Navigating the energy of disruption
What is your relationship with disruption?
Is it something you tend to avoid or protect yourself from, or do you see it as a catalyst for growth and change? What would your life be like without it - and what about the world and the human collective? Does disruption exist to help or hinder us? What if it isn’t an energy of disruption but an energy of movement, of the natural laws of energy, which is never static. Is disruption necessary? Or could we exist on a continuum of ease?
Disruption often shows up quietly at first. A little nudge to remind us to take better care of ourselves, to slow down and live more in the present, or to make some little changes to our daily life. Perhaps this sounds familiar?
When we miss or ignore these more subtle signs, disruption can step in to shake the ground we walk on. Maybe it shows up as a major health crisis, chronic pain, a broken relationship, redundancy, losing a loved one, an accident, anxiety or depression...
These bigger challenges can sometimes feel impossible to overcome - taking us on a journey we can think of as a dark night of the soul. In order to make it through such an initiation, you may be required to get comfortable with and ‘own’ your deepest fears. You may be required to collapse your identity as you know it, shatter illusions, and break the patterns and habits that have given you a sense of comfort, safety, certainty, and familiarity. As terrifying as this might seem, at some point you realise that disruption has the upper hand and there is nothing you can do but surrender…let go of the tight grip you have on the familiar, and step into the abyss. You have to trust in something far greater than your individual self.
When this happens, it can feel as though absolutely everything has fallen apart. It can feel as though you are losing everything, including your mind. It can feel as though you are shattered into pieces. But rest assured you are not broken. When disruption shows up like this, it is an invitation to dissolve the old and tired structures and to create the space for a new story to emerge. You are being called to shed your skin and step into the next version of who you are - to experience and embody more of your soul, more of who you truly are.
While our experiences of disruption can be painful, disorienting, relentless and brutal - sometimes even overturning the landscape of our life and taking us to the very edge*, I believe its true purpose is to teach and transform us. If we are willing to meet it and descend into it, disruption will edge us towards the fullest, most luminous version of ourselves. It is a rite of passage, a medicine all of its own, serving as a powerful guide to bring us into greater alignment with the heart of who we are.
That disruption will show up in our lives in some way, is inevitable. It is part of our lived, human experience. The question is - how do we respond when disruption shows up? Speaking from my own experience, I can have feelings of frustration, disbelief, injustice, anger, fear, and resistance - to name a few. These are all very natural human responses. But the point at which these initial feelings rise up within us is also the moment we can make a conscious choice:
What if we allow the initial feelings to rise up and then move through us - to experience them without becoming them? No bypassing, and yet no getting tangled up in the story? What if, instead of trying to fight our way out or flee the situation, we were able to meet disruption with an open heart, without all the resistance? What if we could disarm, take a breath, unclench, and allow the disruption to unfold? To welcome disruption and feel honoured that we are being gifted with the opportunity to re-imagine ourselves or our lives.
The practices I work with and teach from the Andean medicine tradition have given me the capacity to meet disruption with steadiness, patience and self-compassion - and even a sense of excitement, if not curiosity. I am able to feel a deeply embodied trust in what is unfolding, even in those times of disruption and uncertainty - and I can assure you, I am no stranger to either. Over time, the journey of empowering our energy body reveals to us more of who we are and what is truly possible when we can see ourselves beyond the limitations of our stories. We see that beneath or beyond the experience itself, our luminous self is steady and constant and always willing itself to be expressed more fully through us, to express more of our infinite potential.
This doesn’t make disruption disappear, it just means that the way we respond to disruption changes. We can learn to welcome disruption as a sign that something within us is ready to be awakened. Something is ready to change.
*I wish to be really clear that I am not suggesting we ‘descend into’ or accept situations such as physical or emotional abuse, or willingly expose ourselves to violations of any kind in the name of personal growth. What I am saying, is that if we do experience such circumstances in our lives, part of the healing process can be to discover our ability to overcome even the harshest and most devastating experiences - to alchemise the pain, the trauma, the hurt into powerful medicine that we can share with the world.