Reality is a higher power. Running from it is pointless. And yet, run you do. You ignore anything that is too emotionally risky, difficult, or inconvenient. The number of sneaky plots you can mastermind to avoid the truth is limitless. Two of the best places to hide are denying the reality of a job and denying the reality of a relationship—or both.
Up to a certain age, every single job you have spurs growth. But after, let’s say, 40, choosing to stay in a job that isn’t compelling you to grow to your highest potential is denying reality. It’s a way to hide. You play a lot of the “yes, but…” game. Yes, you could be acting on the whispers of your Spirit, but interviewing is a drag, and you have health insurance. Yes, you could fulfill your role in the universe by being loyal to your Creative Intelligence. But art is hard, and the money is good here. The armor of past accomplishments protects you from a soul-expanding risk today. You ignore the reality that you aren’t in the right place. You ignore your body’s outright revolt, showing up as isolation and chronic pain. You deny the soul-stomping monotony of a lack of real challenge.
Another popular hiding spot is denying the reality of a relationship. You survive on rationalization and justification. You deny that all you can feel is a fabricated love mania or a bone-deep loneliness. There is no peaceful middle. Maintaining the denial requires lying to yourself and everyone else, often by omission. You make excuses for how people mistreat, disrespect, and lie to you and refuse to see how you do the same to them. You win the Guinness Book of World Records title yearly for time spent walking on eggshells. But magical thinking tells you that tomorrow will be different. You refuse to see glaring patterns playing out. You avoid the reality that you are with the wrong person. And, most important, that you are the wrong person.
The entry fee to Fantasyland is your self-loving and sustaining soul. You trade a higher and true state of being for something lower and deceitful. You’re afraid of letting there be light because you still want to hide in the dark. In your mind’s eye, you are a vibrant, dynamic person from long ago. But, the old, abandoned grief behind your eyes tells you the opposite. One by one, the lights go out in your house of possibility until you’re cowering in the corner of a back closet. Safe? Yes. But cornered nonetheless.
At some point, you run out of tactics and recognize that the pain of the past didn’t die. You’re then ready for the healing power of facing reality. You can put your hands up and walk in the direction of The Truth, undefended. Ready to befriend it for the holy advocate it is. You are prepared to interact with your vulnerability. You become open to the warmth of a loving Light.
Living in reality feels like soul-aligning peace. Your portion of life’s suffering operates in service to people and places essential to your being and purpose. Your surrender to The Truth is personal, but the walk is universal, intended to be hand-in-hand. You can finally experience life and give the best of yourself.
Song Accompaniment: Call Your Mom – Noah Kahan and Lizzy McAlpine
Quote: Those who are truly decrepit, living corpses, so to speak, are the middle-aged, middle-class men and women who are stuck in their comfortable grooves and imagine that the status quo will last forever or else are so frightened it won’t that they have retreated into their mental bomb shelters to wait it out. –Henry Miller
Artwork: The Art of Seth
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