Develop. Embrace growth as your purpose. Commit to evolving internal awareness, in your actions taken in the world, in relationships in all their forms, with all manners of beings on the planet, ultimately deepening the sense of life as sacred. And more importantly, to continue. To refuse what is akin to dying. Frankly, I’ve been dead in the past. And I prefer to be alive.
How do we know if expansion—EXPANDing—has occurred? We know because we experience more potential to step away from Pain and Self-deception, to find some space. We become less blended to borrow ego-state language, and we obtain more flexibility in our responses. In practical terms, expansion means that the things that trigger us can be recognized but don’t have to hijack us to the point that we get lost in the past or get caught in the trance of an addiction. Expansion provides at least enough metacognition so that we can quiet the voices sufficiently and move with intention.
This is never a perfect resolution, not the ending that we may wish for in our romanticized fiction. We move forward with an embodied hope but never with “truth” as many would depict it: factual certainty or something that can be used competitively or to solidify status and the status quo. Our Truth is something that we cultivate and evolve, doing our best to anchor what we learn in a ground of wisdom.