Have you noticed that it feels like we are all in a giant pressure cooker? That the discomfort, maybe even pain and pressure is going up and up and up and up? And the relief never seems to come? You may have found yourself wondering what the hell is happening. Well, there is actually a reason this is happening. And knowing that reason, may just help you to find your way out of the pressure cooker. 

The dynamic that is at the root of all of this is mankind’s tendency and capacity to exist in an “out of alignment” state of being. In this context, what does it mean to be in alignment? It means for there to be agreement and harmony rather than discrepancy or conflict in the way you exist both internally and externally. This implies thinking, saying and doing things that are true to who you are, that are in line with your wellbeing, that are consistent with what is truly right for you, and that are a match to what you truly value and truly desire. 

So that you understand this better, let’s say that what you truly want is to be in supportive relationships. To keep yourself in relationships with people who prove to be unsupportive, is to be out of alignment. Or let’s say that you value family above all else, but you spend the majority of your time working away from them. This is to be out of alignment. Or let’s say that the truth of who you are, is that you are a leader. But you consistently choose to follow so as to avoid conflicts, this is to be out of alignment. Or let’s say that what is in alignment with your wellbeing is to be in nature, but you live in the city, this is to be out of alignment. When your thoughts, words, behaviors, values, health, desires, choices and actions are not consistent with one another, you are out of alignment.     

People tend to go out of alignment and then develop strategies to tolerate misalignment, rather than seeking true change. It isn’t like life is going good for you when you do this. Life hurts. Things feel wrong. But if you are like most people, you take the edge off of that pain in some way so that you can handle that out of alignment state of being. And because of this, you are unresponsive to the pain and pressure and signs that you are out of alignment. As well as to the universal promptings to get back into alignment. Knowing all this, the pressure cooker dynamic is down to two things.

1. When you are out of alignment in some way, you are lining up with what is not true to who you are, not in line with your wellbeing, not what is truly right for you, and not what you truly value and truly desire. Your energy will be going there. To unwanted things. And so, more and more of that will manifest in your lived experience. A worsening and worsening will naturally occur.    
2. The universe is enhancing this worsening with a pressure cooker dynamic, intensifying discomfort and negative effects of misalignment, due to people’s non-responsiveness to it, so that you can’t ignore it or cope with it anymore. It is doing so in order to snap people back into alignment. The universe is snapping people into alignment and into their rightful place by making misalignment too painful to maintain. 

This process is not just happening at a personal level, and it is also happening at a more macrocosmic level, with humanity and the world itself. This is why you see such an amplification of what was and is out of alignment within humanity and within the world. So, we are seeing this amplification happen as crises in people’s personal lives as well as crises within whole populations of people. We are seeing it manifest as destruction or death in people’s personal lives and also destruction and death on a global level. We are seeing the worst expressions of self in individuals, but also in governments. You may be seeing an amplification of health issues in yourself as an individual, but you are also seeing an amplification of ill-health in the environment, especially where nature meets humans.

This pressure cooker dynamic is unbearable, because it is designed to be. It is designed to be a way of making it so that a person literally cannot stay out of alignment. And so that the collective of humanity and the world cannot stay out of alignment. It is designed to make it so that people have no other way out other than to snap. But snap back into alignment. This is not often a smooth or pretty process though. After all, people have very real reasons for being out of alignment and staying out of alignment. Very real terrors and yes, even pains that they are up against in getting back into alignment. And so, the resistance to getting into alignment is HUGE. People tend to try to resist harder when this pressure cooker dynamic is occurring. They double down on their coping mechanisms and go more out of alignment before snapping back into alignment. You are probably recognizing some of this in the people in your life already, if not in yourself. 

Some people have a higher tolerance for the discomfort and pain that comes with being out of alignment. This makes them less responsive in general. When this is the case, the pressure will increase until they literally reach a “snapping point.” Humanity has demonstrated a tolerance for what is out of alignment on a collective level, especially for collective unhappiness. So, here too, there is a snapping point. Change is being forced; people can no longer somewhat uncomfortably remain in misaligned states. 

To give you a taste of this pressure cooker, say that someone is struggling with feeling powerless and wants to be able to actually do things that bring about a better result. But say that they are acting out of alignment with their own personal power. The pressure cooker will escalate situations where they experience disempowerment until they can’t take it anymore and re-claim their power. They may take an empowered action and be forced to draw on a powerful inner resource. 

Or for example, say that someone values integrity, but keeps behaving in flaky ways. The consequences of behaving flaky will escalate, as will situations that cause them to become aware of the fact that they are flaky. They will encounter flaky people everywhere they go and suffer from the consequences these people create. Until there is an acknowledgement that they have to keep their word and be on time and follow through and keep the plans they set and stay true to their commitments and promises. 

Or let’s say that people in general are in a position of valuing freedom and kindness, but they are part of a country with a government that restricts their freedoms and behaves in corrupt and cruel ways. This will escalate, becoming worse and worse until they finally act so as to bring down that government and demand/create a new form of government. Of course, these examples are objective pictures of what is occurring. They do no justice to the actuality of such an experience, any more than saying "they were plunged into frigid waters” does justice to the actual experience that those on the Titanic endured when they actually plunged into the North Atlantic Ocean which happened to be about 28 degrees Fahrenheit, or -2 degrees Centigrade). 

So, what should you do about all this? 

