Personal growth is not about filling yourself into a pre-set
path. It’s not about meeting specs, whereby if
you do x, you will become y, let
alone being obligated to any x in
particular.
A true path of growth is ultimately unlimited. The way this is possible is that you are not growing into anything in particular. In fact, you are not the only thing you’re growing. You are growing reality itself.
Creation vs. Exploration
On the home page, I’ve stated the purpose of this website as “to explore and understand reality.” I’m feeling out of resonance with that, however, because the goals of exploration and understanding in themselves assume a limited, objective reality. You can only explore and understand something that exists independently of you.
Conversely, to create consciously can only occur within the context of a subjective, growing, boundless reality. While you can have the experience of creating consciously in a reality you deem to be objective, you’ll always perceive that the unfolding events are not 100% you. You’ll always see them as separate from you, to an extent, and in so doing you limit your ability to create in full consciousness (and therefore, in full power and creative ability).
Ultimately, reality is not objective. As such, I have no desire to pretend that I am a passive observer, which is what happens when reality is perceived to be objective. That’s not why I’m here. If I wanted to live passively, I would have stayed in a realm where everything is one, not just conceptually (as it is here) but experientially, too.
I see I’ve been going about things all wrong. I’ve imagined that there is a path somewhere I have to follow to find the pot of gold. I’ve been assuming there is a reality “out there” that I must explore every inch of, to the point where I have as complete an understanding as possible. I’ve been trying to get the story right.
But there is no getting the story right. The point is not to study the story intricately and then tell the story accurately. The point is to make the story.
This isn’t about reframing events. There is no shifting perspectives here. To say that you view reality through a lens is still to assume that there is a reality separate from the lens. But there is no such thing. You make reality. You simply perpetuate what you give your attention to.
Even choice is beside the point. You don’t choose from a set of pre-established options. Such “options” exist only because you’ve conceived of them. They aren’t laid in front of you like a menu at a restaurant. You create out of thin air. Decision is an illusion. There is only creation.
The Creation of Possibility
Growth is not about seeing things a new way or even about making new choices. Growth is about making something new, period.
You can’t even make a mistake. You just make. It’s simple and straightforward.
Growth is amoral. It inherently has no preferences. There is no specific, concrete, physical manifestation it is particularly concerned with.
Growth is simply about expansion: it seeks to become more of what it already is, so it can be what it has always wanted to become.
There is no end. To grow is to create new possibilities. Therefore, there can be no end.
This is the only essential rule of growth: there are no limits. The moment you assume an inherently limited reality, you can bet that you have stopped growing, and thus removed yourself from the path with a heart.
In choosing the next step on your path of growth, there is a simple heuristic you can follow. Howsoever you are prepared to expand reality next, go there.
Remember—you’re not just growing yourself. You’re growing reality in its entirety. You’re like a gardener, and reality is the plant you’re growing.
Of course, since you are a part of reality, you are also growing yourself simultaneously. Therefore, through your role as the grower of reality, you yourself are growing. This is the aim of growth, then: to expand your ability to grow the range of possibilities available to you. The gardener grows through what he grows.
Why expand reality? Why bother? There are simple reasons for doing so. You can do it because you’re simply prepared to. You can do it because you’re curious. You can do it because you dare to. You can do it because it makes you feel alive in every cell of your body.
Rules of Thumb
Of course, reality will grow according to the rules, mechanisms, and principles that you believe that it does so. Your ability to create is limited by what you are prepared to experience. As such, there is a corollary to the heuristic stated above: Where you are not prepared to change, remain there, and focus your innovative instinct elsewhere.
Principles, along with the apparent consistency of reality, provide you with the experience of order. The appearance of order in this reality is highly valuable to the journey of growth, because it is order itself that enables us to experience ourselves growing and reality expanding. If reality was either totally random, inconsistent, or extremely fast-moving, we would experience nothing but chaos, and that wouldn’t be much of an experience at all. Plus the experience of growth requires that we perceive ourselves to be creating, and random chaos defies deliberate creation.
To keep things simple, we can simply use Steve Pavlina’s principles of Truth, Love, and Power. It makes sense to use these principles because they are the principles that govern conscious growth, and the growth of consciousness is the same as the growth of reality. Of course, ultimately I’m choosing these because they are how I perceive reality unfolds. More finely stated, these are the tools I am wielding in the creation of reality.
