Being UNcomfortable
What do you think of this statement: If you’re not uncomfortable, you’re not doing things right. That sounds a little harsh, a little dramatic.
Here’s where I’m coming from: Consider the last time you did something without thinking about it: it just happened. Good or bad, the ease with which you engaged in the action means you’ve done it before. Many time. So many times that the neural pathways in your brain fire to complete this action with almost no thought on your part. It’s automatic and reactive.
I think about driving home: sometimes I don’t even notice getting off on Exit 44 until after I’ve done it and am a half mile down 36th Street. Or a maybe I hear a certain tone of voice or a receive a particular look: BOOM! I react without thinking about it. I don’t even know that I’ve done it until it’s done.
When you’ve been an addict for the past 10, 15, 20 years, what comes naturally is rarely what is best for your life. Actually, for any of us, what comes automatically is rarely what’s best. Patterned ways of being: automatic, easy, natural, reactive, comfortable….these are not experiences that will produce a different life with different results.
We all know the common saying, “If you’re doing what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always gotten.” And when you’re at 255 Division S., you don’t want what you’ve always gotten because it’s gotten you here. You’re here because you have nothing left. You’re here because you want something different. This ‘something different’ doesn’t come out of what’s easy or automatic.
We think about being uncomfortable in such a negative way, like it’s all suffering and pain and agony and willpower.
But, there’s a different way of interpreting being uncomfortable: the thrill of the unknown, the excitement of POSSIBILITY, the stretching and breaking that’s GROWTH.
I’ve been reading Anthony DeMello recently and in his Awareness book, he states that it’s not the fear of the unknown that holds us back, it’s having to give up what we know. That statement really hit me. “What we know” is comfortable. We know how to navigate, we know how to get what we (think) we need or want. Letting go of the certainty of what we know is extremely uncomfortable.
It takes courage to let go of ‘the known’ for the Possibilities in an uncertain future.
That is what we push every day. What is possible in your life, in your relationships, in your spirituality? What is possible? Am I willing to step into a little discomfort to experience some of those possibilities?? Are you? -B