Earlier today I began thinking about somebody from my past, and what came to mind was how easily falling back can happen, even after deep change.
It was a friend – I’d still call her a friend actually, although we don’t really speak much anymore and I never see her because she now lives miles away.
And what came in to my mind is: how people change.
More particularly I want to talk about this in terms of: being awake and of falling back to sleep.
This friend of mine is about ten years older than me and when we met, she was already wide awake to all things spiritual and metaphysical.
I really respected her insights on healing practices and what it takes to heal and she introduced me to authors and innovators at the perfect time to expand my understanding of the visions and dreams that I was receiving back then.
She was always so thorough in her research and integrity of the people she trained with and the processes she used.
And then over the years something changed in her.
From a woman who only ever chose holistic methods of healing she went full swing into big pharma and the products they recommend.
This woman was as much a conspiracy theorist as I am and boy, back in the day did WE have some amazing conversations that would have anyone within earshot doing a double take on what we were discussing.
But she flipped right back to being someone who followed her doctor’s orders.
I was shocked when she told me her list of medications.
This was someone who previously had healed herself and many others through light and sound frequencies – years before it became popular! I’m talking early 2000’s and we were already seeing near miraculous results from some of the technologies that were around even back then.
I said to her: What changed?
And she simply said that she couldn’t hold it any more.
She couldn’t hold her beliefs together as the world that surrounded her was so in opposition.
Her workplace, her location, her family – she said that she felt as if everything was against her and the easiest thing she could do was to cave in and go along with the crowd.
She told me that it was hard to do that.
She knew that she was putting toxic substances into her body.
She knew that she was dumbing herself down by no longer challenging the status quo – just accepting and giving in.
But she’d run out of energy and she couldn’t hold her values anymore.
It was just easier to give in, she said.
I felt sad after this conversation with her. We hugged and she cried. But said that she couldn’t go on any longer, fighting for who she was inside…
This was almost five years ago now and since that time I’ve watched quite a number of people who had previously held firm spiritual and holistic views, just simply let go of them and become a person that I don’t know anymore.
You could argue what “awake” really means…. Does it mean anything?
And we could enter a vast conversation about expansion of consciousness or exiting the matrix – or whether a matrix even exists! #iykyk
But for the purposes of this article I wanted to show you how, even when you think you have made a change or a shift of consciousness, that it can sometimes be difficult to hold yourself at that new or higher level.
I think it’s perhaps a bit like somebody fighting against addiction, or depression. Or simply when you’re living a life that you don’t love and you’re trying to work out how you can change it.
It can be hard to do that on your own.
I think we all need support at times…
But the problem is that many of us don’t reach out.
We don’t want to ask for help and we don’t want to appear weak.
And even when we do reach out sometimes we’re asking for help in the wrong places!
I’ve been thinking about the number of times I’ve reached out to a coach or supporter just to discover that even when I do everything they tell me to do, that it doesn’t work!
Why? Because we’re all unique and what works for them may not work for you or I.
What I took from that conversation was this…
It’s not always about whether you’ve “woken up” or not.
It’s about whether you can hold yourself there… hold yourself awake when everything around you is geared to making you fall asleep again.
Because when you can’t hold it, it becomes very easy to drift back into what is familiar and most general.
Not because you don’t know.
And that’s something I’ve seen happen more than once.