A little more serious topic this week. We, at Take Giant Steps (and SpiralKinetics) like to talk about the self and its growth. The self as it becomes more. The self in “evolution.” When many of us think we understand what evolution means….. we create visions and versions of it. Conceptions in our minds and hearts that encapsulate what it means to be evolved. Sometimes this is profound, and sometimes it is problematic.
To some, being evolved is a deep dive into a high level of being special. Looking around at the most common ways that people are being and behaving then turning them aside for a harder but more advanced route. This way of looking at the evolution of the human self is exclusive. Differentiating between the evolving/evolved and the unconcerned. This parses people into the evolutionary “haves” and “have-nots”, which does not promote our growth, and instead curtails it.
This is one of many of what I call “spiral traps”.
There are also moments when we experience an opening. What we call a “peak experience” that some workshop (or drug) bursts us at the seams maybe for the first time in our lives and has all our insides pour out and rain down on ourselves… leaving us feeling freer and grateful. We then often turn in the direction of the creators of this experience and decide that we will pursue the system/substance/person/community that facilitated this sense of liberation, often for the first time in our lives, in the hope and desire to find more of the same. This spirals us into another spiral trap.
Evolving is a commitment to ongoing growth, not exclusive of others or grasping onto the thing that caused it, but inclusive of all experience. Not just having patience for people and where they are in life but instead even “knowing” their experience as a part of your own… as a part of us all. Distinguishing between your personal path and anyone else’s is ultimately unimportant to the flow of evolution.
Evolving is also not holding fast to whatever opened you to your evolutionary self. It initially seems as exciting as a life-preserver to a drowning man… but quickly transforms into an anchor and holds us fast causing less evolutionary growth (even if it seems like growth and we can’t distinguish the difference at the time).
The one main criteria I always recommend is openness. Openness to becoming something more. To allowing something more to penetrate you. To keeping ongoing change in motion without looking to hold onto and force “change” itself. Its to continually transform your experience courageously, with humility, while reinforcing your core. Its almost contradictory. To change and yet be build up and reinforced at the core. To be powerful and porous at the same time. Its almost as if we were molten metal and we were being casted into a sculpture…. there are moments when the metal is melted…and then the following moments when the metal is hardened. And it happens again and again. Melted and hardened, and melted and hardened …strengthening to become more and more and more.
Spiral traps are everywhere. They seem like growth, but then slowly, before we know it…. things stagnate and we are no longer within our growth.
Be in evolution. It is a very fine path. One that is highly prone to distractions. But being committed to it and opening to it is the priority and truest method to make sure you are on its ongoing ride.
And if you wonder aloud to yourself how you know when you have spiraled-in to a trap in your life or if you are on the true path and spiraling up… Whether you are on the fine line of your growth or off on some shiny tangent…. contact me. If the question is in your mind perhaps it’s really time to pursue it far more… along with another set of conscious eyes.
