In Defence of Wholeness: Countering the Epidemic of Performative Growth
If you're constantly at your limit, are you really free?
I noticed myself walking a familiar path recently: courting extreme emotional peaks and dramatic troughs. I’ve suffered enough to last a lifetime, so when something feels harder than it needs to be, or challenging in a way I don’t value, it piques my curiosity.
I’m sitting in a circle at an embodiment retreat, I notice someone across the room having a massive emotional release.
“Ooh,” a little part of my brain says (completely outside my conscious awareness) “that looks like fun, maybe we should be doing that too.”
Off I go, trying to one-up them.
Over the next few days, I force myself into higher highs, lower lows and bigger releases. Instead of experiencing clarity, I get more confused and rather than coming home feeling stable, I feel like I’m crashing after a sugar high.
The myth that bigger always equals better is making itself known through the healing and personal development world. Maybe it’s a pendulum swing from centuries of emotional suppression, but it feels like we’re all trying to outdo each other: hours of primal screaming, blood-smeared bodies and overt displays of sexuality.
On one hand, our Souls love breaking out of chains and we’re probably coded with competitiveness to help us land the visions we came here to deliver. Yet… I also think there’s a survival mechanism at play here. At least, there has been for me. I don’t feel good enough as I am, so I have to compete and consistently excel to maintain my place in the tribe, even if it means exhausting myself.
Exploration and self-expression are wonderful and necessary but going all out at the expense of your health isn’t liberation.
I can see now, in the same way humans escape painful ecological realities through ideological extremism, we can also skirt the deeper, more intimate, work of loving and revealing our true selves, by consistently going to the outer limits of our self-expression.
But isn’t all growth created equal?
In my experience, true healing and transformation isn’t just radical catharsis. The most sustainable growth work is sacred, and sacred work has a feeling of integrity about it.
The Fault Line
Spiritual entrepreneurship, and spirituality in the digital age, was always going to be a tough line to walk.
In the same way mega churches have distorted the spirit of genuine faith, I think a lot of healers are caught in the trap of thinking they can (or need to) apply the same entrepreneurial principles as any other business. But as coaches, therapists, guides and healers, we’re dealing with how people make decisions, the lives they end up living and, in extreme cases, whether they live or die.
We can’t take the practice of selling t-shirts and slap it on a sacred calling.
For me, the sacred is an essential psychic nutrient. Accessing pure Source stokes my will to live and keeps me connected to what’s really important. But, if I’m addicted to cheap thrills, I miss it completely.
How can I tell the difference between pushing myself because I feel like I need to stand out, and the actions I need to take in actually striving for mastery? Am I driven by compulsion or acting in alignment with my own enough-ness?
Here are some questions that helped me make a clear distinction.
Is this the experience I want to have because I value it? Is it life-affirming, or am I tolerating this now because of some idea about what I’ll get and who I'll be when I get through it? “I’ll be strong later,” is a way to make meaning out of suffering you’re already in, but you don’t need to perpetuate the cycle of suffering to generate strength.
What state am I running to or from? Can I cultivate it now? What, from the fantasy, can I embody in the present?
Is this action taking me closer to myself, or further away? Is it cultivating self-love, and trust, or eroding it?
How healthy are my relationships? Is any success that doesn't include health, actually success?
Is this how I want to do things? Or have I fallen into someone else's way of life?
Is the energy I'm investing in different areas of my life proportionate? Or does it feel a little out of whack? Is there something in the background of my life that’s calling out for my attention? What am I in resistance to? Can I, slowly, with gentleness, accept the resistance long enough to let it speak?
Can I stop? What emotions arise when I do?
Am I putting padding between myself and Life? Consuming to seek comfort (food, coffee, alcohol, tv, sex, social media) as a substitute for integrity?
Can I trust the timing of my life and go at my own pace? Why? Why not?
“Is the desire to do this still present in a place of whole-hearted devotion to yourself?” - Madeleine Burgoyne
At the same retreat, another woman keeps excusing herself. She lies down and wanders in to join the group a few hours later. It takes me a while to realize she’s not missing out, she’s tuning in. Seeing how she's operating subconsciously gives me permission to do the same.
If you're feeling a bit exhausted by the growth culture or your journey has felt a little "off" and you're hankering for a taste of the sacred, take note:
You don’t need to be or feel extraordinary to have value. In most businesses, if you fail to deliver on what you promised, people might get disappointed, but they’ll be okay. Luring people in with the promise of heaven on earth sets you and the people you’re serving up to fail in a big way. It’s okay to play it safe.
The closer to your inner light you are, the less you need shiny things. Stay devoted to your own regulation and your own heart. Everything you’re looking for is already here.
You don’t need to move any faster than what feels good. You don’t need to be any further ahead than you are.
Healing happens in daily devotion: small, consistent acts of self-care, underpinned by a willingness to accept and meet yourself where you are.
Wisdom knows when to say when. Get a feel for your inner limits and practice staying within them.
There’s a line between vulnerability and over-exposure.
You’re allowed to have “whole, balanced and sane” as your guiding lights. Like a friend saying "warmer!" when you're close to the treasure, let your inner stability be the compass that guides your path.
The more I dismantle my own pedestal, the less pressure I feel, and the less stock I put in the pedestals of others. My capacity is smaller than I thought, but that’s okay, because what I have is enough. I feel proud of myself and accomplishments, but I’ve given up trying to feel or make myself seem superior.
The relief of knowing I can be of service without strain, is other-worldly. I can devote myself to what I love without worrying about being consumed by it. Life has oodles of compassion and no expectations of me, so I can have oodles of compassion and no expectations of others.
I trust I’m growing in the way Life wants, but I’m not chasing a result, so there’s no pressure or disappointment. The more I honour myself, the more unconscious motives reveal themselves and backsliding and “mistakes” become part of the process.
When someone thanks me for my work in the world, I can say, “it was a pleasure.”
Something a mentor said in the season after this retreat has stuck with me.
“Beings in the highest light aren’t doing whatever they want, they’re staying within certain parameters. They don’t need to go to extremes; they know their place. It makes it easier.”
Ultimately, it’s all okay.
The Soul, like a homing device, will always call you back to equilibrium.
Whatever poison you’re ingesting, you’ll find the medicine in it, your vices will fall away when there’s no longer a use for them and the people who are ready to receive the gold you have to offer will feel it, just like you’ve seen and felt it in others, without you needing to over-exaggerate or compromise your integrity.
