In the last year or so I have been up and down and in and out. I think I’m ahead only to turn around and perceive that I’m actually last in whatever race I am running at the moment.

My friend and colleague Liz is a therapist but also quite metaphysical. She has said that this period of my life is one for massive growth and change. Her unspoken comment is that it’s up to me to seize the opportunity to find and make something of the calling that has been following me for years.

She sent me the following article from a self-help and growth website called “Daily OM.”

Sometimes our lives contract before they expand.

However, there is nothing we need to do at this time other than to be patient and persevering.

We may be working hard on ourselves spiritually, doing good in the world, following our dreams, and wondering why we are still facing constrictions of all kinds: financial, emotional, physical.

Perhaps we even feel as if we’ve lost our spirituality and are stuck in a dark room with no windows. We may be confused and discouraged by what appears to be a lack of progress.

But sometimes this is the way things work. Like a caterpillar that confines itself to a tiny cocoon before it grows wings and flies, we are experiencing the darkness before the dawn.

When things feel tight, it’s easy to panic or want to act in some way to ease the feeling of constriction. We might also spin our wheels mentally, trying to understand why things are the way they are.

We can cling to the awareness that we are processing the shift from one stage to another, and the more we surrender to the experience, the more quickly we will move through the tightness into the opening on the other side.

Just like a baby making its way down the birth canal, we may feel squeezed and pushed and very uncomfortable, but if we remember that we are on our way to being born into a new reality, we will find the strength to carry on.

Even as we endure the contractions, we can find peace within ourselves if we remember to trust the universe. We can look to the natural world for inspiration as we see that all beings surrender to the process of being born.

In that surrender, and in the center of our own hearts, is a willingness to trust in the unknown as we make our way through the opening.

http://www.dailyom.com/articles/2013/37108.html

by Madisyn Taylor, the co-founder and editor-in-chief of DailyOM

Madisyn Taylor of DailyOm