About a year ago, I remember being at an event where a friend was asked to say some words about me.
He stood up and said that I’ve had one of the biggest transformations of anyone he knows.
I was reflecting on this evening a few days ago.
Where did the growth come from? Was it “me”?
I didn’t desire to get on a spiritual path eight years ago.
I never sought out a teacher.
I didn’t want a lot of hard things to happen to me that created a crucible of growth.
Yet all these things happened.
So who is doing the growth?
Are you really doing it? Or is it happening? And what is making it happen?
If you look at your own life and where you are today, you can sit in the same question.
Where does this inquiry lead you to….
What comes up for me is a sense of humility, trust, and appreciation.
Life is leading you, like it always has.
The concept that you need to make your growth happen just isn’t very true in my experience. There is something to a willingness to meet the growth opportunities though…or maybe that is an illusion to. I’m not sure.
Challenges to the notion of a “do-er” has been very prominent in my experience recently. It seems like it is coming up everywhere. One example of this was my conversation with Dr. Srikumar Rao. If you want to sit deeper in this reflection you might enjoy that conversation.
Have a great weekend,
-Scott
P.S. if you’re in Austin, I am having a launch party for my book on October 9th. 🥳
If you’re a fan of my writing and would like to attend, you can find the event details here. It’d be fun to meet in person!
It feels to me this is a collective learning happening now. Our current notions of productivity suggest we all have agency and it’s binary is laziness. What is more true is that to grow, we need less doing and more being, more openness to recognizing where and how growth is happening so we can be part of it.
Beautiful reflection, Scott. What you describe feels like the point where “growth” stops being a project and starts revealing itself as movement within what never needed to grow. At some point even humility becomes inclusion — the same life that moves the tides moving the sense of “me” and “my story.” There’s such relief in seeing that even the willingness isn’t owned; it’s just another wave in the same sea.