by Matt Kahn
(via email)
Imagine scrolling your newsfeed when you come across a meme. Its words resonate to your core. It feels like a sign from the Universe. Perhaps it ignites a newfound passion in you. A clearer knowingness that everything is going to be alright, despite the insurmountable challenges and harrowing details of your life’s journey. As a refreshing windfall of perspective washes away the residue of the past, an essential question looms in the background: What changes are you inspired to make, now that you know more than you did moments ago?
You might add a comment of gratitude to the thread or even share it on your page with enthusiasm. All the while, the fundamental importance of insight asks you to consider: now that you know more than you did before, how will you allow this new insight to influence your choices? What self-destructive habit are you more inspired to surrender, or which courageous decisions are you ready to embrace?
If without the ability to influence your behavior in a more mindful, heart-centered, and courageous direction, the value of insight extends beyond merely soothing your most desperate parts; it invites you to address and resolve the core issues.
Though insight may initially offer a moment of serenity, it is intended to supply you with the strength, courage, and perspective to face difficulties more openly, instead of creating new ways to avoid them. It is similar to how ‘going within’ has shifted on a societal level; from being an entry point into deeper realities to becoming a portal of avoidance for the details and demands of everyday life.
Nowadays, some people don’t even go within. They go online to read about the findings others have discovered. As they glean resonance from someone else’s sharing or merely comprehend it on a conceptual level, it is then adopted as their newfound wisdom to pass along. While the sharing of inspirational content on a viral level offers important moments of collective heart expansion, we are now living in an online culture where going online is the new going within. It is where, for some, the act of liking others’ shares often supplants the need for personal inner work, which is essential for making the leaps of understanding and growth that insights encourage.
Imagine a person lost in the dependency of alcohol coming across a blog post highlighting the long-term effects of alcohol usage. Their eyes bulge from the surprising health risks attributed to constant alcohol use they never knew existed. Imagine them surprised, alarmed, and concerned for their health as they discuss such findings with friends at a bar over rounds of drinking. Notice how the content spoke to their experience, inspired them to discuss its meaning, and yet, couldn’t penetrate the walls of human patterning to help them break free on a tangible level. Such a reality is no one’s fault. Rather, it is the opportunity of all who seek deeper meaning and search for greater clarity to fully understand the risks and rewards of ever-deepening insight.
When open to allowing insight to be received, yes, you will be rewarded with perspectives, reframes, and shifts of awareness that allow life’s most debilitating pain to be seen from more expansive perspectives. Like a cool breeze on a sweltering hot summer day, you will feel the rush of elation from having the finger of insight point out possibilities you never knew were there. Equally so, with each reward the ego receives comes an equal form of risk for your most conditioned parts. The risk being the issues in your life the Universe asks you to face, the decisions your destiny urges you to make, and the inevitable discomfort your ego will feel when going in the direction insight inspires. It’s almost as if many people are open to being inspired without being equally available to the journey of inspiration when such pivotal choices exist outside of an ego’s comfort zone or focus of desire.
As many unknowingly live out the mantra, “Help me feel better, but please don’t make me do something uncomfortable”, we come to realize why the Universe guides each journey with silent compassionate resolve. As the creator of time, the Universe uses the 4th dimension to wait out the negotiations and demands of any ego structure, waiting for the ego to break itself down through oscillating patterns of compulsion, judgment, and avoidance to release the grip of control only the ego believes it has. As this cracking open of exhaustion welcomes the ego into a humbling journey of surrender, it now explores the living reality of each inspired thought, so not to hide from the hands of fate as the memorizer of other people’s evolution. Of course, the ego is rightfully afraid of discomfort due to how scary it makes life seem through the way it judges decisions unlike or opposite to any desire.
While the ego is destined to realize the difference between the pain it anticipates and how not as painful things will actually be, the only way for true letting go to occur is by no longer maintaining a hiding spot for the parts only wishing to grow on its avoidant timeframe. Like a wise parent who loves their children through moments of discomfort and displacement, but without a way to help them avoid the experiences that need to be faced, such is the responsibility you incarnated to embrace as the wise loving guardian, guide, and protector of your ego’s evolving journey.
It’s much like when a child begs their parents for a puppy. While a child is enamored by the idea of having a cute furry friend to play with, parents have to field their child’s interest to determine if they will actually be as open to caring for the puppy as much as they are excited to hold one. Much is the same with having an ego. While it may seem more like an inner monster at times, there exists an equal need to care for its needs and help raise it through infancy, much like a puppy learning socialization skills from those who love them. In the same way a puppy can’t just run around tearing up carpet, furniture, and shoes without developing unhealthy habits, your ego can’t just be the part you play with by reading inspired wisdom and watching its mood momentarily change. While oscillating between patterns of desire and avoidance, it relies on you, the consciousness of the body, to provide the structure and consistency to help it face the unknown it only knows to hide from.
When an insight equally urges you to take a bold step you’ve been hesitating to take for quite some time, the ego’s only tactic in getting you to help it avoid reality is—pretending to be you. As this so commonly happens, it’s no longer a wise parent holding the hand of their child during a doctor’s visit, but the child hiding inside the body of a parent who now comes up with more sophisticated reasons to skip the appointment. Since the ego’s only game is pretending to be you, it is essential to make sure any insight that speaks to your soul equally comes with a moment of adult contemplation, simply by asking: “No matter the fears or risk of pain my ego anticipates, what newly-inspired choice is this moment of insight asking me to make?”
Yes, growth can be intense. Even painful to endure. But for those whose ego hide in avoidance, there remains a ‘half in the light, half in the dark’ pattern playing out, where change only seems scary to the one running from it. In order to become a true inspiration to others, you must be willing to venture in unpopular directions, even at the risk of inconvenience and discomfort, in order to see what has never been seen or shared before.
Even when a path of change or a journey into the unknown feels scary, risky, or even overwhelming, the purpose of insight is to supply you with perspective to help you face and overcome each fear with more bravery and faith. When inspired insight is more about preparing you to leap beyond your limits, a true evolutionary shift has occurred. It is a shift no longer limited to creating momentary state changes in the lives of those who refuse to change, but helping you find excitement in the unknown and all it is here to provide you. While you cannot know what awaits you on the other side until each leap is taken, please do not rely on the testimony of others, as if their journey reflects the same incredible fate you were born to so uniquely uncover.
Since the ego is like a child evolving within your body, you are the greater reality carrying it along—into, through, and beyond the fire of transformation. When not imagining the ego to be the you it pretends to be, you are able to take the biggest leaps and make your greatest strides that no amount of fear, panic, or resistance can prevent you from completing. All you need to know is how much better everything will be, as a brand new season premiere joyfully interrupts the stagnation of endless reruns throughout your life.
Change only seems scary to the one running from it. In honor of this insight, may today be the day to try something new. No matter the thoughts in mind or feelings being processed, I believe in you.
All for love,
Matt