Week 4: Using Past Trauma as Your Great Ally

Your life purpose is desperately attempting to move through you. It is part of the mystical flow of life and is innately destined to use your presence in the world. This universal force is powerful and will make it difficult for you to find peace until you surrender to its will. A huge part of the journey as a human being is to merge your personal will with this universal will. But still, with so much in our favor, we manage to get tripped up.

Often, we get tripped up because past trauma has dampened our connection with our most powerful selves. In our need to survive and find belonging, we do our best to cope with painful experiences.

Well, here’s a secret. We all have past wounding. We were all raised by inherently imperfect parents because of their status as human beings. We’ve shut down our hearts in close personal relationships where another person was not able to meet our needs or love us unconditionally. We’ve even disappointed ourselves as adults by not being able to create the life or the personal change we desire.

The incredible twist in this story is this: You do not have to overcome this human trauma. Life on the physical plane was set up for you to fail. In reality, you haven’t failed, but your egoic attempts at fixing yourself or deriving happiness from the external world have failed. Seeing and accepting this is a magnificent realization! For then, the opportunity lies in the willingness to radically accept your imperfect human nature. Happiness and purpose do not arise from overcoming life’s difficulties, but by accepting them completely. You can let go of the stories, the fables created to explain what your personal discomfort or suffering means about you. It doesn’t mean that you can’t be of great service to others. It doesn’t mean that you are broken or stuck. It doesn’t mean that you aren’t special enough to create change in the world.

On the contrary, your human suffering can be your greatest ally because it breaks your heart open. It is an unrelenting master that continues to remind your ego that you do not have it “all figured out” and you never will. You may need a good cry about it, but on the other side of that grief is a deep surrender to the mystery of the universe. Your heart opens and compassion flows out for all on the journey of finding happiness on Earth. You experience deeper connection with others and a reverence for powers much larger than you.

With time, you recognize that you and the universal flow are not separate. You are the embodiment of the larger universal forces that are naturally and effortlessly expressing purpose. Then, you can simply smile and dance with the flow of existence.