How To Measure Your Progress by Bernhard Guenther
Regardless of what is occurring in one’s outer life, the TRUE measure of how developed one’s soul is and how integrated and embodied we are, is mirrored to us by how we REACT to ORDINARY everyday circumstances.
It shows itself by our emotional reactions (or numbness/suppression) and how easily we get triggered and thus blame others and external conditions or project our unconscious shadow on others – or we shut down, avoid and try to hide from life and the world, getting stuck in our comfort zone.
The point of esoteric, spiritual, psychological, and somatic work is not about eliminating challenges (even though they might be alleviated to some degree), but rather how we change, transmute and transform by facing life and reality directly; becoming more objective with ourselves and the world and face any challenge with full self-responsibility.
This is also the gateway to real Love. Childish and immature love is conditional and demands attention and validation from others. If it doesn’t get what it wants, it blames others for it, or it blames itself for not “being good enough,” getting stuck in self-pity, poor-me, shame, self-importance, entitlement, and narcissism.
Mature love is unconditional, takes self-responsibility, and loves even if it doesn’t get what it wants or prefers. We all have the immature child within us, acting out at various times.
If we can spot it, it’s a chance to heal this wounded child, which can also relate to past life trauma and not necessarily related to your current childhood in your present lifetime.
It’s important for this child to experience, express, and feel repressed emotions of sadness, fear, anger, abandonment, shame, etc. without projecting it externally.
This process needs to happen somatically — through the body. You cannot think yourself through it as this only results in more self-deception. The intellectual recognition of your “issues” is not enough and is only the very beginning of a much deeper emotional and somatic inner process.
In fact, your intellect can fool you that you are doing “self-work” but you can waste many years just intellectualizing the process. Moreover, there is only so much self-work you can do just by yourself.
Therefore, you can gauge your own progress change by witnessing changes in your reactions to the troubles and difficulties you face as well. Life keeps going onwards and keeps expanding, handing us challenges according to the law of ascent and descent, lessons that are different for each of us.
It’s part of choosing this 3D experience of duality and essentially not getting attached to either “positive” or “negative” experiences, going beyond hope and fear, attachment and grasping, pleasure and pain.
The more you are embodied and integrated on a soul level, the more these challenges in life will no longer have the power to throw you off, upset you, make you stressed out, fearful, worried, etc., and the better you are able to process what comes up in the moment.
Godspeed.
Bernhard Guenther
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