I've had some people ask me over the past few years, "What if I don't want to grow?" My answer to them before was, "Then don't. You don't have to grow if you don't want to." That was the answer I had at the time and it was incorrect.
My answer now is, "You already are growing. It is impossible not to. We are all growing whether we want to or not. All of us are connected through Spirit. Our very souls are pulling us forward and the pressure you feel is not coming from outside of you. It is coming from inside of you. Your resistance to growth is the cause of the pressure."
A good analogy is like being in a river. Choosing not to grow is like swimming upstream... and what is happening now is that the current is getting stronger and stronger. We look downstream and we think we don't want to go that way because we have always been swimming upstream. We know it's hard, but we have been able to make progress this way before. We have convinced ourselves that the best rewards come from working very hard at something. The problem now is that it is getting much harder to make the same amount of progress. We no longer see our dreams working out using the methods we have been using, so we tell ourselves that it must be someone else's fault that we cannot create what we want. We tell ourselves that others are cheating us, that our government isn't serving us; that we have drifted from our values, etc. And all of that is a rationalization...meaning it is a rational lie.
The problem is that we have so identified with our mind and body as who we are that we believe we are that. We believe we are separate from others and separate from God.
We allow our ego minds to convince us that we don't have to grow, that nothing will change for us if we do. We tell ourselves that we can just avoid it, that the "enlightened" people are crazy... anything to avoid growing. We want to stay in our anger, in our frustrations. While it is not our dream, it is "the devil we know." It is ALL we know and if we allow ourselves even the slightest possibility that all we know is incorrect, we panic and feel like if what I know isn't true, then my life means nothing. This is also incorrect, because so much of what we know IS true... just not the way we think it is right now. What that means is that there are several layers of deeper truth that we can realize and apply in our lives if we are willing to give up what we "think" we know.
There is a story of a rich man asking Christ what was required to be a Master. Christ told him to "Give up everything and follow me." Now what has been misunderstood about this story is that many have thought Christ was saying for the man to give up his riches. God does not ask up to give up our abundance. What we have to give up is our identity of who and what we think we are. We have to completely give up our judgments of others, our anger and frustrations, every slightest grudge we hold against anyone, all of the sadness and sorrow we carry and even our own embarrassments and shame. We have to forgive everyone, allow everyone to forgive us and to forgive ourselves. We must understand that all of our lives have been an illusion and yet that it has all served a purpose in the evolution of our soul.
All of us are on this journey at various places right now. There are many who are not even able to hear this kind of message right now because they are still so enmeshed in the illusion that they cannot hear what we're saying. Some are further along and able to hear, but not able to understand. More are further along and understand it, but not yet able to apply it. A few can hear it, understand it, apply it, but have not mastered it, so they teach it to others so that they can master it. There are a few masters who use their high vibrations to help all of us.
We no longer have to leave our bodies in order to awaken to the truth of who we are. We can consciously release everything that separates us from the truth of who we are. Once we release it all, we don't have to try to be who we are. We don't have to try to be a good person. Good flows from us effortlessly. We don't have to try to be abundant. We follow the bliss of our natural talents, serving others and abundance flows to us easily. We don't have to try to find love... because we ARE Love and what flows out of us returns to us many times over.
What we cannot do is stop this process from happening. We can choose to continue swimming upstream, but the current is only going to get stronger from here. We are growing whether we like it or not and whether we want to or not.
In Conversations with God, it notes that the words, Change, Life, Growth and God can all be used interchangeably. So saying, "I don't want to grow" is like saying, "I don't want to live" or "I don't want to change" or "I am separate from others and God."
These things cannot be. We are connected. We are One with God. We can live from this place of knowing and our world can be a place of joy.
We can fight against the current... or accept it and flow merrily down the stream.
Copyright © 2009 Learning To Flow
Jeff Scholl is a Certified Spiritual Life Coach through Holistic Learning Centers and a Board Certified Holistic Health Practitioner through the American Association of Drugless Practitioners. He graduated from Southern Illinois University with honors in 1994 receiving a Bachelor of Science in Electronic Management. Jeff is also an Honorably discharged U.S. Navy veteran serving from 1983-1992. He coaches in private practice and teaches seminars on Creating Conscious Relationships and The Power of Forgiveness. For more information on Jeff and his Spiritual Life Coaching practice, visit Learning to Flow.com
