thing is that, most things carry huge risks, even if the chance of them happening is 1% or less. Negligble, as some might say, but still very possible and realistic to take into consideration.
Stepping foot outside your house, or not stepping foot outside of your house both carry risks to them. Equally so.
But a Guide who can actually help you is likely to do a little more than just paste a band-aid over your intuitive fears. The real value comes when he or she can help you realize that while your uncertainties may be unfounded or exaggerated sometimes, 1% is still 1%. It’s not 0. And sometimes 1% doesn’t matter at all. Sometimes, 1% is the only thing that does matter.
It’s really up to you to decide. Some questions worth asking yourself when “unfounded” fears start circulating around the possibility of a new undertaking are: 1) is the risk worth it?
2) is the risk something you’re willing to accept if it does come to pass? and
3) do you have plans in place to help you handle it if it does?
Do you have something on your mind today that you’re thinking about trying out, but these weird fears that no one else seems to acknowledge or respect keep popping up out of nowhere? If you do, try answering those three questions and see if they help you gain some clarity on why you’re letting those fears have a modicum of importance in your decision making. It might be a healthy dose of hesitation that you’re experiencing.
Good job for listening to yourself.
As for today’s actual journaling prompt, I’m going to ask you another question:
Can you be likable without conforming?
Can you get along with a crowd without losing yourself to it? Do you have to be a chameleon in order to be part of the friend group? Or do you have to accept being unlikable in order to be yourself?
The best of both worlds would be someone who is naturally popular by being aligned with his or her divine essence.
That’s not usually the case, and if it is the case it takes a long time to cultivate that harmony within and without.
Why would that be so? Why would it take a long time to find harmony within yourself and with the people around you?
Well, my understanding is that it’s because one usually comes at the expense of the other. Or rather, one must be sacrificed in order for the other to be attained first. And if you choose popularity, you have to be willing to sacrifice that in order to find inner harmony.
Then, from a place of inner harmony, you have to be willing to face a lot of rejection before refining your expression well enough to get along with the outside world.
Not necessarily be accepted as one of them, but at least well enough that you can harmonize with them.
This is a process that takes a lot of time, a lot of effort, a lot of focus, commitment, and most importantly, a lot of grit.
If your inner harmony isn’t worth being rejected over, again and again, for a long time, sometimes really harshly, then it isn’t something you will ever achieve.
But how do you know that you’re on a path to discovering inner harmony, if the only marker is that other people reject you? You could easily be on a path of self-destruction if that is also the case.
Well, one thing that helps is having Teachers, Guides, Mentors who have achieved both inner and outer harmony. They will help Light the way.
Not everybody’s footsteps are worth following in. Some people have no external harmony because they have no internal harmony. Their lives are marked – usually by some sort of substance abuse problem, and also – by great disdain towards them by others and vice versa.
So you have to ask yourself today, “are my footsteps worth following in?” “Am I walking behind footsteps that are worth following in?” “How do I know the answers to these questions?”
If you need help answering these prompts, remember you can always call back those visualizations we’ve been working with. The elders, the wizard, the witch, the decorated heroes who wear their achievements proudly within themselves. They can help you gain some clarity on whether the path you’re on is one worth walking.
What if it’s not?
Well, you know where my 2 cents are going to take you. The Path of Progression in the Lineage of King Salomon not only gives you something to walk upon, but also footsteps worth following in. Not just of the people who are teaching and protecting the Lineage as Modern Mystery School Certified Professionals and Adept Initiates alive today, but also all of those who came before us to ensure that the Lineage made it to today’s world.
This is why it is so important to ask yourself “is where I am headed worth going? Are the people who walked before me worth following?”
Because you have options. A lot of them. And it is important to reconsider that maybe the path you’ve been defaulted into or steered towards is worth examining. It might even be possible to put it aside for a moment while you dabble in something unfamiliar.
We didn’t come here to learn anything. We know everything already. We came here to experience. To remember. To gain context for the knowledge we already possess, and turn that into wisdom. Wisdom is where all stability in life comes from. Without that, we have nothing we can rely on in this world.
There should be no end to the freedom you give yourself to experience all that life has to offer UNLESS it fails one test. It violates one rule. Will it bring actual, real – not imagined, not neglible, not indirect, coincidental, nor inconsequential – HARM to yourself or to another person?
Falling off of a horse and getting hurt is one thing. You’re not getting on the horse because you want to harm yourself, another person or the horse (hopefully).
Going out and shooting a person or robbing a store clerk at knifepoint because you “wanted the experience” or “did it for the plot” is another. Harm was the intention in those scenarios, in more ways than one (the stealing also counts as a form of harm intended).
Whenever I talk about life experience, I always have to make the distinction that you should be aiming UP in life, looking for the good and accepting that some bad might come from that. Rather than aiming for the bad where every outcome is likely a bad one from the start.
And some people really don’t think it’s important to distinguish right from wrong. They hide behind culture, religion, and other facets of their upbringing to argue what shade of grey is actually black or white.
The unfortunate reality is that none of us get to be the judge of this for the whole world. I know a lot of us want to be. Maybe that will be tomorrow’s journaling prompt. Or it can be a bonus for today.
If you were the JUDGE of this world today, what would you rule as obvious harm? What would you allow as beneficial, that others may find controversial or worthy of debate?
How would you rule on adults marrying children, childhood sexual assault, domestic violence (spouse vs spouse, parent vs child, child vs parent), gay rights, and other hot button issues that most people can’t discuss without seeing red?
How would you handle people who didn’t see eye to eye with you?
I know this is supposed to be a relaxed mode kind of journaling prompt…but I suppose the opportunity to relax today comes AFTER the structure has been contemplated and documented. Also with the awareness that you don’t have to build an entire worldview alone. You might actually find that The Modern Mystery School culture aligns with a lot of the ways you view the world, or challenges them in such a way that helps you rise to new heights of awareness, awakening, and overall satisfaction with and enjoyment of life in the real world. Not just in your imagination. Not just in your room alone with your phone, your gaming console, or your computer. Not just with one or two people who echo everything you believe back to you. But a path, a structure, a system, a team, and a way that actually empowers you to improve your relationships with the people around you and possibly even enjoy every last drop of the sweet nectar of living life fully alive. Awake and aware. Present.
Here’s the link again, in case you were curious to check it out.
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