The Pain of Becoming

🌟Weekly Inspiration🌟

Hi again! For this week, I'd like to share an excerpt from a daily meditation book that I love: THE BOOK OF AWAKENING by Mark Nepo. I like to have my cup of coffee in the morning and start the day with various forms of inspiration ❤️.

Here is the excerpt:

We do ourselves a great disservice by judging where we are in comparison to some final destination. This is one of the pains of aspiring to become something: the stage of development we are in is always seen against the imagined landscape of what we are striving for. So where we are—though closer all the time—is never quite enough.

The simple rose, at each moment of its slow blossoming, is as open as it can be. The same is true of our lives. In each stage of our unfolding, we are as stretched as possible. For the human heart is quite slow to blossom, and is only seen as lacking when compared to the imagined lover or father or mother we’d like to become.

It helps to see ourselves as flowers. If a flower were to push itself to open faster, which it can’t, it would tear. Yet we humans can and often do push ourselves. Often we tear in places no one can see. When we push ourselves to unfold faster or more deeply than is natural, we thwart ourselves. Nature takes time, and most of our problems will stem from impatience….

Perhaps one of the hardest remedies to accept for our pain of becoming is that wherever we are in our path—no matter how flawed or incomplete—is a blossoming unto itself. However much we’ve done at the end of the day is more than enough; it is a dream becoming the truth.

This resonated. It breathed some compassion into the feelings I have towards myself and my own journey, that of my children, my spouse, and my clients. We can’t blossom faster than we are meant to. We need to be mindful not to tear our petals as we grow. We need to be mindful of pacing and what one can handle. As parents, we are constantly pushing/encouraging/impatient for maturity/growth/success. Often as therapists, we feel pressure from parents to achieve progress quickly and find ourselves working towards some hard-to-reach landscape, instead of actually letting things unfold more naturally.  Growth takes time ❤️. 

Summertime is a rich time for kids to blossom. All that extra sleep, chill time, outdoor time, and unstructured time is hugely healing and grounding for kids.  Lean into it all in your final weeks of summer as a family.

 Ask Yourself:

Do I often feel like I’m not quite enough?  That my loved ones aren’t quite enough? 

Is life a race to be won?

When do I feel most at peace within myself?

How can I accept my children’s rate of blossoming?

Does growth happen in fits and starts?  For me?  For my kids?

Is it possible that when I don’t force unfolding, the unfolding may actually occur more readily?

How can I work to let go of control a little bit more all the time?

Be well 🌟