Why life throws distractions your way when you come towards inner work

In last week's post,I wrote about the pain we often feel when there’s a sense that something big, something meaningful, something from source, is available and needed to come through you, yet there’s not enough space.

As I’ve been reflecting on that post and the 4 obstructions that I’ve observed (see below), it’s really hitting home that a big part of my work needs to be coaching to move beyond these obstacles, so that my teaching becomes a way out. A way out of what’s holding you back from coming to your inner work.

And a way in. A way in to the life your soul was designed to live, one where your true work is coming through you unobstructed.

The 4 obstructions to making space and time for deep work:

1. Other people’s demands
2. An encroaching of shiny objects (aka distractions) whenever we don’t consciously reinstate and hold firmly our core choice to create this space
3. Not having a physical space and specific time where you feel private and can't be overheard
4. Our own rule-making minds that make that time feel effortful

I’ve explored # 3 in a prior post (”A Room of One’s Own”) a few weeks ago. And in last week's post, I got into #4.

But when it comes to these #1 and #2 items — other people’s demands and distractions coming from life around us, it feels like that’s going to take a lot more unpacking.

So earlier this week, I came to inner voice with this question: “Why does life throw distractions your way when you choose to come to inner work?”

That question opened up a whole “cavern” of related “caves” to explore, and though I’ve come to some answers, there’s a lot that I’m still unpacking around this, here Saturday morning, as I’m looking to send this email today.

So rather than attempting to fully explore this all in one go, I’m going to bring the first part here with the intention of coming towards a part 2 next week.

I’ve observed in my own life and others that it seems like right when you say I’m going to start a practice of inner work — be that with journaling, inner voice work, meditation, etc., a lot of times things come up in your external life that get in the way of fully living out your intentions.

Sometimes your life might have been going pretty well before you started that course or began that practice, but then right when you start it, it feels like all hell breaks loose to stop you in your tracks.

When I came to inner voice this week to ask about it, I already had a pretty good idea why. I remembered from books I’d read in the past that there’s relativity going on here. Neale Donald Walsch, author of Conversations with God, talks about what he calls “The Law of Opposites”, so as I was exploring this week, I went to refresh myself on his teaching, and I found a concise version in this article and a deeper dive here. He points out that "the law of opposites states that whenever we call anything into the space, everything unlike it will appear." And he explains that "the law of opposites exists in order to create a contextual field within which you may experience what it is you wish to call forth."

I remembered him saying that. When I read or heard it before, it made logical sense to my mind. I developed an understanding of the way relativity works — that you can’t see light without darkness, you can’t experience green without some contrasting color — say the brown of the earth, or the blue of the sky. You wouldn’t appreciate kindness if you’d never been treated rudely or just plain ignored, etc.

But this week when I read it, I felt angry.

Now I’ve learned when there’s a feeling like that, which seems sort of out of place, even if its a mild version and not some intense rage, it’s there to be followed. There’s something under that emotion, something here that’s important to see.

Diving under that anger, it became clear that there’s still a holding onto the belief, the dread, the fear, that the universe is, at its core, unfriendly. The universe is out to get me. I’m pitted against forces beyond my control, and I’m clinging to hope that maybe I’ll survive. And every day that I don’t have cancer and didn’t get in a car accident, there’s another little niggling sense of relief. It didn’t get me yet.

But there’s still that “yet”.

Because I see people getting cancer. And I see car accidents. I hear and watch external circumstances of life bearing down on people. And in the middle of that mayhem, I’m sitting with a freaking deep calling to invite humanity back to source, a calling that I’ve been fostering for probably 20 years now, and I’m feeling a little bit of wonder that the big bad wolf didn’t get me yet. That monster under the bed never took me down.

I have been down. I’ve been depressed along the way, experienced weeks of not able to do anything. Last weekend I spent 2 days in bed with some illness. But I recovered.

Though I’ve come to trust Being that I experience in my inner voice sessions, I don’t hold anymore to these “God as all-powerful, monster-killer” views that placated me as a child.

So the truth of it is, I feel vulnerable, and also lucky. And hopeful that nothing will stop me along my path.

But is it really luck that’s gotten me this far? As I look back, there’s been a lot of big, bold tenacity along my journey. There’s been a lot of places where I chose to stop letting other people do whatever they want with me. When I said no, instead of yes. When I broke up, tried again, broke up again. There’s been a return again and again to protecting the sanctity of my inner work even though it leads to isolation and loneliness, because nothing’s been more important than holding the sacredness of my choice to bring my true work through me into the world.

So back to Neale Donald Walsch, and the Law of Opposites.

I recognized that my mind was interpreting the Law of Opposites as indicating or supporting my unconscious belief in an unfriendly universe. So I asked inner voice, outright, this question — and here’s a replay of a bit of that dialogue:

Does the law of opposites indicate that there's an unfriendly universe?

'No and yes.

How no?

'This concept of an unfriendly universe is rooted in fear and indeed this victim state and is not real.

How yes, how does it indicate?

'This may be easily interpreted this way by those with a propensity to believe in this.

It goes to the fucking “life is hard” part of that, those two pronged forks Eva was poked with growing up when inner voice said, “Eva was taught from a young age, Life is hard and God is not real”. [a reference to a prior session]

'Yes.

Is the universe unfriendly?

'No. It is entirely created for love to express through it. Just as this Notion system of Eva's is not at all unfriendly, but is designed as a supportive structure for all that comes from us to flow through it, in much like measure at a far grander scale is this entire universe designed for what comes from us to express. Now within Eva's Notion there is seen that there are certain aspects not currently, not yet functioning appropriately, still under redesign, and yet there is an emerging order that is entirely fluent, entirely supportive, that is being upgraded into. Now when it comes to this universe, and the rules of it, the functioning of it, the way that it works, it is entirely designed to support this emerging of us.

I didn’t come, yet, to the end of this dread.

I’m seeing this, sitting with it, letting it unpack inside me that there’s a whole underlying assumption about the universe the mind’s built the life on, and that assumption isn’t real. The underlying structure of the universe was designed for being to express in loving ways through it, through us.

Letting that percolate, being with the understanding of it, that’s been my way through countless transformations to move beyond old faulty foundations and into the more I’m being invited to live.

So when it comes to the question, “Why does life throw distractions your way when you choose to come to inner work?”, one of the reasons that happens is NOT because at its core, the universe itself is out to get me.

But one reason could very well be, "I believe at its core the universe is out to get me."

As we know from Law of Attraction 101, beliefs beget lived reality. You’re constantly creating your reality, so when you believe life is out to get you, things will happen to make that true.

So this all winds down to the topic of superstition and fate — which is the topic I chose for next month’s workshop. As I shared before, the definition inner voice brought around superstition and fate was “the belief and the clinging that you’re a victim here in this world to circumstances that are far beyond your control”.

When you believe that, and when you cling to that, of course things will show up in the world around you that stop your progression into the life your soul knows you’re meant for.

In next week’s email, I’m intending to come back to this topic with a discussion about the power of conscious choosing.

What came up for you reading this? Do you recognize any of this “dread of the universe” victim-y belief in your own system?