Humanity learned to play it safe during the Piscean Epoch of 2250 years. It was more of a forced learning, a not so subtle fear-based push to keep scared and be protective because at any moment, it could all fall apart…the sheriff could come to the door, the IRS letter could be in the mail, that thing you did could come back to haunt you, the investments might fail, there might be terrorists on the plane, the world might end…on and on over the millennia, herded into a collective loss of power, compromised, giving up for the most part, imprisoned behind our supposedly desirable comfort zone.
Just what is this comfort zone anyway?
It seems like a good thing. We gather everything we think we need to make our life comfortable around us and then maintain it no matter what…because…you just never know. It’s like a leaf in a stream, in some ways. The leaf falls into the river and goes with the flow. It is exhilarating and constant and, although it is scary sometimes, it is exciting and we really enjoy it. And then the leaf gets into an eddy. Round and round it goes. In the beginning the leaf goes faster than ever. Wooohoooo! This is sooo coool! Hey, wait a minute….I just saw that….and soon the realization hits that the leaf is trapped in a repeating scenario. Same ol’ same ol’…until there is very little inspiration at all…but, at least the leaf is safe separated from that life thing…and how can the leaf get back into the flow? By a miracle (someone lifting the leaf up and setting it in the stream again or by a massive wash of water…a flood.
The comfort zone is an illusion. Trading the imprisonment of the same ol’ for the real adventure of life and moving into and with and through the changes is a very high cost. We lose our inspiration, our vitality. We learn to hesitate and second guess. There is no inspiration or even a real sense of direction. We watch the world go by. Gone is the wonder, the imagination, the excitement, the vision…well, at least temporarily misplaced.
Our personal story can become our comfort zone. Life happens and we carry the memory and the energetics of the specific experiences. We become the things that happen to us. We let the past dictate the present and the future and we learn to expect the same result so we do not even attempt…we throw up a try or two and always fall short…but that’s OK because this is familiar. Our story shackles us and we activate Universal Law to attract to us the very same frequency level over and over. We rise only as high as our wounding…and that keeps getting recycled.
Someone had some time on their hands and did a significant study involving fleas. They put a bunch of them in a terrarium like container. The fleas initially did their thing…jumped. They jumped up, over, around, and often right out the top…woooohoooo! Then the controller put a lid on the terrarium. The fleas jumped but they kept banging themselves into the ceiling. In not time they adjusted and jumped much less high and all was well….woohoo. SO, our controller then took the lid off and the fleas, even though their barrier was removed, only jumped as high as the barrier was…even though they were totally free to jump as high as they could. SO, too, we are with our comfort zone. It becomes our self proclaimed, adjusted to, limit. And for the sake of the familiar we just keep on as life passes by and we grow weary of the routine…but the cultural wash of fear is strong enough to keep most unwilling to change. So, fearing change, we put blinders on and overtax our adrenals.
We must open the door of our comfort zone at least…just to see what happens when we venture outside. We choose to stop telling our story so much and start living more closely to the moment where real life happens. We start to do things differently and before you know it, we are spending more and more time outside the walls of the zone. It is still available but we are not so invested in it any more. Nice to have it there just in case…but life is so much richer outside those walls…
If tyou want more from life you have to be willing to take the leap. What you are really starting to do is develop trust muscles that will help you…yes, you got it…trust life!. This will open the adventure gates and the black and white movie will burst into technicolor.
So, in order to bust out, you have to be honest and examine your current and historical comfort zones. Look at where you live. Look at your routines. Look what brings up emotion. Look at the people in your life. Look at your history with relevant people. Be honest with yourself. You are on the threshold of removing, in some cases, life long chains. Freedom is a moment by moment choice. It is your nature, your design. You have to be taught to be afraid.
Describe your comfort zone in writing, in spoken word, in pictures. Get to know the nuances. Where did you stop dancing, stop singing, give up, settle, turn your back on your dream, stop playing as much?
And now that you have all this information…evidence…make a choice to step outside of at least one element. Leave it behind and simply see what happens. Do it for a while with just the one…proving to yourself that you will not be destroyed in the process. It may be hard. It may be emotional. You may manifest dis-eases as the old way that feels so threatened struggles to keep the castle walls strong and impenetrable.
In the 60’s there was a TV commercial with singer, Ella Fitzgerald in the recording studio. There was a crystal goblet on the studio console. Ella sang a pure tone note and the goblet shattered. The announcer asked, “Is it Ella or is it Memorex?” End of commercial. Let’s bring that commercial into present day with the super fast cameras that can record the details of an event so finely that when played back at a very slow speed, we can see just how the event happened. In this case you would see the crystal goblet react to Ella’s note by starting to shake. The longer her note held the more intense the shaking became. At one very critical point the goblet ceased shaking and seemed to contract completely, as if doing everything in its power to hold itself together…until, with Ella’s pure tone ringing out the goblet surrender and shattered.
This is how our comfort zone goes when it is challenged. It holds on with all of its might and resources and diversionary tactics. What really is going on here is that the comfort alone is really a series of life decisions for survival made by your inner child self. She built walls based on those decisions and has maintained them for decades with your cooperation. When they become threatened she does everything she can to resist and throws up smokescreens and discomfort and pain and foggy heads and washes of fear to keep you from doing the unthinkable…remove the comfort zone.
But this is exactly what must be done. The child self must be brought into trust of you to become open to re-education. This is not 40 years ago anymore. Things are different. Most of that was never hers to do anyway. But she did it…well done precious, but let me take over and share with you what is really going on here. Just relax and enjoy the wind through the trees…
For awhile we shall use this space to work with standing outside our comfort zone. In the meantime keep this in mind. You know your zone. Make conscious choice to do something different just to see what happens, what it feels like.
I wrote a song about Leaving the Comfort zone about a year ago while camping beside the Columbia River in Washington state. Click the title below for the lyric. It is not recorded yet…but the lyric will make sense after this reading.
