I suspect a great many people who visit my blog do so because they are interested in personal growth. I have spent my personal and professional lives towards this goal – the concept that life is a continual evolution towards wholeness. Life is an ongoing process of incorporating more and more into consciousness.  

This sounds nice. It is also one of the most difficult, scary tasks a person can take up. I warn patients this is no yuppie hobby – you will be transformed and the process will be ugly and completely unsettling. Going into counseling or analysis should only be done when you have “no choice” – and with the realization you don’t know what you are in for.  

Why is this so scary? It involves realizing most of what you learned is wrong. It requires you to break away from your tribe(s) and go into places you did not know existed and doubt they are there. It sends you on the Dark Night Journey; it drives you into the Wilderness. And you will feel bad for doing it. It evokes depression.

And you are tested.  Everyone on this journey goes through some sort of test; think of the great minds who were tempted by devils – can they be broken? Could they be bought?  When I read or interview the ‘sages’, they all agree when they were called, they didn’t want to go. It required them to forgo all. It was terrifying not knowing where they were going; it required trust in something – God or the gods – and a surrender to some vision they did not want in the first place. 

Most lost their friends and loved ones along the way – the people they were with prior to ‘awakening’. I don’t have a lot of success stories of people who grew and their spouse and companions went with them.  

It sounds rather bleak.  

Nevertheless, the journey of Self-growth will give you something wonderful in place of something small or false. It is rather like exchanging fool’s gold for real gold.

The price is terrible, but the reward is beyond belief.