In case you hadn’t noticed, something is happening in the universe. Maybe you’ve been noticing that life is feeling more difficult than ever. Maybe you’ve been feeling like you’re being pushed to the edge in an emotional pressure cooker. Or maybe you’ve been feeling like your attempts to create the life you want are proving futile, as you find yourself in the very situations you were desperate to experience the opposite of. There is a reason for all of this!
Let’s start out by jumping right to the punchline. What is happening in the universe right now is that each and every person is being forced to face the very thing that they have spent their life avoiding, running from and using coping mechanisms to get out of.
So that you can wrap your head around this, I’ll give you some examples: The person who has been avoiding stepping into their power for as long as they can remember is likely to find themselves in a situation where that is the only way forward. A person who was traumatized by aloneness, will find themselves back in that aloneness and being forced to feel it and explore it and understand it to the degree that they are no longer running from it. A person who has spent their life trying to run from failure through successes, will see everything they try to do fall apart until their relationship with failure changes for the better. A person who is in avoidance of responsibility will find themselves in a situation where they cannot avoid responsibility, no matter how hard they try, so they will find themselves choosing it for the first time. You get the point.
The very thing we are the most afraid of, we are being forced to confront to the degree that we are no longer walking the earth in fear and resistance to it. The reason this is happening is both microcosmic and macrocosmic. On a microcosmic level, when a person is desperate to get away from something, the various beliefs they form, behaviors they employ and actions they end up taking to get themselves away from it, bring about terrible results. Often ones that bring them in the opposite direction from what they want and thus, create intense suffering. And as a result, this desperate avoidance acts as an oppositional force to a person’s personal expansion. Avoidance gets in the way of a person’s wellbeing and what a person needs and wants.
On a macrocosmic level, when all the people of earth are stuck in this pattern of avoidance, and they can band together when they agree upon something that is to be avoided, the various beliefs they form, behaviors that they employ and actions they take, bring about terrible results that create suffering for the world. Avoidance gets in the way of the world’s wellbeing and what the world needs and wants.
On paper, this all sounds straightforward. But on a practical level (and for some more than others) this is so difficult, if not unthinkable, that no words do it justice. I’ll give you just one example of this playing out on someone’s life. Cassidy grew up in a rough culture, where vulnerability of any kind was seen as a weakness and weakness had no place. Vulnerability was the road to incredible suffering and exploitation. It just made having to fend for herself worse. So, Cassidy has been avoiding vulnerability all her life. To put it mildly, she had to “man up” from the time she was three. But she has been wanting someone to fend for her all her life. That is her missing need. To avoid vulnerability, Cassidy has become uber competent, strong willed, harsh, hyper responsible, competitive, focused on achievement, domineering, intense, opinionated, charismatic and she’s developed serious grit. But because of this, no one wants to take care of her. In fact, she attracts the exact opposite. She attracts men who prove to be weak and who want her to protect them and take responsibility for them and encourage them and coach them out of their weaknesses and vulnerabilities, like the father these men never had.
The very thing that Cassidy wants and the very thing that would be in alignment with her wellbeing is being prevented by the thoughts, behaviors and actions that she is engaged in, in order to avoid vulnerability. And the suffering is really racking up. So now, the universe is forcing her into her vulnerability. She is now in a situation where a forest fire burned down her home and the riding school she had built. Her third husband had an emotional breakdown because of the trauma of the experience and left her to man up and deal with the damage herself, while he was out of commission and even to help him deal with his breakdown. And this caused her to lose respect for him and also for them to grow apart because there was no one there for her in her darkest time. So now, they are on the verge of divorce. Her best friend just moved to another state. And now, she started feeling sick and was just informed that she needs to have bowel surgery.
Cassidy is being literally forced into the very thing that she has spent her life disowning and resisting and denying and rejecting and trying to avoid… Her vulnerability. The solution to this, is for her to stop doing what she has been doing all her life, which is trying to get out of it. Trying to re-establish her power. Instead, she needs to recognize, sit with, re-own and integrate her vulnerability. The feelings of being unable to control life into working out the way she wants it to. The parts of her that are lost and that don’t have any of the answers and are confused. The needs she feels ashamed of, because they make her feel weak, such as the need for guidance and the need for reassurance and the need for comfort. And she needs to explore the discomfort she feels when someone else is in charge or is in the top position. Ironically, doing this, rather than avoiding her vulnerability, will cause her to be able to have that relationship that she wants, where a man is truly fending for her.
When we are desperate to avoid something, our whole life becomes about avoiding that thing. For example, if we are desperate to avoid the feeling of not belonging, we might adopt a codependent relational style. We might put on a fake personality to establish a sense of sameness with our friends and dupe them in the process. We might get addicted to alcohol to numb the pain of inauthenticity. We might choose to enter a group and do whatever is needed so that we can feel that we are wanted, rather than to do what we are actually good at and actually enjoy doing. We might thwart our own successes, if they threaten our social connections. We might marry someone one week after we meet them and end up suffering in an incompatible marriage. We might suppress our own truths and desires and needs, if they even remotely threaten to differ from those of the people around us. And the list goes on and on.
Our lives become an absolute mess because of the beliefs we form, behaviors we employ and actions we end up taking to get ourselves away from whatever it is that we are desperate to avoid, because it is what we are the most afraid of and it is the thing we don’t want to experience the very most. The solution is to consciously get on board with ending this avoidance pattern and to choose to face and integrate the very thing you’ve been avoiding.
Universally, time has run out for humanity to change patterns on our own terms and at our own pace. What we are a match to on a microcosmic level as individuals and on a macrocosmic level as humanity, is the universal timer running out and the universal pressure cooker being turned WAY up, so change is literally forced. Kind of a do or die situation. We are being cornered so we can’t keep running from what we were trying to avoid. Where it literally won’t work to keep coping to get out of the acknowledgement and experience of what we are trying to avoid. Given that this is what is going on in the universe right now, we are likely to find ourselves in the very situation we have spent our lives trying to avoid. No one will be exempt from being put directly into what we are so desperate NOT to experience. Many of you reading this have already ended up in that very situation.
The good news is that the solution to what is happening right now in the universe, is to figure out what you are trying desperately to avoid. And to stop avoiding that thing. Because ironically, the thing you want the most will only be actualized as a result of doing so.
