Crabs
I grew up in the State of Oregon. My parents had some friends that had cabins on the coast and we would often go there to spend vacation time. There is a particular crab that lives in the area that is very tasty called the Dungeness crab. We would get up early during the low tide armed with rakes and catch the crabs in the tide pools. The crabs were a pretty good size. Only the male crabs were kept so that the females could reproduce.
When a crab was caught we put it into a wide shallow pan. The crabs were quite quick and agile and the first crab would sometimes escape from the pan (the sides of the pan were less than 6″ high). But once you caught more than one crab and put it in the pan with other crabs, none of the crabs would ever escape. Why? Because the other crabs would always pull the escaping crab back into the pan.
Spiritual growth is much the same way. As we begin to grow and transform many forces try to pull us back into the “pan.” For example, we may find that friends and family will resist the transformation we begin to experience and try to pull us back to the norm. Often society as a whole resists change. Transformation and growth always involves change, and change often makes the people we know and deal with uneasy. Change often brings up fear, and personal growth involves change.
As we negotiate a spiritual path we find that it is not only people in our outer world that try to pull us back into the “pan.” There are many things in our inner world that do the same. Patterns, habits, beliefs all resist change and transformation. It sometimes seems as though patterns have a life of their own. Knowing that healing and transformation may mean death to the pattern, the pattern resists continually pulling us back into the status quo. When we shine the light of awareness on ourselves we will find that there are things in our inner world that resist change and limit our ability to grow and transform.
By acknowledging and getting to know the things that limit us and hold us back we begin to loosen their grip on us. Most importantly we must become aware of those areas where we hold our self back. Fear of change looms large for many of us and can run very deep. It is quite simple really – if we want transformation we must embrace change. So often the “pan” is of our own making.
Love and Light,
Kristopher
http://masteryofawareness.com