T
he Path of Personal Development or spiritual path is a creative process. Something has to die, and something has to be born. That is the essence of a creative process.
Life is much more that we think. Life is much more than we even sense with our five senses. What we feel, see, hear, or touch together with what we believe is merely the superficial layer of life. Life was created as a conglomeration of vital and powerful forces to give lessons to all beings that come to experience the process of being alive. In the shamanic tradition, it is said that first, the Spirit or God Created powers, spirits, and Gods and then physical beings. These gods or spirits where higher forms of existence that were interacting with other, lesser forms. The game that immerged was life.
If you feel that you are in a dead-end in your life and your path, that is a sign that the point of spiritual death and rebirth is here - this is how it always happens. That is the creative process of transformation. At this moment is happening the end of your present level of being, of your current knowledge of life. What you were, up to this point, has to die, so inevitably, life brings you to this dead end. This "shamanic death" as shamans call it can be internal, in a psychological or spiritual level, or externally like a sum of situations that lead to experiencing this dead-end in your relationships, in your marriage, professionally, etc.
Now it is essential to understand that this creative process of evolution does not include only the first part of the shamanic death. Unfortunately, many people suffer from their lack of understanding and faith in life, where they stop only in this first step. The result of this is, of course, suffering. It is crucial in this moment of the destruction of the old to have enough understanding and consciousness to realize the creative process that is taking place. How many times do people ask for changes to happen in their lives and then resist it when it happens? TOO MANY!
If you want to empower yourself, you will pass this process. That's why it is crucial to understand the "path of the warrior." The spiritual warrior is training all his life to be able to pass this process of death and rebirth as smoothly as possible. Then he or she will be perfected.
So instead of suffering and resisting, you should do the same. You should fight to avoid to remain only in the death process but to realize the opportunity that the ending of the old brings. You should aspire to the new and the transformative. The new frontiers that are in front are always waiting for you to step forward to the higher level of consciousness.
I remember a situation that I was in many years ago at the beginning of my path where I had just started traveling around the world, searching for knowledge and transformation. I met a man in a train station somewhere in the Netherlands, and as we were waiting for the same train, we started to talk. We had some time, so I invited him to the nearby cafeteria. He told me his story that demonstrated precisely this: The power of transformation and the creative process of life. He was in his forty's, and he had recently lost his job, wife, house, and friends. All of these happened in a matter of a couple of months period. In the beginning, the blow was devastating. He thought of committing suicide. But as the days went by, he felt the relief of this heavy burden that surrounded him the first days as a "dark cloth of death," as he told me. He was drifting here and there like a shipwreck in the wild sea with no meaning or feeling of purpose. He was feeling that he was dying inside. But this lasted a few days or a couple of weeks, and then one day, he told me that he woke up with a feeling of serenity and peace. Everything around him was shining with a weird light of joy and happiness as he could explain it. He had no thoughts of suicide anymore, no heavy feeling, no burden, nothing. He felt a newborn man, something for sure had happened to him very deep and profound, and in this newfound state, he started gradually to realize that what had happened to him was more than a blessing in disguise rather than a disaster. Step by step, he realized that the opportunities that all these catastrophic events had created in his life were much more significant than what he had lost. He told me that his marriage was stagnant, and the same was the case with his job. The house was a bit more challenging to accept, but at the end of the day, he decided because of its loss to travel, something that was his dream for a long time. His friends, well as he realized what friends were these that abandoned him when he entered in a crisis? Certainly not good ones.
To be continued...