We Must Learn to Grow Through Joy

I read recently that we have a mass consciousness belief of having to grow through pain and struggle. I have really given that a lot of though in the past week since I read it and I can now see how that belief permeates not only our history, but also our lives.

On a personal level in growing up, my parents punished me for my "bad" behavior. Much of how I was raised centered more on what would happen if I did not behave as expected than it did for what would happen if I behaved well. More attention was put on punishments than rewards. So in growing up, I continued to learn mostly from my pain. I created pain in my life again and again through dis-ease, injury, divorce, job loss, lack of abundance, etc.

The focus on what is going wrong in our behavior is not just at the tribal family level, but also at every level of our society. If we look at what our media reports, they focus almost exclusively on what is NOT going well, what is NOT working, what they DON'T like and give almost no attention to all of the news out there of what IS working.

In business, most of corporations focus more on what is going wrong than what is going right. If they are a manufacturing company, their business metrics are set up to track things like, Cost of Poor Quality, First Time Failure Rate, Field Quality Failure Rate, Out of Box Failure Rate, Supplier Defect Rate, etc. Even if they are measuring for the positive such as, On Time Delivery or On Time Departures, there is a list of Issues, Actions and Owners targeted specifically for the problems.

From a historical perspective, humanity as a whole has grown from our most significant times of pain...wars, plagues, natural disasters, economic struggles, etc.

At what point though do we determine both individually and collectively that we no longer want to grow through pain and struggle? At what point do we decide that we want to work together to heal and grow through joy instead of pain?

On a personal level, that means we must learn to forgive ourselves and others. We must learn to love and accept ourselves for who we truly are right now in this moment. We must come to accept that most of the pain we are creating is at a level that we cannot see and heal on our own. If we could see it, we would have healed it already.

What we have to recognize is that our future is created by who we choose to be and what we decide to feel...right now, but it is also created by the enormous amount of energy buried both within our individual and collective sub-conscious. If we are going to change our world, we have to be willing to let all of that go. It serves no purpose other than to create more of that in our lives.

We have to be willing to forgive all those we feel have harmed us. We must be willing to put aside our differences and focus on what it is that we want to create. We must focus ONLY on what it is that we INTEND to create together and work together to create that.

Our power does not lie in our separateness and individuality. Our power lies in the unification of all of our talents and abilities. We all have a part to play in the healing and growth of this world. We must stop and ask ourselves what we want to create. If we want to create global peace, we will not create that through war. If we want to ensure that all have access to the resources they need to live, we must stop our power struggles over resources. We must be willing to take responsibility for all that we have created and be willing to forgive ourselves for it. We must be willing to take that next step forward in our growth by focusing on what would feel good if we could create it in our world.

What we do now is we look at the world and say, "Well, I would like to create peace, but since I see all of the things to fear in the world, I have to defend myself and I may even have to attack others so I can be safe." This is not the path to peace. When we focus on creating peace, our actions will be inspired and we will find new actions to take. These actions will be something so obvious we will be stunned that we never thought of it or believed it would actually work.

Saying war will create peace is like saying rape can create love. It simply cannot be. The motivations for war are similar to the motivations for rape or any other violent crime. The motivations come from anger and fear...not love and compassion.

We must wake up from the violent dream we have been living. We must stop supporting any form of violence. The end does NOT justify the means.

The means justifies the end...which means when we come from a place of love and compassion, our actions will be guided by love and our results will be a reflection of love.

Our relationships can be a source of our greatest joy in life, rather than the source of our greatest sadness, pain, fear, embarrassment, shame and frustration. But we must learn to heal not only our pain, but the generations of pain that have been passed down. When we do so, we are able to see the world through a completely different perception. Our reality is created by our perceptions-and now we have to start changing our perceptions.

When you're ready to start growing through joy, let me know.

Namaste

Jeff

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