1. Accept that even though it does not feel like it, from objective perspective, what feels like it is happening against you in your life right now, is actually happening for you. And accept you are not going to get out of the pressure without making serious changes to turn what is out of alignment into what is in alignment. It will snap you. To use a popular phrase, your resistance is futile. 
2. “Get ahead” of the universal pressure cooker; take proactive action. Stop putting up with discomfort. Stop tolerating what feels wrong. Do not wait for discomfort to escalate. Notice the increased discomfort you are feeling and use it to define what’s not right for you. Recognize what is out of alignment. Identify what is a “no” for you (misaligned, draining, wrong) and stop doing it. Identify what is a “yes” for you (aligned, authentic, right) and commit to it. Where is there agreement and harmony in yourself and in your life and where is there discrepancy or conflict in yourself and in your life experience? How are you thinking, saying and doing things that are NOT in line with your wellbeing, that are inconsistent with what is truly right for you, and that are the opposite of what you truly value and truly desire. Really think about this: “If the heat gets turned up on this in that the situation worsens, if I were to act in alignment with what I truly want, what will my reaction be? What will I do? What will be a yes and what will be a no?” 
3. Immediately start making the changes that will become necessary later if things get worse. Take steps in advance to align with what’s genuinely right for you. Keep in mind that when it comes to alignment, it never works to just do fill in the blank that is out of alignment, so that you can get fill in the blank that is in alignment with what you want. There is no such thing as “misalignment now, so that I can get alignment later”. Consider first: What am I wanting? And from this vision and with this vision in mind, consider what to do and how to deal with things, especially unwanted situations, in a way that is in alignment with what you truly want.    

So that you understand this better, here is a real-life example. River just turned 40. River grew up in a childhood home that really did not adjust for her best interests in any way. The house revolved around her mother, who was diagnosed with a severe anxiety disorder. In order to adapt to this environment, which was out of alignment for River to be in, River was on her own to accomplish anything she wanted to accomplish. She did not have real support. Rather, her parents would do things for her only when it served their best interests in some way. For example, when they wanted her to go preoccupy herself, so that they could have time without the pressure of having to watch children, they would buy her a bike. She would then use that bike to get where she wanted to go. River overcompensated for the lack of actual support by becoming super competent and capable and putting all the pressure on herself, none on others. The problem is, it was out of alignment for River to pick up all the pressure and take it off of everyone else. Over time, this has gotten her into more and more trouble. She keeps getting into situations where people ride her coattails and set up gaslighting situations where they profess to be supporting her, but really it is the other way around. They are coasting on River. It has become a real “support me, so that I can support you” dynamic. River is now a company owner. No surprise there. But she has been so out of alignment in this way: She wants to be supported. She needs a team that is really pulling their own weight and taking pressure off of her. But when the company gets into a pinch, the people in her company always find a way to put the pressure back on her to do what it takes to pull them all out of the hot water. Some days she wonders why she even has people working for her, if she has to do everything so that they can get a paycheck. 

This situation, in this pressure cooker dynamic, gets worse and worse and worse. The man that she hires as her CEO embezzles money and puts the company into debt, all personally secured by River herself before bailing without finding a replacement. The company has no money to sue. The rest of the company doesn’t hustle to make enough to cover expenses, leaving River to take on double the work to cover for it. The woman who replaces the old CEO gets them into even deeper trouble, this time with the taxes and with slipping into the behavior of passivity. River feels like she has to do everything herself, which she literally can’t do given that she has a very specific role in the company that can’t be dropped. And certainly not in a company of its size. Despite it being impossible to do, more people start bailing out of the company, leaving her to have to downsize and sell her personal house to cover for the debt. River’s health takes a bad turn because of all the pressure she is abandoned to deal with alone. River is brought to a snapping point. The snapping point of: “I cannot carry other people on my shoulders. I literally cannot do it anymore. I am putting the pressure that people should be carrying back on them and I’m holding them accountable to it. And if they refuse to take it, I do not want them in my life. And if this means I have to fold my company, then I will do it and find some other way to do what I do.”

If River had realized this pressure cooker dynamic were happening, she would have stopped tolerating the discomfort of people putting all the pressure on her. Every time it happened; she would have put the pressure back on them. She also would have put in the necessary preventative measures to ensure that they couldn’t do so in sneaky ways, like using her name to take on debt or accessing her accounts or getting into dispersed responsibility dynamics in the business, so no one can be held accountable. She would have started to set up the structure of the company and her life in general in different ways where she isn’t the back-up plan for things going wrong. She would proactively practice the art of letting other people pull their weight and putting pressure on other people and making them face the ways that they are refusing to take pressure that should be theirs to take. She would have proactively started doing trauma work relative to the lack of support she experienced. In her romantic relationships, when a man ceases to put in effort to stay connected and make the relationship good, she would stop herself from overcompensating for his lack of effort and instead, mirror his effort level. Of course, this means being willing to potentially experience the pain of relationship loss. 

In alignment with this pressure cooker dynamic that is currently going on in such an extreme way, and people’s general lack of responsiveness to all the things on the road to a level 10 reflection of misalignment, a lot of people are experiencing or are going to be experiencing the things that catalyze drastic change. Things like crisis, death, loss, drastic worsening, health issues, wars, drastic political shifts, climate catastrophes, traumas, things coming to an abrupt end, collapse of things that were depended on, relationship patterns becoming intolerable, the arrival of a baby, financial disasters, geographical moves and accidents. A lot of which is experienced as dystopian.   

If you are like so many of us, currently struggling big time with this pressure cooker situation, another good video of mine to watch is: The How Might This Be For Me Exercise. 

Again, it does not feel like any of what you are experiencing is for you. But this pressure cooker you are in, is trying to make you aware of what is not in alignment and to snap you back into alignment. Ultimately to put you back into alignment with what is really good and right for you. What you really, truly want. And the more ahead of this process you can get, the better.