“Just when the caterpillar thought the world was over, it became a butterfly.”
I kind of hate that quote. It’s so cutesy and cliché. But it’s fucking true. On our path of growth, we sometimes have to die a small death to live a bigger life. As Dr. Habib Sadeghi puts it “every contraction in life is setting you up for another expansion. It must. That is the rhythm of life.”
LINEAR GROWTH IS A MYTH
We get hung up on wanting to be in a perpetual state of expansion, but that’s not how it works, folks. Linear growth is a myth. The evolution of anything isn’t a smooth bell curve. It’s a pulse, a wave, a heartbeat. You are designed to contract and expand.
CONTRACT TO EXPAND
Shape-shifting (catharsis/growth/change/call-it-what-you-will) demands that we experience a contraction before we expand into our next expression. It asks that we wade through sweat and tears. It strips us down to our most vulnerable, rawest self. It sometimes requires us to totally lose our bearings. But most of all, shifting asks us to bear witness to the transition with total willingness.
SURRENDER TO THE RHYTHM OF YOUR EVOLUTION
When you let go of the attachment to expansion and stop fighting the contraction, you surrender to the rhythm of your evolution.
Surrender doesn’t mean letting the process of just happen to you like a helpless rubber-necking bystander to your life. Surrendering means embracing the contraction (the break down, the shrinking, the shrivelling self-doubt) with your whole self so that when the time for expansion comes (and it is coming), you can unfold those prized and well-earned wings and fly free.
Just as the ocean draws herself back before thrusting her full force magnificently upon the shore, you too must recede and regather yourself before bursting forth once more.
This is shape shifting. This is growth. This is the process of expansion. First: you get small. Then: you get bigger. Contraction, expansion. Drawing in, breaking through. Shrinking, shining.
YOUR WINGS ARE ON THE WAY
So if life is feeling stuck or shitty or small right now, hear this: Stop fighting it. Surrender to the process. Yes, it’s messy and uncomfortable and uncertain. But it’s right. You are incubating another, higher incarnation of your truest self. You are unfolding. You are growing. You are shifting. It IS happening. The answers are coming.
Shit happens. Shift happens. Keep showing up. Be there to receive the gifts. Your wings are on the way.
