SPIRITUAL ATTRITION
Word Of The Week
ATTRITION
noun
the action or process of gradually reducing the strength or effectiveness of someone or something through sustained attack or pressure
When we are confronted with a painful experience or hard truth, it often doesn’t cut deep enough to implement change the first time around. It seems to be an unspoken rule of three, at least speaking from my own experience, before we actually process the event enough to determine how to respond. Attrition. When there are painful lessons to be learned, there is something within us that wants to resist learning. Again, I’m only speaking from my experience so it’s possible that I’m way off base with how you, specific reader, respond to things. However, I find that in these sorts of situations we tend to have more similarities to one another than differences. I’m not a psychologist, so I can’t confidently tell you why this phenomenon seems to persist, but I can give you my opinions.
As humans existing on this planet, we are programmed to maintain the illusion of control in order to survive. We aren’t really programmed to become self aware or heal our emotional body, as that is of no use when it comes to continuing the human race. Because of this, when we experience trauma, we are naturally programmed to keep the information from the traumatic event stored somewhere for safe keeping, to ensure our survival should it happen again in the future. We are not naturally programmed to identify the root of the trauma, comfort the past version of you who experienced it, and heal from it emotionally. This is where our spiritual self comes into play. Our spiritual self is constantly trying to show us how to get back in touch with our love. Our spiritual self recognizes the trauma and urges us to talk to it, understand it, let it teach us and then let it go. I think this becomes such a difficult task when our spiritual side is incongruent with our physical side. We are programmed to avoid the pain in order to survive and reproduce, but this does not help us release the pain.
And so, our spiritual side understands we need to be confronted with the pain until it’s impossible to ignore. We are given situation after situation that triggers the same emotional response as the first traumatic event, in hopes that this time we will confront it honestly and understand where it comes from and what it is trying to tell us. It certainly is not an easy process, and oftentimes is even accompanied by fear, since your physical body perceives this as a threat to its survival. But if we are able to push through, and actively seek out truth within, I believe there is another side to the pain that is a level of peace and joy we were unable to feel before. That being said, as long as we are human beings on Earth, there will always be new painful experiences and lessons to be learned. The exciting part about this, though, is that it means there are also equally as many chances to release the pain and experience greater levels of peace and joy. The only control we maintain is whether to listen to our physical mind or our spiritual mind, and you always have the freedom to choose.
LOVE, JENNA