These principles are much subtler in subjective reality than they are in an objective reality. Truth is what you honestly believe—that is, what you regard as being possible. Love is simply to recognize your role as creator of reality. This is because love is engagement with reality. Accordingly, when you forget about your creative abilities, you become less engaged with life, and you’re more likely to hide away instead. Power indicates whether you are making reality as you have deliberately intended. Power is all about follow-through: it is to act in accordance with the truths you are aware of. Note that focus is essential to power.
Similar to the heuristic stated above, Wherever you are inspired to see greater alignment with truth, that is the place to be now. Note that I used the word see instead of seek. You know what ultimately is possible. You know that you, and all of reality, are both infinite.
However, you simultaneously have to accept what you presently experience: because you value some degree of order, you’ll only allow yourself to go so far relative to what you have experienced up to this point. So, aligning with truth demands that you simply look ahead and see what possibilities lie up ahead, both in any particular aspect of life and in life in general.
At any given time, you have an inkling about what is possible next. You know there is something just beyond your present experience, and you simply have to lift your head up and look it square in the eye. That “something” is your path of growth. It is the something that will ultimately shape you into the sort of reality-grower that you desire to become.
Growth Over Morals
The growth-approach to life is liberating. In this journey, it does not matter who you are to other people. Ultimately, since you are creating all of it, it just matters that you are the grower. That’s all you have to do—be the best grower you can be, and the rest will take care of itself. It has to, since it all lies within the realm of your creation, which is the garden that you grow.
The growth-approach frees you from empty obligations. This is because the point of everything is to expand. As such, do not seek to do the same thing over and over again simply because you think you are obligated to do so for its own sake. Do what will grow you, as the grower itself. This is where the love-based energy you cultivate and send to others comes from anyway. There is no love, and therefore no service, in thankless repetition. No one truly gains from stagnation.
So, write if it would expand reality for you. Don’t if it wouldn’t. Make the dietary changes that would grow your reality. Don’t bother with changes that would shrink it. Take the career path that would expand the possibilities available in your reality. Forget about paths that keep possibility stagnant.
Remember that making money, serving people, gaining fame and recognition, and achievement are in themselves creations (explorations, if you prefer). These things may not be the point (contrary to what you have been taught), but they are still valid, and they still can serve as steps along the path of growth. So if it is a challenge for you to consider making money congruently as being possible, then there may be tremendous growth potential for you to steadily see your way into this possibility until you experience it as your everyday reality.
This progression will indeed not only grow the possibilities available to you in your reality, but it will likewise grow you as the grower of reality. And because growth is the point here, you can forget all about morals and ideas about right and wrong, because those aren’t going to help you.
Of course, moving beyond those ideas is part of the process of growth, so you will have to face them and ultimately re-create them one way or another. However you do it, do it in a manner which expands reality in a way that you are now prepared to experience for the first time. Indeed, that is what growth is: the timeless embracement of newness.
Growth in All Directions
Finally, take note that growth sometimes entails revisiting a place you have been to previously. This could mean testing dietary habits you’ve since shed, engaging with previous hobbies, and talking to old friends. It can likewise mean experiencing a temporary decline in your health, performance, or finances.
Sometimes you need to take a step back before you take two forward. Growing reality entails growing in all directions- not just what you consider “forward progress.” As such, taking a step back can actually help you to continue that forward progress, because you will see these old, limited experiences with fresh eyes, and this will shed light on the ultimate direction in which you are headed. Remembering where you have been can provide you with clarity as to where you are about to go.
So if you get sick, use that as a pointer for the experience of health you would like to create next. If you move back to your hometown, let that leverage your desires for the type of place you would like to experience next. And if your very ability to create reality shrinks, let it serve as a reminder of the great creator you truly are, and as motivation for how deliberate, powerful, and engaged you would like to become.
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So, in deciding what to do next, just hold this thought in mind: Howsoever you are prepared to expand reality next, go there. Before you get jitters, also remember, Where you are not prepared to change, remain there, and focus your innovative instinct elsewhere. And to provide you with focus, Wherever you are inspired to see greater alignment with truth, that is the place to be now.
You can go now.
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