Extreme Situations: Something to Be Grateful For in Retrospect?

Thinking out loud

I am thinking about extreme situations. Strangely, I have dealt with a lot of extreme situations (I wrote about a couple of them here and here). I am saying “strangely” because there was a time where I really didn’t think that extreme situations had anything to do with me, oh how naive I was. :)

Interestingly, I have observed that as a result of having been through extreme situations, I got calmer and kinder (after the necessary time passed). The experiences were excruciating, not fun in any way, I did not like them in any way at all. But as a result, I got calmer and kinder. And having lived through them helped me stay alert and composed in 2020.

I am curious, what kind of extreme situations have you dealt with, and what did they do for you?

Philosophically, the “kinder and calmer” dynamic makes sense to me because, the way I see it, extreme situations exist to teach us something about our soul. They make sense if we consider the view—shared by many of our ancestors in the olden days—that we come to this world to do a a particular job, and that we choose that job before being born.

Here is a metaphor.

Imagine if you were a very beautiful spiritual being, curious, creative, and rooted in love.

Imagine that after a while, you wanted to try something new, and you decided to explore what it would be like if your knowledge of love were challenged, if it were put under stress, if you forgot that you were a beautiful spiritual being with beautiful wings. it’s kind of like some people want to try themselves out at extreme sports, etc. You want to get stronger. You want to put yourself in a situation that will make you stronger, and you also want to do something good for the world.

And so, with your permission, you get your wings tied up, you get put in a cage, and you get thrown in a river—and of course, before all that, you are given a bundle of secrets: a magical knife that can free your wings on its own, a key that can unlock the cage, and a compass that will guide you home.

But as you get thrown into the river, you feel shocked, and you forget that you have a bundle of secrets. And you can only remember about having a bundle of secrets in your possession when you are calm because when you are freaked out, your memory doesn’t work.

What you are not told, and that is something that you get to figure out on your own, is that the key to not freaking out is love, the very love that you knew all along, and that you came to this world to grow and reaffirm.

The End

PS. We’ll talk about it tomorrow (Friday April 26 at 2pm) during the paid subscriber call, the zoom link is in the chat.

Dealing with Uncertainty

Spiritual Possession: Looking at the Spooky Subject Without the Spook

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